Macau

On Saturday December 19, Mom, Dad and I went to a place called the Island of Macau. It is an island about 1 hr boat ride away from Hong Kong. It is an island still owned by China, but like Hong Kong it is governed by itself. Macau was owned by Portugal for 450 years until Portugal gave it back to China in 1999. There is still a large European influence, as can be seen in many of the buildings and life. The island is interesting, there is the old section, which has a large Portuguese influence. Then there is a new section that is full of casino's and very modern. Apparently there are a lot of high rollers that come and play at the casino's and gambling brings in a lot of money. We didn't spend any time in this part of the island, except to catch a taxi!

This sign is typical for signs on the island. I thought it was fascinating that all of the signs were in Chinese and Portuguese.

In order to get to Macau, we took a boat. This is what the boats looked like that we took.

This is me and Dad getting into the boat.

This is part of the old town square. They had up some beautiful decorations for Christmas!

Macau apparently is pretty well known for it's shopping as well. Look at how many people are on the streets. This was actually not very crowded yet!

There were some pretty amazing places that are on the island. The first one we went to is the Fortaleza do Monte. It was built in 1616 and originally was where the settlement was founded. The walls are thick and there are big cannons that surround the top to help with protection (or for modern day peoples such as myself to take pictures with!)

This is the view of Macau from the top of the wall.

We also went to the facade of the Ruinas de Sao Paulo. This is what remains of a Jesuit Cathedral built in the 1600's. It is built at the top of a steep staircase. It's beautiful.

We were able to go behind the facade and climb up a staircase to look out some of the windows and get a great view of the city.

We went to a Catholic church called St. Dominic's Church.


While walking around we saw some celebrations going on in honor of Christmas. Some of them were very much reminder of the Chinese influence! We were able to see a dragon dance... well, actually 2 dragons dancing with typical Chinese instruments being played for music.

While trying to find a Protestant Cemetery, we went into a large city park called Luis Camoes Garden. It was a beautiful garden with plenty of plants, large open areas and even some old Chinese men playing what we think was checkers. We also came upon some Chinese women doing some sort of dance. We weren't sure for what, but it sure was fun to watch.


We finally did find the Protestant cemetery which was mostly in English, although we did see some German.


Here are just some general pictures of Macau.


After a very full day, we got back on the boat and went back home. It was an awesome day!

Hong Kong for Christmas!!!!!

So this year for Christmas I gave myself a trip to Hong Kong to visit my parents. I got in Thursday night, December 17. I'm not going to lie... It was a long trip! It took around 21 hours for me to get here to Hong Kong. I flew from Salt Lake to San Francisco, then luckily I had a direct flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong. That flight was just over 13 hours! Needless to say, it was a LONG trip! However, I have just about 3 weeks to adjust to time over here! :)

Friday for lunch Mom and I went and met Dad and some people from his office for lunch. One of the girls took us for lunch to a Japanese Noodle House. I have to say it was really pretty good! The noodle bowls are served with a ladle attached to a long wooden handle and chop sticks. I learned that the way to eat a noodle bowl is to scoop up some broth, put some noodles into the ladle with the chopsticks, then to eat the noodles and broth. Slurping is allowed! Thanks to my mad chopstick skills... I ate like a pro! Not only was lunch fun and an experience, the food was really pretty good!

Here are some general pictures of Hong Kong. I am absolutely amazed at how tall the buildings are. It's like any big city, but still, I'm a girl from Alaska! It truly is incredible to me how many people live in such a small area. There are always people around! I have been quite impressed with my Mom... she has gotten to be quite the aggressive walker. I have been concerned a few times that I may have to stop and provide medical care for some old person Mom has knocked down! ;)

People in Hong Kong do celebrate Christmas. It is interesting though... There are not really any religious symbols around. Also, the colors used to decorate are a lot more purple, pink and silver, not as much red and green.

Hong Kong is awesome so far!

Viva Las Vegas!

So over the weekend my friend Melody and I decided late Saturday night to drive to Las Vegas on Sunday. There was an audition for a performance company she wanted to try out for, and she wanted someone to drive with her. Since my job didn’t start until Wednesday I was the perfect candidate! Plus, I’m always up for a good adventure!
So, Sunday after church we got ready, packed the car and left! We got on the road about 1:30 pm. Seriously, it was so much fun. I think that so much of how delightful it was is how spontaneous the trip was. 24 hrs before we had left, I had no thought whatsoever in my head that I was going to be on a road trip to Vegas!
The 6.5 hours that it took us to drive there went by so stinking fast! We had so much fun in the car, totally time for some great girl talk, catching up on each other’s lives (for crying out loud, I had been gone for 2 months!) rocking out to music (the 80’s music was the biggest hit I think. ), and just all around joking and laughing.
As we were driving, we came to the Arizona border sign. So, apparently one has to drive through Arizona to get to Las Vegas from Salt Lake. I didn’t know that. I was quite surprised! We didn’t spend a whole lot of time in Arizona, but honestly I didn’t know that we needed to drive through Arizona.

