September 2010 – soloflighted.com

Macau Side Trip: Senado Square and Ruins of St. Paul

This is part 2 of our day trip to Macau. I decided to divide this side trip into four parts because of so many places we explored. I already have a number of travel posts that my site is clogging up on my server’s bandwidth and I have to work on the backend in order … Read more

Macau Side Trip: Venetian Hotel, City of Dreams, Grand Lisboa

September 04, 2010
Macau Side Trip: Venetian Hotel, City of Dreams, Grand Lisboa

A tour around Macau’s Hotel Casinos.

I’m having a hard time separating this entry as there’s just so many places in Macau that we visited even if we spent it only for a day. That’s why I’m probably going to have to break the Macau Trip into other blog entries to cover the places we’ve gone to.

The Venetian Macau

Woke up early in order to prepare for our trip to Macau. We decided to push through with our plan as we needed to cover as many destinations and tourist spots in Hongkong while we’re still there. Although it rained the previous day, we were bent on at least getting to a good place in order to scratch of one of the locations in our itinerary.

The weather was humid but we proceeded to taking the ferry from Hong Kong to Macau. We ate breakfast first in order to fill ourselves for the day. We visited a Burger King store near the Tai San Guesthouse. Cindy and Logan ordered a bagel meal while I ordered a sandwich at half the price – really had to cut down on my costs – hehe.

Burger King breakfast in Hongkong

Places we visited in Macau:
The Venetian Hotel
City of Dreams
Grand Lisboa

September 3, 2010
Hong Kong Trip Day 2: World Trade Center and Times Square in Causeway Bay, Wan Chai

It rained on our second day in Hong Kong and it was declared as Storm Signal Number 1 which was such a bummer since we were raring to go out.

Designer Tram at Causeway Bay

Although we slept late in the morning, I woke up early to find some food for breakfast. From our hostel at the Tai San Guesthouse, I went to iSQUARE which is just a couple of blocks away. Initially, I thought iSQUARE was an office owned by Apple; later did I found that it is one of Hongkong’s skyrise malls.

I went there because I was looking for a supermarket to buy some grocery items: water bottles and chips; as well as some hair gel because we realized we weren’t in our best look when we saw our pictures the previous day. hehe.

Marketplace by Jasons at iSquare mall

Places we visited:
iSquare Mall
World Trade Center and Times Square in Causeway Bay
Wan Chai Computer Center
The Spaghetti House

September 2, 2010
Hongkong Trip Day 1: Tsim Sha Tsui and Mongkok Computer Center

It was a good thing Cindy, the ever-reliable researcher, read through a lot of information online especially on PinoyExchange.com (PEX). She told me that all the necessary details on what to do, where to go and how to get there is already laid out so there was no need for us to hire a travel agency to create an Itinerary for us.

shops and streets at 10pm!

I woke up and saw my friends, Cindy and Logan, still surfing the net with their laptops. I slept for a couple of hours at the Hong Kong International Airport which was a good thing as I had more energy to stroll around the place when we got to our hostel.

Train Tickets to purchase Octopus cards

6am, at the airport; we went to the center where we could buy some Octopus cards for our MTR (Mass Transit Railway) fares. This proved to be a wise choice as it’s a very convenient way to travel and pay for your fare when going to different towns.

Octopus cards – check out wikipedia for more information about it: Wikipedia – Octopus Card

Places we visited:
Tsim Sha Tsui
Tai San Guesthouse
Avenue of the Stars
1881 Heritage
Mongkok Computer Center

This will be a series of blog entries on how we got to Hong Kong from Cebu. Because of the information we got online was so helpful, this is my way of giving back to the community in sharing my experience for those people who might also need the information.

Hongkong Trip: Going From Cebu to Hong Kong
September 1-2, 2010

This was my first time to go abroad so I was apprehensive because I didn’t know how many issues we would be facing that would prevent us from setting foot onto foreign soil.

