12th April 2010-Hong Kong – Day 2

We started this day by doing another bonus for 250 points.

The bonus read – Take a ferry to Macao island and do four things. Macau is an island that’s main source of income is from gambling in the casinos. Evidently it makes the most money in the territory. The casinos are very large and grand but many people still live in slums.
I will tell you the 4 things that we decided to do. We did this challenge with Zoe and Rainey. Mum and Barbara were to go with us but they had some passport issues and had to take the next ferry.

1)Get a Team photo at Sao Paulo Church – This was a Catholic Church that had burnt down. It is very amazing as it is highly ornate on the side that we took our photo but absolutely blank on the opposite side. It had a lovely view into some lush gardens and down a steep set of steps to the town below. Our Team photo was taken with “ all our family members

including Ben, so Savannah, Chloe, Drew and Ben know that you are travelling safely with us”

2)Obtain a casino chip for me from either Casino Lisboa or Wynn Macau – This was easy. We took a free shuttle bus to the casino and bought a $50.00 Hong Kong dollar chip as that was the cheapest Lisboa sold. The Wynn had $5.00 ones but we didn’t know.

3)Erected in the second half of the 16th century, it became known as the Portas de Cerco --- visit it and explain it . These were the border gates from China to Macau. It is like immigration. Now there is a big new facility but we had to find the actual old gates. Trickier

than you think.

4) Have a nosh at Riquexo – One of Bill delightful eating challenges. It was in a very obscure part of town across from a supermarket. It seemed to have had strange opening hours it was closed when most of the teams tried to eat there, we were lucky it opened at 12.00 and we arrived at 12 and were the first served. It serves Portuguese style food and was very good.

Lily and I then scavenged all over the city. My goodness we walked miles and miles but did lots of challenges. I will tell you some but not all.

We went to the High Court to see a court case. I was sure this was going to be one of Bill’s favorite red herrings but we tried anyway and were amazed that we actually allowed in our scruffy state into one of the court room. It is still very British in rules. The judge and the lawyers all wear long robes ( the judges own is red and the others are black) and the white curly wigs. I have no idea what the case was about as it was in Mandarin but they had 4 male defendants behind a “cage”. Seven people sit on their jury. It was really neat.

We purchased a Chinese Chop from Chop street. A chop can be made out of bone, jade, soap stone or ivory. This is a stamp or seal. We had one carved with Lily’s name.

The hardest one that took the longest and was definitely undesirable was one of the mandatory eating challenges. That was to select a meal at Lei Yue Mun Market. It was very difficult to find, very far away by train and then a 15 minute walk. This market is a sea food market. For those of you who think you like sea food you have NEVER seen some of the things that were alive and swimming in this place. The smell was out of this world. I thought Lily was going to throw up as she ran for the door. We actually fund somewhere selling a hotdog but even that was difficult to eat because of the smell that surrounded you. I was upset with how long this took because we had to miss out on other things I would have preferred to do.

One of the neatest things was we had to go to the FCC building ( this is the Foreign Correspondence Club. Yes Club you have to be a member and took a photo of Hughes Vanes photo of the last helicopter leaving Saigon. It really is an amazing shot.
Lily and I also scored ½ points on one of the Bonus challenges. The challenge read The Team that gets to the highest point in any building and can prove it will earn the points. If other teams get to the same height the points will be split. Lily wanted to do this desperately and in fact we tried for both days to do this. The tallest building was IFC ( International Finance Building 2) which is actually 88 stories tall. On Sunday it ws closed but on Monday we got our security clearance with our passports and travelled up to the 55th floor which is the highest visitors are allowed. I was sure everybody had done it but one our Team and Team Camels managed to get there. What luck for us- Good Girl – Lils.

The night market was interesting with lots of clothing, bags, belts, you name it they had it. We took The Peak tram to the top of Hong Kong and the view was spectacular. We saw the Symphony of Lights ( not very spectacular that night because it was foggy. We tried for Lily to sing Karaoke but we loss those points as the place was closed.
We are off to Hanoi in North Vietnam tomorrow!!!!!!. I can’t wait.

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