Melody has a friend named Jared who lives in Las Vegas and we stayed at his house. We got in Sunday night and we decided to go out and get some dinner. Jared took us to this wonderful tapas restaurant.It was so nice and the food was incredible! We sat outside on the patio and the night was warm, but not too warm. There was some music playing, but it wasn’t too loud or overwhelming. It was really so much fun.


After dinner Jared took us to the Bellagio hotel and we watched the water and lights show. Holy Cow! It’s incredible! It almost made me feel like I was part of the Ocean’s 12 cast…If only I had my own Matt Damon or Brad Pitt by my side! :) We enjoyed the first show so much we stayed and watched a second show. Now, granted they do them every 15 minutes, but still.

Jared took us to the Bellagio’s flower gardens. They are BEAUTIFUL!!! They had all sorts of statues and display’s made out of flowers.

Also, one of their displays was made out of Gerber daisies, which are my favorite flower.

Jared then took us to one of my new favorite places on the face of this earth…the world’s largest chocolate fountain and candy store! Oh, you read that right. IT WAS AWESOME!!! All I could think of while I was standing at the glass was “open…open…open”. They had all kinds of chocolate and candy and they even had an ice cream section. I got some mango ice cream (I know, totally not chocolate but totally worth every bite!).

This is the top of the chocolate fountain. This is above the chocolate inside the glass.

Then we decided to go walk around for a little while. We went through Cesar’s Palace and some of the shops there.

This is the kind of man I need...the strong, silent type, looks good sitting there, and doesn't talk back! :)

They have some HIGH end shops in that casino! I’m not going to lie… I don’t normally like to shop or even like name brand stuff. Hell, I don’t even know who most of the names are whose stuff we were looking at. However, I fell in love with a pair of Jimmy Choo’s (for the bargain price of $895) and a Judith Leiber purse (for just $5,600). Oh my gosh, the purse was awesome! It’s an asparagus shaped clutch purse. How can you go wrong with that? :)


As we were wandering around we saw this poster advertising Cher. This is my impression of Cher.

After we were done window shopping (cuz let’s face it, am I really going to pay that much for anything other than some outdoor recreation equipment? I think not!) After that we went back to Jared’s and went to sleep. It was almost 12:30 am by the time we got back to Jared’s (1:30 am SLC time).
We got up Monday morning and Melody and I went to the pool at Jared’s condo complex. Oh my gosh, we laid out and just laid in the sun and it was so warm, relaxing and delightful. Luckily, when we got too hot, we just went and got in the pool and cooled off, then got back out and laid in the sun. That was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was so relaxing. Besides, I wore my new bikini. I’m not going to lie…it was delightful!

Monday afternoon Melody went to her rehearsal and I stayed at Jared’s and slept. Once Jared got home from work he and I went back to The Strip and I was going to gamble for a little bit. Now, I totally love to play Blackjack. I don’t play very often at all (like the last time I played for money was 5 years ago) but I love to play none the less. By the time we got to the casino Mel was done with her audition and we decided to go get some dinner instead.
Dinner was at a fabulous Indian Restaurant. I had some of the best Chicken Tikka Masala I have ever had! (I think I like food, I seem to talk about it a lot!) After dinner we went to Coke World where we tried 16 different Coke products from around the world. We didn’t have any regular Coke until after we were done with all 16 we went and got some regular coke to help settle our stomach’s.

Man, some of the drinks that we tried were good, some not so good, and some so disgusting that I totally threw up in my mouth a little bit!

After our stomach’s were a little more settled, we walked through the M&M World which has every possible kind of M&M paraphernalia you could imagine, and some you couldn’t. They also have these large containers of M&M’s in so many different colors and different kinds too. They had a coconut flavored M&M. Honestly, I couldn’t even try it because I was a little nauseated from Coke world!

Needing some more activity than window shopping for product paraphernalia, we went and rode the roller coaster at the New York New York casino. It was so much fun. I sat in the very front seat with this like 11 year old kid. I was talking to him. That time was his 17th time on the roller coaster that day. Holy Cow! I was cracking myself up on the ride. I was totally nervous. I all of a sudden started laughing at myself…I have been skydiving twice, and a roller coaster was freaking me out? What the heck?
This is the 11 year old kid I sat next to.



Then I wanted to go dancing, and honestly I wanted to try and get up and dance on the bar at the Coyote Ugly bar. We went in and alas, because it was so early on a Monday night (it was 8:30 pm) no one was dancing on the bar. So, Mel and I went out and were dancing in the middle of the bar floor. Unfortunately, no bar dancing, but I love to dance anyway and it was fun!


Mel and I then got back in the car and started driving home at 9 pm Vegas time (10 pm SLC time). It was a long trip back home, but we finally made it in about 5:30 am SLC time. We both went to bed and crashed. All in all, it was fabulous and quick yet delightful!