There were three of us (Cindy, Logan and I) and we were all first-timers so this was something we’ve looked forward to ever since we booked tickets about a year ago. We paid only 1200 Php each for the round-trip ticket from Cebu to Hong Kong using Cebu Pacific’s Piso Fare.

Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong

September 11-13, 2010

Two days after my birthday, I had the privilege of joining a group of bloggers to spend three days and two nights in Boracay. I was chosen as one of the winners of Seair and Microtel’s Boracay Blogger’s Tour. I published an entry on why I deserved to be part of the eight people who should go to this ultimate destination and I was very lucky enough to be chosen by Seair and Microtel judges.

Here’s my write-up about it: I’ve been to Different Places, but I’ve Never Been to Boracay

Seair and Microtel Bloggers Tour winners (Mica, Brenna, Gervic, Gael, Gracee, Van, Darwin) with the Seair and Microtel heads (thanks to mica for the pic)

soloflightEd finally lands in Boracay!

I also wondered if I could take part of the event since I’m from Cebu and the rest of the winners were from Manila. After a few emails, I was booked a ticket from Cebu to Caticlan. It’s great that Seair has more options now in offering a ride from the Queen City of the South to this island paradise.

I’m back to work. I want another vacation though, just to catch up on a lot of pending posts.

First, there was Bohol; then my first trip abroad in Hongkong-Macau. Lastly was the free trip to Boracay courtesy of Seair and Microtel Hotels Resort. I don’t even have enough time to update my sites one by one. I’m cramming myself up into making sure that I get to post at least one entry each but I don’t know where to start.

I should probably stay calm cause I might end up getting no productivity at all.

Hongkong International Airport

Somehow, it seems that I’m just starting these trips and I have a lot more that are going to be available for me in the upcoming months. But I don’t want to jinx it. Will be talking more about my trips to these three places (two rural areas and one urban location).

For now, here are just a few pictures of the retreat from work.

“Has anybody died from bungy jumping here?” – I had to bluntly ask the attendant at the lobby of the Macau Tower.
“No sir, if there had been an accident, all of our AJ Hackett locations would’ve closed down.” – I liked the frank response.

It’s been 10 days after I bungy jumped from the Macau Tower, but the incident is still fresh in my mind. All the way from Cebu to Hong Kong to Macau, I never imagined I could do this, well I did; but I didn’t think it would come too soon.

Check out my video of bungy jumping from the world’s highest bungy. I initially planned on editing it in order to save whatever dignity I had left but I changed my mind. What the heck, right?

September 04, 2010
Bungy Jumping from the Macau Tower

Just got back to the Hostel in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hongkong from a day tour in Macau. It’s been a tiring day and I was really amazed at the casinos and buildings in Macau. I didn’t expect it to be really amazing.

But I had an even better time when I was able to cheat death by bungy jumping from the Macau Tower! I’ve been planning the bungy jump since last year and finally I did it!

bungee jump at Macao!

AJ Hackett at Macau Tower

I have arrived in Hongkong. I have stepped on foreign soil, finally!

I got lost in the process and I’m still tired from all the walking. We went to the Mongkok Computer Center today and was amazed at the electronics and other gadgets that were available. I bought a Wireless router for myself – that’s the only thing I bought for this day. I paid only 158 HKD (around 900 Php) for it!

standing still in a sea of moving people in Hongkong!

Macau Side Trip: Senado Square and Ruins of St. Paul

Macau Side Trip: Venetian Hotel, City of Dreams, Grand Lisboa

Hong Kong Trip: World Trade Center & Times Square in Causeway Bay, Wan Chai

Hongkong Trip: Tsim Sha Tsui and Mongkok Computer Center

Hongkong Trip: From Cebu to Hong Kong

Seair and Microtel Boracay Bloggers Tour

After a 13-day Vacation…

soloflightEd bungy jumps from Macau Tower!

Update from Mongkok, Hongkong