Random Pictures

After continuous threats from my mom I decided to get my act together and make another blog entry. This is pretty much just random pictures from Hong Kong and Macau.

Dim sum brunch in a fancy Hong Kong restaurant. Dim sum is pretty much just many small dishes. The waiters walk around with trolleys and you just point to what you want. The dish closest to the camera is something like rice pancake with shrimp inside. It is one of my favourites.

The IFC tower is the tallest building in Hong Kong. It has 88 floors (8 is a really good number in Cantonese, because the word for eight sounds very similar to the word for money). It is also interesting to note that they have skipped a few floors that have numbers with bad connotations attached to them. For example there are no 14 and 44, because the words for the number 14 sounds almost like "definitely fatal" and 24 like "easily fatal".

Went on a day trip to Macau during my Easter break. Macau is a special administrative province of China that was under Portuguese rule for over 400 years. It was handed back to China in 1999. I love Macau. It has such a European feel to it.

The great church of Macau, or the wall that is left of it. It is a pretty impressive sight.

The church wall from a different angle.

Macau is also infamous for its many casinos. Gambling is more or less illegal in mainland China, so the Chinese flock to Macau to get some action.

I kind of like all the blinking lights. Artificial perhaps, but pretty in its own way=) It takes about an hour by ferry to get to Macau and you have to go through immigration and get your passport stamped to get in. If it wasn't for this (and the rather expensive ferry tickets) I would go there all the time.

The Travelator is the world's longest escalator. It consists of of three moving walkways and 20 escalators. It can be reversed, and runs down in the morning and up in the afternoon, so people that live at the top of the hill can get down to work in the morning and back up again in the evening. Around 50 000 (almost the population of Sandnes!) people make this 20 min trip every day. You can walk on and off at several points along the route. I have never had the patience to take it all the way to the top.

Hong Kong just had a bad case of flu and all the primary schools shut down for a week. All of a sudden these masks mysteriously started popping up everywhere.

Funky people handing out free Coke.