Pilgrimmage to Macau and Hong Kong

The trip to Macau and Hong Kong started at the Centara Hotel with Rory and I trying to learn Thai on the elliptical machines

by Jack Corbett

It was time to revisit Hong Kong now that Rory who used to exercise next to me at Pattaya's Centara Hotel got transfered to Macau.  That was only two months ago when we used to do an hour on the Fitness Club's elliptical machines trying to learn Thai on our USB devices.  It had all started when the Canadian started watching me mumbling to myself as I tried to get through lesson number 12 of Pimsleur's  conversational Thai while sweating my balls off doing my exercise.  It all seemed to be a pretty good idea to Rory.  The canned music at the Fitness Center was horrible, and being a busy man he must have figured what could be a more time efficient way of picking up a little Thai.  One thing led to another since that first day we met on two elliptical machines.  Soon afterwards I copied the Thai lessons to a second usb, gave it to Rory, and it wasn't long after that when he'd join me and my friends on our Friday or Saturday night's excursions to Pattaya's go go's and beer bars.   We all soon found out that Rory's one of those high octane guys who works hard and plays even harder. Ironically his house warming party would be his goodbye party when his employer suddenly transfered him to Macau. He had just finished decorating  the magnificent three bedroom condo he had rented only a few blocks from me with its three balconies overlooking the Gulf of Thailand and here he was leaving all of us.  But although I had been wanting to take my girlfriend to Hong Kong for several years, I simply had not been motivated enough to do it and took her to Vietnam and Malaysia instead.  But with Rory now living only one hour's ferry ride away in Macau I decided to buy two plane tickets.  Enough time had gone by.  I had not been in the Hong Kong area since 1982 after making my first visit there in 1979 on my way to the Peoples Republic of China which had opened its doors to Americas the first time that year since going Communist. 

We spent four nights at Rory's apartment in Macau and one night in a Hong Kong Hotel down the hall from each other.  So I have decided to split this travelogue into two sections.

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Macau (and)

Hong Kong