Here is some wiki info on Macau.
My journey started on Thursday morning. I was booked for an 11am flight direct from Chicago to Hong Kong. This is a 14.5 hour flight. I checked myself in online before going to the airport so I could get in quickly. Things went pretty smooth, and checking in was no different than checking in for a domestic flight, except when I was online it asked for my passport info. The gate for the flight was in the B gates at O'Hare, which is where all the domestic flights are, so it was a quick entry.
I got to the airport in enough time to grab some food for the trip. I went to the store and got some beef jerky, some gummy worms, some M&M's, and water. With such a long flight, I'm at the mercy of the airline as to when I will be fed, so better safe than sorry.
After getting everything I'd need I proceeded to the gate where they had just started boarding. I get up to scan my boarding pass it the machine goes "beep beep beep beep beep", definitely meant to bring attention to the ticket taker. She looks at the ticket, then looks to the side and goes "Good news Mr. Young, you have been upgraded to Business Class". Sweet.
The next 14 hours flew by living in the lap of luxury. There were hourly massages to make sure my muscles did get too tired sitting in my completely reclining seat that contoured my body.
Just kidding, it was a long flight, but it was comfortable too. Having a wider seat that reclines in every direction is helpful on this flight. The food was ok, nothing amazing. I actually should have slept more on the flight than I did. Instead I watched every movie shown pretty much. I did get some sleep, but not really enough.
Ok, so I land and go through customs. I then exchange about $100(us) for about $725(hk). I'll need this later for taxis and what not. After this I get a train pass on the Airport Express train which will take me straight into Hong Kong. It was a pretty quick train ride, I'd say maybe 30 minutes. The last stop is Hong Kong (there are only 3 stops from the airport). From this point I was to grab a taxi over to the ferry. It took me over an hour waiting in line to get a cab. The funny thing is, I swear the cab just took me around the corner.
Once at the ferry terminal, I got a ticket pretty easy for the 5:45pm boat. Inside the boat it is a lot like an airplane that is wide. There were trays on the seats in front, and they offered beverages and what not during the ride. I was so tired at this point though, I slept for the whole boat ride. After landing on Macau I went to another taxi line, which took me to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel where I was staying.
I made it! It only took about 22 hours door to door, but I was here, and man is it warm and muggy! Needless to say my energy levels were low. I reached out to the team I was to meet to let them know I was here, and we coordinated meeting the next day. After that I needed to figure out how to talk to people back in the states. I had a conference call scheduled for 3am Macau time I needed to sit in on. I downloaded the Vonage softphone application thinking that would work. I called my voicemail back home and left a test message to see how I sounded. It seemed to work good enough, although there was a little digital distortion probably due to bandwidth I thought. Now it was time to finally sleep.
I woke up around 2:45am for the 3am call and quickly found out my Vonage solution was not going to work well. I could hear everyone, but I couldn't be heard. Fortunately there were several other people from my company on the call at the same time, so I IM'd them anything I needed said on the call. Pretty funny when all said and done, but it worked ok for this. After the call I just called by boss (who was on the call) through my cell phone. I was previously trying to avoid using the cell as it costs $2/minute, but we needed to talk. After that call I went back to bed.
I woke up Sat morning at around 9am and got ready to go out and see Macau. It is a small island when all said and done, and there isn't a tremendous amount to site see as the island is really known for casinos. I can't say I saw anything amazing, but I did find a bit of a mall near my hotel. I was hoping to find a mic/headset for the laptop thinking it would help the VOIP calls I was trying to make to avoid spending the $2/minute on the cell phone. Plus since it was Heather's birthday on the 14th, I needed to find her something neat while I'm here. So I was now on a mission to find these two things.
I found the electronics section, but had no luck in finding what I was looking for. I did find a couple of Australians and asked them if they had any suggestions. They told me to go to the "Red Market". They said just jump a cab, and there was a ton of shopping there with better pricing, and they have everything there.
The cab ride over was pretty funny. The driver spoke no English, and I speak no Cantonese. The driver had no idea what "Red Market" meant, so I remembered the Australians told me it was just on the other side of the tunnel. So I then proceeded to act out a car driving through a tunnel. Somehow he figured out what I meant and drove me to a tunnel. On the other side of the tunnel there seemed to be a lot of shops, so I jumped out.
At this point I was getting pretty hungry as I hadn't eaten anything since landing. It was near 1pm by now so my tummy wanted something. I hate to admit this, but I was a little gun shy after my experience with the cab driver and the language breakdown that I went towards something everyone speaks, McDonalds. Everyone knows what a Big Mac meal with a coke is, so that's what I got. It tasted pretty similar to what you'd get in the states, and it foot the bill to get me through the afternoon.
After feeding my brain it hit me that I had a computer on my hip (cell phone), so I Googled "Red Market" and found the streets it was on. I was in luck, I landed on the right street.
I then walked the streets and alleys (as there are a bunch of shops in the alleys) for a few hours on my hunt for a headset, and something for Heather. At first I stayed on the streets, but then I found this alley with a ton of little stands with food, so I kept going down the alley, and it just kept opening up to more and more alleys with more and more stands, it was crazy. This is where the real life was here. I took a video while walking through this maze.
Finally after getting to the point where I was going to give up because I could not find an electronics store that sold a computer headset, I managed to find a hole in the wall computer store. I found a Philips headset and bought it, it was only about $150(hk), that's less than $20(us). By the way, Macau has its own currency as well, but they take Hong Kong dollars and the exchange rate is almost 1-1. Success! One task down, now for a gift for Heather.
I won't go into any detail here as she will probably read this before I get home to give her the gift, but let's just say it is really nice, unique (I think), and I haggled the price as you are supposed to here.
After purchasing everything, it was time to go back to the hotel. I had done a lot of walking around, and it is pretty hot and muggy (did I mention that before?), and I was feeling tired. Fortunately I found a cab pretty quickly and he took me back. Once getting to the room I tested the new headset, no luck. The audio was just as choppy as during my call. I had read in a forum that if you get a USB headset it will take the processing load off the computer's internal sound cards to be full duplex and would help. Oh, well. After this small defeat I decided to take a nap.
I was woken up by a call from the team who were going to meet up for dinner. We ended up walking over to a nearby hotel/casino and ate at a Japanese restaurant. We ate a teppanyaki dinner. It was nice and not too expensive. Afterwards we went over to the Wynn casino for a drink. Walking through the casino was interesting because they don't play any games you would in the US. Their big games are Roulette, Slots, Baccarat, Sic Bo, and Fan-Tan. Fan-Tan seems the oddest of all games, it is remarkably slow to play, and they are betting on the number of buttons the dealer has (basically). Didn't seem very exciting to me, but that's just my take.
Also at the casino is a stage where these performers come on one after another keeping the stage live constantly. It was interesting to watch as the singers all sang American songs, however I don't think they actually spoke English. I also don't think most of the people watching speak English, so it was just such a funny concept to me to watch.
After the drinks I headed back to the hotel and knocked out a little work and called it a night. That brings me up to today. It's morning now in Macau, and a bit rainy out. I have some work I need to knock out in my room here, then I need to go to a meeting. The next time I write will probably be while on the plane heading home. Since I'll have 14 hours to kill, it's a good time to sum things up. Until then, here are some pictures I took.
Guess where I'm at today?
This is the view from my hotel room in Macau
A nice walk along the water
This is where the taxi dropped me off near Red Market
I stumbled upon this in a bakery window. The aroma in the air was awesome!
Here is another street shot near Red Market
Lot's of scooters here to get people around
This is a night shot outside the Japanese restaurant we ate at