Month 2 Travel Update: Macau, Hong Kong + Shanghai

As I sit down to write, I can hardly believe that another month has passed and that I’ve been away from Canada for 2 months. Time really does fly by, and I can’t help but wish that I could slow things down…

Over the last month we traveled through Macau, Hong Kong + Shanghai. We arrived in Macau to visit our Canadian friends, Josh + Tanis, who teach at an international school there. They are in their second year living in Macau so they are quite adjusted and familiar with the area, and it was really cool to see their life in Macau and to have them show us around a little bit.

Josh + Tanis are super busy with school, so we didn’t get to spend that much time with them, but we were grateful for the time that we did spend together. We had plenty of late night chats, dinner dates and good conversation about travel + life.

Macau itself is a pretty neat country that I may not have otherwise visited had Josh + Tanis not lived there. It was a Portuguese colony that is also connected to mainland China, so it has Portuguese influence that can still be seen through the architecture, while also being quite Chinese. Most of the signs in Macau are in Cantonese, Portuguese + English, which is quite interesting. The other thing that struck me about Macau was the differentiation between old and new; the older, more historic areas of Taipa village and Coloane in comparison to the Cotai strip, which is reclaimed land that has been turned into a strip of casinos that revenues more than Las Vegas does.

As we explored Macau, it was quite clear to us that there is a lot of money in the country. Restaurants are pricey and there is a ton of luxury shopping. Ryan and I spent some time wandering through a few of the casinos, and there was almost nothing that we could afford. Nevertheless, it was fun to window shop and take it all in!

While in Macau, we explored the historic areas of Senado Square, hiked up a small mountain on Tapia, ate almond cookies in Taipa village, dined on delicious Indian food in the Venetian with Josh + Tanis and some of their friends from school, took in a luxury movie at the Venetian (a must in Macau!), wandered to the beach in Coloane and hiked up to the A-ma temple, which is the highest point in Macau. We also went to visit Tanis’ grade 3 students at school, and answer some of the questions they had about Canada! Other than re-connecting with J+T, the highlight for me in Macau was doing the Macau Tower bunjy jump, which is currently the highest bunjy jump in the world at 233 meters. I wrote about it more in depth, and shared my bunjy video here.

After a week in Macau, we made our way over to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is only an hour from Macau via the ferry, and as we rounded the bend in the bay and caught our first view of the skyline, my jaw dropped. Hong Kong is easily one of the most impressive cities I’ve ever been to. It’s also one of the most expensive. It was tough to find affordable accommodation, and during our week, we stayed in 2 different AirBnb’s and a hostel, all in different locations. Where you stay in HK doesn’t mater too much because the public transit is awesome, but we did spend a lot of time on trains or buses getting from place to place.

While in Hong Kong, the highlights were eating amazing, healthy western food (not what most people do – HK is known for its dim sum!), hiking to Victoria Peak to see the view of the city, taking in the skyline from the harbour at night, hiking Dragon’s Back, and visiting the Big Buddha. We also met up with a few acquaintances that lived in HK, and it was great to take in HK like a local for a couple of hours.

Although HK is awesome, it is also really busy, and by the time our week ended, we were ready to go back to Macau and hide out in Josh + Tanis’ quiet apartment. We spent another week in Macau before making our way to Shanghai.

We don’t have visas for China, so China wasn’t originally in our plans, but when we arrived in Macau, we found out that we could cross into the neighboring city of Zhuhai (pronounced Jew-high) for 72 hours with an on arrival visa. As I started doing more research, I discovered we could also do the same in Beijing, Shanghai and a few other cities in China. We didn’t feel that excited about Zhuhai, but the thought of going to Shanghai for a few days seemed spontaneous + exotic. Plus, we could stay for 144 hours there!

The only condition with the 144-hour transit visa is that you have to book from one country, and then fly to a 3rd country after China. This wasn’t a problem for us, as we wanted to go directly to Thailand afterwards. As we stepped up to the desk to check in, the lady told us that she couldn’t let us on the flight because we had a connection through Kunming, China before heading to Chiang Mai. That made our 144-hour visa null. Damn!

So we stepped out of line, hopped on the phone with the company we booked through, and changed our return flight so that it flew direct from Shanghai to Bangkok. Thirty minutes and $300 later, we were able to check in for our flight.

Shanghai ended up being an expensive detour for us, but it was fun! We can now check China off the list of countries we’ve been, plus we were able to experience Shanghai for 5 days. What I was not expecting is how nice the airport officials and border agents would be upon arriving in Shanghai. I also didn’t expect it to be quite as cold as it was. We went from a somewhat chilly 15-20C in Macau to a very cold 5C in Shanghai. We were definitely not prepared for that, and spent most of our time shivering as we walked around.

For the most part, Shanghai is a clean and organized Chinese city. The people were friendly and the city as a whole was enjoyable. We spent our time eating good food, drinking tea + coffee to keep warm, and taking in the impressive skyline. We also paid a visit to the Propaganda Art Museum, went to the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center (100 stories up!), and visited the Yu Garden.

The thing that was the most challenging about our time in Shanghai is that it was relatively chill, but the wifi at our hostel was terrible and we had to use a VPN for almost everything, which made it a challenging spot for getting work done. We were able to get one podcast interview done where we created a hotspot on my phone, and then used a VPN on both my phone and my computer to ensure that we were able to have a good connection over Skype. It was workable, but not pleasant, and by the time our 5 days was up, we were ready to head to warmer weather, better + less regulated internet and more affordable food + accommodation in Thailand.

We spent the last 2 months moving around a lot more than we had originally planned, so both Ryan and I are very excited to stay put for the next month in Chiang Mai so that we can catch up on some R&R and get some stuff done!

Until next month!