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I took the Venetian shuttle back to the Macau ferry terminal. There I caught the Hotel Royal shuttle to the hotel Royal which is on the Macau peninsula. The whole journey took less than 2 hours from leaving the Venetian to the Royal.
The Royal is also rated 5 star but is probably a 4 star and is about average or a little better for the hotels I have been staying at so far throughout this journey. This one has free wifi, unfortunately signal is not that great in my room. It is within walking distance of the historic centre of Macau and some of the peninsula based casinos. My room was not ready since I got there shortly before 12pm so I had to walk around with about 6 kg on my back.
This is really a tale of two cities. There is a part that would not be out of place in historic Lisbon, Portugal and the casino part which is full of glitz and neon lights. I walked to most of the historic sites and was done in a few hours of walking. Went for a walk to a couple of the casinos in the evening. Very nice cars operated by the hotel/casinos. One had a fleet of 3 rolls Royce parked outside and another had 2 jaguars. Was passed by a couple of ferraris and a Maserati.
On day 2 here, it rained until about 11am. It is 1.45pm and I have not left my hotel room today except to have breakfast. Been sitting here and updating the blog and watching tv. I need to do some "load shedding" today. My suitcase weighed 23kg and my backpack 7kg when I left Hong Kong. I need to somehow work the weight down for the internal flights in India. Every 2 or 3 stops I have to go through this process and think about what I have and how I can reduce or spread the weight. Starting to run out of options now, but I will make a plan somehow. This is the heaviest my bag has ever weighed. It was just over 19kg when I left SA. I have managed to always get it back to around 21kg through this trip.
Eventually left the room at 3pm and went to Senado Square and had some Haagen Daz ice cream. After that I went and sat in the park across the road from my hotel. They have exercise machines in the park. Many cities seem to have this. I started raining at 5pm again so I went in.
Repacked my entire bag and weighed everything to try and understand what I need to move around if I have a problem or get rid of. I performed a similar exercise in Chicago and kept note of all the weights so I can keep track of where I am gaining/losing weight. Interestingly, my Haviana sandals increased from 0,2kg to 0,3kg but I have not used them at all since Miami.
On the 25th, I checked out just before 12pm and took the hotel shuttle to the ferry terminal. It was about 12.15 and I got a ticket for the 12.30 boat. I think I boarded the wrong boat in the rush since we docked in Kowloon instead of Hong Kong Island as I expected. Oops! Not a serious problem though. I asked one of the information guys where the nearest MTR (metro) station is and that I wanted to get the airport express. Turns out there is a free shuttle bus at the hotel attached to the ferry terminal, going to the Kowloon station where I could catch the airport express. Not sure if I was entitled to use it or not, but I got on and no one asked any questions.
Eventually got to the airport around 3pm and now sitting around killing time until my 7.50pm flight.
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