Leaving HK, Macau, and Onward

The ferry ride from Hong Kong to Macau lasted two hours. The scenery was probably interesting, all the towers jutting up from the sea, but it was foggy, drizzling, and I was in an aisle seat.We arrived in Macau around midday and taxied to the Ole London Hotel on Praca de ponte e horta. Our domestic life began with my "roommate" noticing that our room hadn't been cleaned, so we were moved to another, where the key didn't work. Finally everything was settled and the group went out for lunch.The first meal in Macau was an experience. We sat at a table without waiting for the previous diners to finish their meal. "Is this normal? To join a table that's still occupied?" I asked. "No, not really," was the answer. Oh well. The Chinese eat everything family style, with communal dishes in the middle of the table which are picked at from everyone's own personal chopsticks, without serving spoons. The meal consisted of Cantonese dishes. One looked like a jellyfish and tasted like a cookie inside. Another was some kind of meatball with rice or something, along with fried prawns, pork BBQ, tea and green spinach.Afterwards we walked into the shopping district, did a lap past stores like Espirit, McDonalds, a pastry shop called Beard Papa from which the music of Green Day spilled out, and shoe stores selling Adidas and Nike. Then up to The Ruins of St. Paul Cathedral, which the Portuguese built a few centuries ago. Our guide disappeared after leaving us at the Macau museum. The museum was first place I experienced Chinese staring. The security guards seemed to be following me from room to room, watching, intently, as I looked into the exhibit glass trying to make sense of it all. This wouldn't be the last time I was stared at. Many of the artifacts on display were reproductions of their original, but an exhibit on photography and the history of Daguerre, Heliotype, etc. saved my interest.Leaving the museum placed us at the Monte Fort, which offers a panorama of the city skyline. We exited and found ourselves peregrinating through an undeveloped neighborhood. Homes had walls constructed of rusty metal, strung together by rope and gravity. A dog started barking and we made a swift exit. We made a few attempts at finding destinations of interest by the map, and ended up walking down a swollen road choked with exhaust, the other side of a shipping port, crossing streets without the slightest accommodation for pedestrians. Finally near the shopping street, there was a place that looked manageable, so we sat down to order dinner. After laughing at the menu for a bit I realized it probably wasn't very polite and tried to stifle my amusement at the pigs feet and other available delicacies.We stopped off at the hotel to clean up afterward and then set out again for a casino. The first we stopped in seemed dead, stifling, smoky and unpleasant. Like most casinos. But we wanted the Grand Lisboa, that towering golden fortress which hung up in the Macau skyline so noticeably. We found it, sniffed around a bit, sat at the bar to settle our nerves, and then put down a few dollars on the roulette table. I ended up leaving with 500 more (Macau) dollars than I started with. I usually feel guilty about getting something for nothing, so we hung out in the bar for a while to enable my moral circulation. Walking back to the hotel along the Av. do Infante Dom Henrique, we passed a policeman posted in a wooden chair on the sidewalk of a quiet street, his head slouched back, eyes shut.The next morning before leaving Macau, I set out for an early walk, and found a convenience store open and bakeries closed. There were a few laughs at strange things for sale, but gladness at finding a bottle of Coca-cola, some instant coffee which would last me the entire trip, and a few other essentials. Paying at the register I could sense the teller's confusion at a human without a Chinese vocabulary stopping in her shop. A functioning Catholic church exists in Macau, leftover from the Portuguese days, and I made a short visit before packing up and heading out of town. Sitting outside the church I was briefly reminded of the Sagrada Familia and its exceptional quality. Walking along the main street again, I was also tempted by the camera shops, shoe stores, and other bargain basements.The border crossing into China seemed lengthy and redundant. First there was the departure from Macau, which required lining up for customs and presenting a passport. Then there was some kind of preliminary line for getting into China, filling out an arrival card. Then finally the border, where the guards were young girls wearing surgical masks. My arrival card stated I had been in Spain for the past eight days, before entering Hong Kong. "Spany? Spany? Oh, you come Spany?" the girl asked. It made my entry go smoother than some of my companions, who, coming directly from Australia or England were potential harbingers of H1N1, the Swine Flu. My passport was stamped on the page next to my Visa and I was granted entry to China.From the border crossing, the journey to Yangshuo began with a bus ride to Guanzho. I have never even heard of Gaunzho before, but arriving that afternoon, the city looked massive from my window seat, the size of Los Angeles or Chicago. The modern steel and glass towers put shade over the leafy street, buzzing with modern cars and busy sidewalks. This wasn't the China I was expecting. This looked like mid-Atlantic USA. The bus terminated at a metro station, from which we traveled a few stops to reach the unimaginably crowded train station where a "hard-class" sleeper train awaited. Guanzho's pleasant air wore off upon entering the train station. People were stopping to stare at us with an expression resembling either disbelief, or disgust, but it is very hard to gauge what the mood of a room really is when everyone is speaking a language you don't understand.I had to laugh to myself as I remembered the scenes from HBO's Deadwood in which Wu and Al Swearengen negotiate with each other across the barrier of language.