As I say in the about part of this blog, a big part of the reason for me making this is to log my own personal memories of my travels. I have done a lot of travels in the past, and I am realizing that the memories are getting blurred and mixed, and details as not nearly as clear as they used to be. In addition, a lot of the photos i have taken have been lost in computer crashed, or they are in a folder with 17.000 other unsorted pictures and never gets looked at.
Date of holiday: October 9-10, 2019
Anyways, after I got a text message from Sands Rewards offering me a free night stay at the Holiday Inn, Macau I decided to make the trip across the bridge again, as it has been a while since I was there last.
i left home around 11:45 and made the 15 minutes walk to the Tung Chung Bus station, where I had to walk around a couple of minutes to find the new location of the B6 bus stop, as it had moved since last time I used it. This time the stop is located on the back side of the bus station, next to the Ngong Ping 360 cable cart terminal. I only had to wait for a couple of minutes before the bus arrived, and I was charged 7 HKD on my Octopus Card for the ride to HZMB port.
Arriving at HZMB port a few minutes later I quickly cleared immigration, and the bought a bus ticket to Macau for 65 HKD, again chargeable to the Octopus Card. From there it was a quick 3 minutes walk to the bus stop, and the bus was waiting until it was full before it left.
The bus drives across the impressive Hong Kong – Zuhai – Macau bridge, a ride that takes about 45 minutes, being the longest sea bridge in the world, about 55km long.
After the crossing I arrived at immigration to Macau, and it is quite a trek through the building to get to the immigration counters. The complex appears to have been built to handle a huge amount of people, but when I have been there it has been mostly empty. The bus from Hong Kong runs every 5 minutes during peak hours and every 10-20 minutes during off-peak, so there is a limit to how many people will arrive at the same time.
Being a Norwegian passport holder I get 90 days visa free stay on arrival in Macau, and immigration was cleared quickly.
After exiting the building I headed to the shuttle bus area, and jumped on a free shuttle bus to Macao Port. The area there is being refurbished, so I had to walk around for a few minutes again before I could find the free shuttle bus to the Holiday Inn. All hotels/Casinos that I have seen in Macau have free shuttle busses running between the hotels/Casinos and both Macao port and Taipa port. The bus took about 10-15 minutes and dropped me off outside the Sheraton (which is the same hotel complex where Holiday Inn is), and I proceeded to the check-in there.
Review of Holiday Inn, Cotai, Macau.
I then had a shower and relaxed in my room for a while, before I headed out for some light gambling and sightseeing.
I had no luck on the slot machines in the Casino below my hotel, so went outside for a walk and sightseeing instead.
Studio City seems to have a Ferriswheel-like area in the middle of the hotel, inside the number 8 in the centre of the picture.
I then headed to Broadway Food Street to see if I could find anything to eat there as I was getting hungry.
There were mostly Macau/Thai and Chinese dishes available here, and as I was not in the mood for rice or noodles I headed off towards the food court at the Galaxy instead.
Here I grabbed a quick burger at KFC, and then headed to the Casino where I won back some of my losses from the Casino earlier.
I then headed over to the Venetian Casino, and spent a few hours playing slots, 5 card stud and 3 card Caribbean Stud, breaking about even, before heading back to my hotel around 3 am.
I had a good sleep that night, and rolled out of bed around 11 am, for a shower and then packed up my things and checked out.
Sleeping late has the advantage of not needing breakfast, and I headed instead to the Grand Orbit below the Conrad hotel for a lunch buffet there. The cost of the buffet was 270 MOP, and 2 Singha beers cost an additional 52 MOP. Being a Sands Reward member I get 15% discount on food, so the total bill came at about 300 MOP, which was really good.
The food was excellent, they had a huge selection of hot and cold dishes, seafood, soup, meats, noodles, pizza and pasta. They also had a pink theme at the desert station, and although I normally don’t have much of a sweet tooth I had to come back for seconds at the desert table, as some of the deserts were amazing.
After lunch I spent a few hours walking around the Cotai area trying to become more familiar with the location of everything, and did a bit of window shopping as well. I finally ended up at the Parisian Casino (I was planning on heading to Studio City but never made it that far…)
As some of the tables here were fairly reasonably priced (200 HKD min bet) I spent a couple of hours loosing money playing 5 card stud, before I headed to roulette, Sick Bo and slot machines to make back my losses. At the end of the day my total loss for the two days was about 2000 HKD, which is not too bad.
The time was now 8 pm, so it was time to head back to Hong Kong. I went back to Holiday Inn and collected my overnight bag from the concierge, and jumped on the free shuttle bus to Taipa Port. There I had to wait about 20 minutes for the shuttle bus to HZMB port, where I bought a bus ticket back to Hong Kong (again for 65 HKD, payable with Octopus card even here). Again it was quite a walk through the immigration complex before getting to the bus, but immigration itself was cleared in a minute.
Bus ride back to Hong Kong was uneventful, and I arrived back home around 11 PM.