DAY 1
The Trip: Sixteen hours stuck on the flying purgatory that is the Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong isn't anyone's idea of a fun time, although food, sleeping, a fully charged I Pod, and the in-flight entertainment (Casino Royale and Blood Diamond, among others) help pass the time.
The trip was about 90 minutes longer than anticipated because of strong headwinds which forced the plane to make a refueling stop in Taipei.
On the Ground: We didn't waste any time as soon as we were in Hong Kong. After checking into our rooms at the University of Hong Kong, we met up and headed to Central, the heavily developed commercial area of Hong Kong with shops and skyscrapers and Victoria Harbor most people are familiar with.
We had our first group lunch, dim sum at a local restaurant in Central. After that, we went to the Wan Chai and Tai Koo neighborhoods of Hong Kong to get oriented where all of our offices would be located, and also managed to get local cell phones.
In the evening, we explored the Soho neighborhood and ate at an Indian restaurant. We came back to HKU and called it a night fairly early, after having been up for nearly a day and a half.
DAY 2
I went to explore Tai Koo and Central by myself to get oriented for next week. In the late afternoon, we all met up at the Mandarin Hotel in Central to head to a reception organized by the USC Marshall School of Business which we were invited to.
DAY 3
We met for dim sum as a group over lunch, after which we went over to the ferry terminal to head to Macau for the rest of the day. The weather took a turn for the worse while we were having lunch and continued raining nearly the entire time we were in Macau. The ferry ride took about an hour and we kept ourselves entertained with sleep, I Pods, and a few scattered widescreen monitors which were showing skits from a late night Chinese comedy/variety show. The most widely known skit from the show is this one, dubbed "Matrix Ping Pong," which has made the rounds on the Internet.
Interesting to note that all the signs in Macau are written in Mandarin, English, and Portuguese. We headed for Largo do Senado (Senate Square) which is the historic heart of Macau and began walking around. We eventually made our way to Macau's equivalent of the strip in Las Vegas, where several casinos have set up shop targeting the Asian market who wants to get their quick gambling fix without having to fly to the U.S. We had dinner at a Japanese restaurant inside the Wynn before heading back to the ferry terminal and eventually, back to HKU.
DAY 4
We did a whole lot of nothing during the day, and the weather didn't help which was just as miserable as yesterday. We eventually met up for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Soho a few blocks from the Indian place we went to on the first night.
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