BY KES

So after a lovely night out with the girls last night, I slept in for quite a while. Missed the hotel breakfast so I went out in the street to see what I could find. Luckily enough I found a bakery not to far away from the hotel. They had a lot to choose from but I left with mango pancakes and a coconut bread, both were delicious! Whiteout really having a plan, I strolled down to the harbor. Just by the river bank they have a memorial park of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, the revolutionary person who is a little bit of the reason why I’m going to GZ. I’m going to study at his university. It was a very pretty spot and families were playing around in the grass around the big statue of Dr. Sun Yat Sen. I was thinking by myself, wondering why all of these people were out in the park playing on a Thursday.

I walked by the bank, until I arrived at the Ferry terminal for boats to Macao. I thought for myself, why not? And jumped on the next ferry. It took one hour and it was freezing cold because of the air conditioners. In Macao I could just walk from the terminal into the city. It resembles Las Vegas quite a lot, and looks quite dull in the bright light of day. Although the colonial buildings from the Portuguese era looked very pretty in their bright colors. When I finally got into the city center that’s when I understood it was a public holiday for the Chinese people. A lot of smaller shops were closed and some blocks were all empty of people but when I came into the touristy parts it was totally crowded. People everywhere! After fighting myself through some tight alleys of people I needed a break and found a little Starbucks. It felt silly, but sometimes you just need something familiar and peace. So with a cup of chai latte in my hand I could sit down and relax a little bit.

After the little break I had some new energy and went out in the town again, now the darkness had fallen and the city looked a lot more fancy. Thousands of Chinese people were now accompanied by thousand of led lights. It was like a circus. Fun to see, but felt quite done with Macao and all the people so I decided to go home again. Back at the ferry terminal, the economy class tickets were sold out until 23:00. So if I didn’t want to wait for 3 hours, I had to pay a premium price ticket. This was of course due to the fact that the place was packed with Chinese people on public holiday… It was not a hard decision to make, I paid the double price for a ticket and got to board a ship within 30 min. During the boarding procedure two Dutch guys approached me telling me I looked so confused. They seemed quite nice in the beginning telling me a lot about HK and so on, but when I told them I was going to GZ to study they begun talking a lot of shit about the place and bragged about their fancy banking jobs in HK. Hopefully it wont be as bad as they say, but I cant help but wonder… 

Jenny