Seoul, South Korea

I arrived at Seoul Incheon airport just before 5am on a red-eye from Hong Kong.  I had bought my ticket with a built in fifteen hour layover in Seoul, just so I could pick up another country for my list.  I spent the first hour sitting in the arrival terminal in a daze, chugging coffee and trying to get enough motivation to figure out how to buy a train ticket into downtown Seoul.  I sat on the hour long train-ride that started before dawn half-filled with Koreans on their way to work.  Nearly all of them were asleep. 

 I finally arrived at Seoul Station, and exited to the near-freezing autumn air.  I walked and walked and walked and shivered, and looked at big buildings.  Then back into the station to ride over to Changdeokgung Palace

Changdeokgung Palace,  a World Heritage Site.

The World Heritage Site palace was an enjoyable diversion, though the guided tour seemed to go on about an hour longer than it needed to in the bitter cold.

Gangnam Style!

After the palace, I made a pilgrimage over to the Gangnam section of Seoul, made famous by Psy in 2012.  I had plans of asking some locals to do the horsey dance with me in front of the sign, while someone else took video.  But, every Korean looked really busy and serious and on their way to work in a hurry, so I chickened out.

 

In my 15 hours in Seoul, I didn't see anything of much interest to tourists.  It strikes me as a working mans city.

Hong Kong

 

Our hydrofoil ferry zipped past small islands covered in high-rise apartments, in ninety minutes we had arrived at the ferry terminal on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong.  Just across the harbor we could see Hong Kong island.  Above us dozens of skyscrapers loomed. We struggled with our bags across thick traffic to hail a cab to take us to our guest house on Nathan Road.  By now night had fallen and our cab ride was a kaleidoscope of neon lights right out of Blade Runner. 

This intersection in Kowloon is considered to be the most densely populated spot on earth.  I was worried that Aaron and I would get separated in the crowd and never find each other.  Aaron said, 'Naah, that wont be a problem, look around."  I realized that as we were both over six feet, we could find each other in any crowd in Hong Kong!

I've been lucky enough to have a couple friends come along on international trips every now and then.  On this one I hit the jackpot.  Derek happened to have business in Singapore, and flew in to meet us in Hong Kong.  I posted pictures of us on facebook, then get an email from Ted asking if we are really in Hong Kong?  Turns out he was in mainland China for work, and he flew in to HK for the weekend!  It is a small world when you have friends with global business.

Macau

Macau


Aaron and I arrived late in the evening to Macau's airport, and caught a shuttle van to the city center.  After the ramshackle chaos of the Phillipines, landing in Macau felt like travelling forward in time.  We drove the smooth highway and passed the bright lights of casinos, notably the City of Dreams and the Venetian, the #2 and #1 largest casinos in the world.  We checked into our downtown hotel with high hopes for fun in the "Vegas of Aisa".  It was not to be.  Macau has triple the annual gaming revenue of Las Vegas, but it has none of the fun.  We walked through the gigantic Grand Lisboa into the massive gaming area.  We saw baccarat card tables as far as the eye could see.  Each table was filled, mostly with Chinese men, all smoking up a grey cloud.  The room was practically silent.  No bands playing, no slot machines bleeping and clanging, no jubilant winners shouting and cheering.  Just chain-smoking Chinese hunched over their cards deep in concentration.  We found the single bar in the football field sized room.  It was empty.  The two bartenders looked nearly asleep.  We felt bad awakening them from their slumber for a couple glasses of Tsingtao.
We took a long lap around the room to see if we were missing some excitement, tucked away in an alcove, then bailed on this lame Chinese version of Vegas.
We walked towards the waterfront to the area of bars and restaurants known as "The Docks".  Reputed to be the nightlife area of Macau, we found only a couple places open, and nearly no one inside.  A tourism based city of a half million people, seemingly has nothing going on on a Thursday night.  We headed home early.  I've discovered that thus far in my travels, the absolute worst nightlife is to be found in Chinese cities.  Beijing brought boredom,  Shanghai was somnambulant,  Singapore seemed stodgy,   Taipei was too tame,  Macau, kinda monotonous.  I was now worried for our upcoming days in Hong Kong. Would they be humdrum?

The next morning we did an obligatory walk around the World Heritage Site historic center of Macau.  The mosaic tiles were very nice, and the old Portuguese architecture was pleasing.  Though the preponderance of Prada and Gucci and Versace stores seemed less historic.  After a couple hours sweating in the hot sun and randomly stumbling into an ice skating rink, we made our way to the hydrofoil ferry to Kowloon.