In Hong Kong we had the luxury of staying with family, which is almost like staying at a hotel except for the fact that soup and fruit are served immediately after each hearty meal. As a result I am now allergic to fruit and Chinese style soups. The first hotel we stayed in was The Venetian in Macau, a massive complex built on the opposite side of town away from the main casino district. In a town like Macau you need a gimmick to attract visitors - the end result may still be the same but each casino comes in different packaging. Some have bright lights, some are shaped like stuff, and The Venetian shifted a city block of Venice to your hotel doorstep.
The real Macau as seen from the old fort.
A lot of detail has gone into this recreation. The style of building, the canals and the gondoliers are all there waiting for you under a perpetual blue sky. The ceiling isn't bewitched as described in "Hogwarts: A History" but if you look close enough you can see the smoke detectors. Suppressing my inner architect took a bit of doing, the strange reproduction of the streetscape follows details closely but of course lacks the authenticity of a city that is far older than this. But as I said before, all this stuff is just to get your sad sorry arses through the door - after all, you're all here to 'win' money. I am proud to say that as a family unit we actually managed to make 400.25HKD on the pokies using just the complementary credit generously provided by the casino. Is this to become our new family bonding experience? Time will tell.
The following collage tells the story of our odyssey from the entrance of the casino to our room. One thing we noticed during our stay is that getting from Point A to Point B is never as easy as you might think. Even the most direct points consisted of us walking through long winding corridors built to resemble a maze, and don't think that getting back to the lobby of the hotel tower is the end of that chapter. Unfortunately for us our rooms were at the far end of the floor, and when each floor is shaped like a very large letter 'C' you can begin to imagine what the scenery will be like. It's like being stuck in that hotel from "The Shining" - just add blood. My only real complaint is that the place doesn't seem to be fully staffed, as it took them an extra three hours for them to get our rooms ready for check in. These problems may be ironed out in time but it may deter me from going back there again.
After heading back to Hong Kong for a day to rest and repack we were off to Taiwan for five days. I covered a lot of what we saw there but the hotels we stayed in are worth mentioning (to me) just because they steadily got weirder and weirder as the tour progressed. The general idea behind these moderately priced tours is that your accommodation starts off being fairly cheap then gets more and more impressive near the end. This first place in Kaohsiung was pretty basic but it had plumbing fixtures that were seemingly installed just for me. Ever seen an elephant faucet?
The odd part is that this tap wasn't installed in our parents' room. I'd take it home if not for the mess it'd cause.
The next place was this Japanese styled hotel in the peaks of Taiwan that was superior to the first hotel in every aspect save the smell and the lack of internet access. We suspected that sewage wasn't as accessible up in the mountains so sceptic tanks were probably to blame. The main point of interest again lies in the bathroom with this cool wall mounted shower with jets to cover any body cavity you need cleaned out. Hmm that didn't come out right did it? The funny thing with this one is that the room was so small that using the shower usually meant that half the room (including the toilet) would be covered in water by the end, so it was a pretty good idea to place your clothes far far away.
This next place marked our move into the northern cities, hence the larger rooms. This was probably the most normal place we stayed in for the duration of our trip. One word of advice if you're planning on sharing accommodation with others. When you enter a hotel room for the first time, scan it quickly and calculate the proximity between each bed and the TV set, then proceed with the rules of 'Shotgun' as set by the global Shotgun rules committee. This way you can avoid fighting over beds later on, though if you choose to operate separate rules for the control of the remote beware as you may end up watching one of the numerous Televangelist style Buddhist monk channels on the hotel cable.
This last room was probably the weirdest of all due to its bathroom to bedroom window, a treatment I came to refer to as the 'Deli Bathroom' style. There is a roller shutter you can pull down to conceal tricks but I still think it's a mental idea. The other crazy thing in this room was the presence of one of those crazy Japanese toilets that spray your behind with jets of water. All the instructions were in Japanese so I had to deduce what everything meant. Fortunately half of the language is Chinese anyway so I could guess most of what was going on, preventing any unfortunate toilet based mishaps. The best part was figuring out which button catered for which gender. Rear window entry was easy enough to decipher by looking at a simplified diagram of one's behind. However the jet reserved for the opposite sex was not symbolised by what you think it was, you sick bastard.
Join me next time when I dig up a few more holiday pictures for you to fall asleep to, just like when the distant relative you never liked brings around his/her holiday snaps and forces you to sit through each photograph in agonising detail. Before long you're attempting to end it by cutting yourself with the edges of the photos, and then you realise you're watching a digital slideshow. Just one of the many downsides of the modern age.
only 27 bathrobes? what's wrong with you?!
yes, the single, most exciting thing i'm looking forward to in japan is the high-tech urinals. fingers crossed I don't get any gender-related mishaps whilst i'm there! although that'd make for an interesting story. :)