Macau

(October 24-25)

Macau is a peninsular about an hour west of Hong Kong by fast ferry. It is the world's new Las Vegas with flashy casinos being built on all available turf. Indeed, Macau's gambling revenues are now greater than those of the Las Vegas Strip. However, our guide book which was published three or so years ago failed to mention casinos at all despite gambling providing 50% of the area's GDP! (Note to selves: we still shouldn't trust those pesky guide books!)

Macau has a similar history to Hong Kong in that it was governed by a foreign power for many years, except the Portuguese were invited to move in after helping the Chinese rid the area of pirates; the British just took HK. After a buoyant few years for the Portuguese in Macau, Britain's subsequent move into the region made sure Hong Kong became the dominant trading port. Macau stayed under European rule until 1999 when it was handed back to China although, like Hong Kong, it remains a Special Economic Area, and is likely to stay that way considering the loot it's drawing in.

Here's a little taster of the type of jaw dropping architecture that's gracing the shores of the Pearl River Delta:






It's not all casinos and gambling - there's also some monuments ...


And then there are some more casinos - even themed ones:


The places we have visited over the last 5 months have been very kind and put on events for our arrival and Macau was no different. The second indoor Asian Games started whilst we were there - and here was the team from Tajikistan to greet us:

Joanna preferred the Macau Games Duck:


But what you really want to know is - did we get into the swing of the gambling and lose our fortune at the Blackjack tables? Well, no. In fact, we made a bit of a discovery in Macau: Joanna is tighter with money than Ben. He would have been happy to splash out 6 squid a pop to have a go on the roulette, but Joanna was a big ole killjoy. She puts it down to watching too many Las Vegas films where the only winner is the meanie casino owner like Al Pacino or Andy Garcia who sit in their control rooms counting the pots of money that the punters are throwing away. In other words, if you want to go gambling, don't take Joanna, it's no fun!

But Ben still managed to get into the Las Vegas vibe ...

Hong Kong I

(22-23 October)
To tell the truth we didn't do that much in our first couple of days in Hong Kong, other than organise 2 days in Macau & 6 more days in Hong Kong... We did have a nice walk about, and some yummy Chinese food (especially at the "Best Shanghai" restaurant). And did a bit of blogging, skyping parents etc. Nothing exciting to write about. But we were on a relax mission by this point. And a prepare to go home mission. Ooo, yes, Ben bought sandals, as we were back into our shorts. Lovely. And we were enjoying the no smoking inside, or indeed in the public parks. And all the Public Service messages telling us to Love & Care for Your Family, Vote, Stand Still on the Escalator, etc. And they've solved the escalator problem of the hand-rail going at a different speed to the steps. Handy when they've got an escalator that goes 800m up Hong Kong Island.

And we went on the Star Ferry back from Hong Kong Island - costs 11p (each!).
View (They signed the hand-over treaty on top of the flat building in the middle):


Ben:

Bangkok

(21 October)

We weren't in Thailand for long, just an overnight stop-over. But long enough to wander out for a nice dinner (Nabe - style), and for completion of the drink challenge:


Joanna found a nice vanilla shake for her part-time drink challenge:


We watched the movie "Goal" rather than be sensible and go to sleep, but sometimes it's exciting to see TV in English.

Almaty

This post will be brought to you by the Apple and Camel Marketing Board.
We were in Almaty for the nights of 15 - 20 October.

We found new friends in Almaty. Tara, a friend of a friend, offered to put us up, which was very kind of her. It was very nice to be in domestic circumstances again, and with a young baby about the place, Joanna could ask lots of pertinent questions about our own impending circumstances. We've not had much chance to talk / think / read about what is soon going to hit us, so it was good to get a glimpse of how such things can work... And they had a very nice bed for us too! We stayed with them for a couple of nights before Tara's folks came to visit her.

Almaty is the most cosmopolitan city in central Asia. They're not used to backpackers though. Without our backpacks we could blend in without anyone giving us the slightest look; with them, everybody gawked open-mouthed.

There's a few cool things to see around Almaty. Here's a church made without any metal:

The nails are made of wood. We looked closely however, and despite what the guidebooks say, there's plenty of metal attached to the outside now.

And here's 15 soldiers bursting out of the 15 states of the former USSR, to protect it:



They're both in one of Almaty's many lovely parks. In fact, Almaty, with its lovely leafy boulevards is a city that looks like it was built in a forest:


There's nice mountains to the south too, even if it is all a bit smoggy:


We went up a great cable car to get that look of the city, and as the weather was nice, Joanna felt it appropriate to have a nap:


Autumn makes it all very pretty:


There are a few apple sculptures, marking the fact that the name of the city means "Father of the Apples":


Bonus points for spotting some of the many camels too:


That camel is at the foot of the big obelisk in "Republic Square" that shows their new national symbol, the Golden Man:


The Golden Man is an archaeological find in a funeral site of a body that was covered in gold, and latest research suggests instead of being a mighty warrior, the person might have been a young girl. The Kazakhs brush over that however. There are versions of it all over the place as they seem quite proud of it. We saw it at the National Museum, as well as in a couple of places in Astana.

We also went up into the lovely mountains, first to the ice-skating rink at Medeo:


All the USSR's speed-skaters trained here. There's a 10,000 seat stadium around it:


And that's super pure water in the swimming pool from 3 separate streams in front of it. Ben's not keen on ice-skating, ever since he skated over his own hand at university. So we headed up 800 steps:


And then took a minibus and cable-car:


Up to the lovely Chimbulak ski-field:


Joanna was happy to climb a mountain again, even if we did cheat this time (with not actually doing any climbing).

On other days after that we went to places that didn't photograph so well. There were more parks, and an absolutely amazing food market ("The Green Market"), with hundreds of vendors offering gorgeous fresh fruit & vege, spices, knick-knack stalls, fresh meat including horse and, yes, Ben's drink challenge drink Shubat, or fermented camel's milk.

We did get some. Ben did drink some:


He wasn't impressed:


It wasn't just the lack of alcohol (it's about as alcoholic as ginger beer), it just didn't taste good.

We mentioned in previous posts we were going up a canyon: it didn't happen. The weather in Kazakhstan was fabulous, until the last day. So as we waited at the bus stop, and waited, and waited... it was quite cold. Turned out the tour company had given us the wrong time. We got our money back, but all a bit disappointing. The tour company were very disappointed too. You get the feeling that as Kazakhstan gets so few western tourists, that they really want to get it right with each one...

Party!

Well, we weren't content with ending our travelling in Auckland; so as a little surprise, we went down to Wellington for Saturday night.

It was Ben's brother's engagement party, and although he'd put on the invite that there were relatives coming from Kazakhstan for it, we had told him we weren't going to make it. So David and his fiancee Katrina were very happy to see us. And we were pretty happy to see them too...







We'll get on with filling in the gap from Kazakhstan to New Zealand now. And then maybe think about getting a job, joining the real world etc.

Home! / New Home!

We made it! We survived the flight through Singapore and are now safely ensconced in the parental Clark household, with Kimba:


We'll largely recover for a the next few days, along with finishing off this blog, adding way more photos to the photo site, cleaning clothes, and maybe even buying some new ones that don't smell. But NZ immigration let Joanna in, so she's fine to stay and gestate the bump, and Ben can start thinking about getting a new job, us a new house etc...