My Travel Diary.....Sharing With You Where I Had Been: 2011 April Guangzhou, Macau (Day 1)

19 April 2011 Tuesday

After breakfast at McDonald (yeah....we needed something quick and there are everywhere!), we headed off to Landmark hotel to catch a bus to Macau Gong Bei Port Customs. They are 2 bus companies at the hotel and we took CTS (because that's the one the hotel portal boy pointed us to). The bus fare cost 70RMB and it departs every 30mins. They don't take reservations and the assigned seat doesn't mean anything. People just take whatever seat they want on the bus(if you are quick and 1st of cos). Aircon bus and there's 2 TV screen (where they just played some HongKong movies), one at the front and the other in the middle. I guess for 70RMB you can't really expect a luxury bus. The journey is about 2.5hrs. After Landmark hotel, the bus makes another stop at another hotel and it's highway to Macau. No toilets on the bus so it will be wise to visit the bathroom in Landmark hotel before departure.

It was really bad luck that my Canon EOS camera is stolen right between my feet during the journey. The professional thief/thieves had managed to take the camera and it's twin zoom lens out of the camera bag while it's still being sandwiched between my legs. They had cleverly put in 3 bottles of water so that the weight is the same. I only realise this when I wanted to take some pictures during the journey, about 15mins before we reach the bus station. In the end we had to spend 2 hours in the police station making a statement, which they never give it to me. I only received a report that says I have logged a report. We rang the travel insurance company right away to check if this is sufficient to make a claim. Accordingly to the customer service, so long as we have the receipt and the report, it should be sufficient. Let's hope so as it's bloody expensive camera!

By the time we reach the Venetian, it's already after 6pm. The entire hotel and shopping mall stinks of cigarette smoke, even the rooms hallway and lifts there are guest smoking. There's a huge flood of mainland china tourist everywhere as well. I was told it's close to labour week holiday. Most of the eating places are expensive, unless you happy to settle for McDonald. We tried Fat Burgers (Grill burgers, onion rings and chocolate milkshake). Craig said the milkshakes is yummy. We didn't had much time to walk around as the ZAIA show start at 8pm.

I'm quite impressed with the whole ZAIA setup, music and songs. However most of the performance isn't the best we had seen. Still it's a good performance and definitely worth the time.

The venetian room is huge with 2 TV and a big bathroom! The check in customer service was very nice, the entire place is huge however, unless they improve the air quality I'm not sure if i would return.

Thank goodness I took a spare camera with me so I am still able to take continue taking pictures for the rest of our trip. Definitely a good lesson learnt and I will continue to bring 2 cameras for future holidays now.

Venetian on the outside