Catching up!

MACAU: In the interest of seeing yet another country, Jeff and I went to the island of Macau for 2 days before Chinese New Year (CNY). Yes, it's part of China now, same status as Hong Kong- a Special Administrative Region (SAR)- for the next 60 or so years...just to ease everyone into Communist rule. We took the ferry early on a Thursday morning and about 55 minutes later we disembarked on Macau. Passport control was exciting- lots of mainlanders having trouble getting in- and overall easy to find our shuttle to the Venetian, which is in the 'new' part of Macau, the Cotai Strip. Ultimately this proved annoying because when at the Venetian, all there is is the venetian. So the shuttle bus lobby was chaotic, but we dropped off our bags and went sightseeing. We shuttled back to old Macau and went up to the Portugese part of town. (Macau was originally portugese) There was a big bustling square that looked really European yet happy, probably the Spanish/Portugese style, where we had noodle lunch, and then we walked to the old cathedral on the top of a hill where only the facade is left without anything else. From there we toured the fort, bought some famous candy and cookies and walked really far to about 3 more churches. The only things in the guidebook were churches so there wasn't much else to choose from.
Macau however, is far and wide famous for its casinos. That's why most people go there. It's kind of an early Las Vegas- some of the chains are already there. The Wynn, Venetian, Sands, etc. We walked through a few casinos, caught the Wynn fountain show...nothing too exciting. After this we went back to the Venetian and had dinner before walking through the casino and the outside. Pretty cool, but nothing to write home about. Oh, and we also checked out the pool although it was kind of overcast to really enjoy it.
The next morning we checked out, stashed our bags, had a really pathetic snack of McDonalds and checked out more of the casinos before trekking to the only temple on the island and a famous church we missed the day before. After the temple we had Macanetian food- seafood rice and garlic oysters. Then we headed back into downtown and caught the boat back to HK.

CHINESE NEW YEARS: One of the reasons I wanted to stay in HK until the end of February was Chinese (Or Lunar) New Year! It far exceeded my expectations and in my opinion CNY in HK is better than anywhere else in the world. It started with CNYEve when Jeff and I went to the famous NY fair where they transform part of the park into everything you could possibly want to buy. There's a lot of flowers (big part of CNY), lots of trinkets and CNY decorations. Honestly, it was PACKED. At points we were just getting pushed along with the crowd.
The next morning we woke up late but just in time for CNY treats and tea with Mabel Yee, Judy Yee and Sunarti. Lots of little sweets and nuts, big bouquets of flowers everywhere, everyone in their nicest clothes- it very much got me in the mood! Another big part of CNY is "lai see" or lucky money. It's good luck to give little gifts of money in red envelopes to your family members, coworkers and pretty much everyone. Luckily, if youre not yet married you only have to give your elders little gifts of candy or nuts and they give you the lai see! I went along with Jeff to his Uncle Ken's house with Mabel Yee, Mark and crew and we had more sweets, special turnip cake (actually good), nuts, tea, and we exchanged lai see! I didn't expect to get any but I did. Oh! I forgot to explain that a big part of CNY day is to visit your elders and spend quality family time. So we started at uncle ken's then we went to his aunt helen's apartment with their whole family (more treats, more lai see), then to his grandmother's apartment with 3 more uncles and aunts for more treats andmore lai see and eventually dinner! It was a great day and also very financially profitable for me :)
The next night we stood for an hour to get a good view of the CNY fireworks in the bay and it was 23 minutes of incredibly overdone fireworks. Honestly, I will never have to see another fireworks display again. It was great, loud, beautiful...everything. The woman behind us must have never seen fireworks before in her life though, cause for 18 of the 23 minutes she kept repeating "wow...oh my God...wow....oh my God...wow...oh my God"
And that was CNY! We had a few more days in HK but we said most of our goodbyes on CNY