Stepping into a new continent – a week in Hong Kong COMPLETED - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
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We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Tuesday 19 February – part one: visiting the “Las Vegas of Asia”
It was an early start today, as we had to be downstairs to get breakfast when the buffet opened at 7.00 and then be in the lobby for 7.30 for our day trip to Macau. What is Macau? Well, like Hong Kong, it’s currently a Special Administrative Region, having been handed back to China by Portugal in 1999. They had owned it for around 500 years before that. Special Administrative Region status, as we later discovered, means that everything remains the same for the first 50 years after the area is handed back, which explains why nothing seems to have changed in Hong Kong since the handover.
We were picked up promptly and then spent what seemed like forever getting to the other hotel to pick up another British couple, Thelma and Tim. Their hotel wasn’t far from us, but my goodness, we took a torturous route to get there. It was only then that I realised that there aren’t that many turnings off the main roads here. Usually you would go under and over main roads, but you certainly can’t go over here, as it’s full of pedestrian walkways and I guess you can’t go underneath either, as it’s on reclaimed land. It’s quite an eye opener.
We made it to the Macau Ferry Terminal about an hour later and found the rest of our tour group. In total, there were 55 of us, so we ended up on two buses. You have to leave Hong Kong when you get on the ferry and then fill in another landing car before you get to Macau. You have to go through two sets of immigration, one on the Hong Kong side and one in Macau, but at least you don’t need to purchase a visa, like you do for the rest of China. Another bonus was all the extra stamps we got in our passports – it was so nice, because whenever we travel within the European Union, we no longer get our passports stamped. That’s a great shame, as your passports always used to be stamped whenever you left the UK, so they would provide a record of everywhere you’d travelled.
We were quickly at our boarding gate. They really do leave you to it a bit from that point until you get to the other end in Macau. You are on your own, but fortunately everyone made it OK.
The trip over took about an hour and when we left the harbour, I did think that we were in for a rough time. In fact, I was dreading this, as I had horrible memories – and no doubt Mark did as well – of the last time we took one of these things when we took the hydrofoil over to Sorrento. That was truly a nightmare journey. Fortunately, this was so much better than that. Once we got going, it was nice and smooth, although I didn’t see much of the ride, because I was just so tired and ended up crashing out.
Very plush seating on board
As you can see, it was exceptionally foggy out today
A shot of another of the Macau ferries
When I awoke, I saw a huge road bridge as we came into Macau harbour. I didn’t know it then, but we would later find out that it was one of three road bridges over to China.
Now this place has become the Las Vegas of Asia in recent years and that’s the reason most people come here, but I also wanted to see some of its rich history. The first sight you are greeted with on the land is the Sands casino. It’s a massive complex and sets the tone for a lot of the rest of the city.
We quickly found out guide Mario and our bus and we were off. Mario explained that he’s Portuguese, but has spent the last 25 years of his life here, so I think he can be considered as a local now. He had some interesting comments about the way of life here (they don’t pay any taxes here and have to pay a fee for social services, such as complimentary schooling until the age of 18) and the city’s relationship with China. There are 500,000 people living in Macau, so as you drive around, you quickly notice the difference with Hong Kong in that there are green spaces and there’s not the same density of buildings.
Note the Wynn bus! The Sands casino
Our first stop was the Kun Iam statue, one of he final gifts that Portugal left for Macau before handing it over. There’s quite a story to go with this, which is essentially that the designer was left in a wheelchair, following a car accident, while creating this statue. When it was unveiled, she walked up to it and she claimed it was the statue that had cured her. Mario promised us that it was true, so who knows?
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