Hong Kong, China

Today we barely make it to breakfast, recovering from our extraordinary feast. We just had a light breakfast ,board of shuttle with Chaz our guide and are headed to the port for a one hour ferry ride to Macau. We have to take our passport and go through customs, because it’s a foreign territory! We take the hovercraft to get to the island of Macau which is 32.2 kilometers in circumference- it’s a Portuguese colony and there are 600,000 people living here under a combination of a Capitalist and socialist system. 40% of the work force is employed in the gambling industry, a decent number in shipping and services. Domingo our guide takes us through the old city of Macau- it’s about 300 years old with cobblestone street and a definite Portuguese influence in architecture, some of the black and white wave cobblestone design remind me of walking on the beach sidewalk in Rio. I just love the feeling of the old city, I felt transported to Lisbon. But as your gaze hits the well lit and shiny skyscrapers; Las Vegas is what comes to mind. A lot of the same casinos are here as well. We visit an old church in the town center. We also get to see a Taoist temple; this one is quite different as it’s built outside on top of big boulders , the design is such that it’s in perfect harmony with its natural environment. Some of us are read a fortune by shaking a can with numbered sticks until only one comes out, a paper is given to us matching that number . Nick’x fortune was talking about his very healthy penis ( we had a good laugh about that one) – The guide did not want to read Kate’s fortune, he said it was bad( he could have made up something no!)- mine was really good” great life, great love”. (Sounds good to me!). After a decent lunch at the Macau Metropark hotel, we board our bus and are driven to the. Macau tower which looks like a needle and Is almost 800 feet high. Our tickets gets us to the observation tower where you feel a bit queasy looking through glass at this height of 200 meters. At this point, we have several choices. We can do a sky walk which takes an hour or a sky jump which takes but a few seconds or a 2 hour tower hike which takes you from the 61st to the 88th floor. That’s the one I really wanted to do. But we didn’t have 2 hours. So my daredevil roommate Kat and I decided to do the sky jump; adrenaline junkie that we are! The preparation was far longer than the jump itself. We take the whole package which includes a T-shirt and a USB stick which contains pictures and a few videos. They outfit us with some serious gear and a go pro on our wrist to video our expressions and the view all the way down! – To keep calm before the jump, I was singing Volare( ( appropriate since it means- to fly!) At the top of my lungs and Kat joined me being that she’s also Italian! they suddenly open the metal gate, Kat is the first one to go. Then, they instruct me to put my hands together as if to pray and just walk off the ledge at 800 feet up in the air, my stomach grips me for a few seconds, but it’s smooth flying all the way down. Then we return up with the elevator to collect our belongings. It was a great rush. We take the hovercraft back. Tonight Eduardo, Kat and I had a long dinner in the hotel together, just getting to know each other a little more. Great day and calm evening,