Hong Kong: Day Three

On Saturday night, we ventured out to a few hotspots, including the Lan Kwai Fong beer festival, the Temple Street Night Markets, and the local arcade. The Lan Kwai Fong beer festival is held annually and is a true frat party on several social blocks on Hong Kong Island. The area is filled with bars, restaurants and clubs, and is thus quite lively in its own right. However, during the festival, yards of beer are served on the street and people are openly gulping beer, grabbing finger foods, and singing karaoke on the streets. It was a real sight to see...

The Temple Street Night Markets are more of the same from Beijing and Shenzhen, namely knock offs and other random Chinese goods sold by vendors on a particular block. Since we had seen so much of it already, neither of us were particularly excited by this. At the end of the evening, we found a local arcade and decided to go in. I got whipped several times by a few locals in Virtua Tennis, which I guess I am not very good at (nothing like 4 straight 40-love matches to give you that impression)...

The next morning, we decided to really dive into Hong Kong on Day Three. Specifically, we went to Stanley Market, right by the water in southern Hong Kong Island. Its home to an amazing market and some very nice sites. I'll post some pics shortly. At Stanley, I picked up a few paintings for my parents and sister Mechal/bro-in-law Chaim. They'll be in NYC in about 2 weeks, so enjoy...

Additionally, I picked up an ipod remote control for about $11 USD, much less than the retail price in NY. Finally, I picked up a random t-shirt depicting a kung fu master in the battles with "Noodles of Death". Yup, cool shirt. Howard also picked up a painting...

We decided to lunch at the infamous "Jumbo" floating restaurant. We took a small boat from the dock to the ship, and found one of the 6 restaurants suitable for our budget and palate. We ordered typical vegetarian food, but did not get our order for roughly 1 hour. We both complained, but got little response from the manager. Oh well... I won't be going back there anytime soon...

In the afternoon, we took the escalators to the Mid-levels on Hong Kong Island, on our way to the JCC for an all-you-can-eat BBQ. This was an amazing dinner, possibly the best of our trip, and only cost $220 HKD (~$28 USD). We ate sushi, salads, fish, steak, kebabs, sausage (yes, Howard had sausage!), chicken and lamb. Great times... The desserts were also amazing...

In the evening, we took the ferry to Macau, which took about 45 minutes. At Macau, we got stuck on the worst immigration line, which took another 30 minutes to get through (literally the entire ship was through immigration when we got through)... Once in Macau, we took the shuttle bus to our casino/hotel, the Casa Real. Our room is quite nice and we've enjoyed checking out the adjoining hotels this evening (The Golden Dragon and the Sands). Howard and I are both down, $18 USD and $30 USD respectively... We'll see what happens tomorrow...