Marcus’ Blog

Dit staat hier in Singapore overal in de plaatselijke winkels tussen het bier aanbod… In Nederland nog nooit gezien?

If you visit this site - make sure you read this.

Rgds,
Marc

When taking off for a flight I had a beautiful view over my home the other week.

This is Lantau Island in the morning sun (10am take off to the East, then a right turn over the Tsing Ma bridge).

You can see Discovery Bay in the foreground and Disney park Hong Kong on bottom right.

The Lantau mountains show up between the clouds in the background - and the nice thing is I’ve climbed them all so know all the peaks.

The first ridge is the one nearest DB, with Tiger Head Hill the highest peak (~450m).
The second mountain - to the left - is Sunset peak - about 850m.
The third and highest - in the middle - is Lantau peak - about 950m (and it’s a bastard to climb).

Nice to see them all from my relaxing seat in the pointy end of this airplane.

Cheers,
Marc

We rented a car for a day and drove up to Sai Kung. A nice day on the beach with great Chinese food.

You don’t see this often, well except near the hong kong airport limo pick up area.

I’m writing this from a taxi-ing 777-200, on the Chek Lap Kok tarmac. This week I’m in Singapore, I look forward to the heat and humidity actually, hong kong is getting cold!

I had the pleasure of being in Macau last week, for a few days of planning for next year as well as spending some offline time with colleagues.

As you may know, the city of Macau currently is the world’s largest gambling center - and recently it beat Las Vegas to this rank position.

The number of hotels going up in this town is simply mind boggling. And although recent financial crisis and recessionary climate has put some stops to the immediate growth, there seems to be no doubt that this place will continue to attract the up and coming middle class mainland Chinese to come and gamble their hard earned cash. With a hinterland of over a billion people it is indeed unsurprising that a city like Las Vegas now has to play second trumpet.

Anyway - back to my trip here. I stayed in “the Venitian” which is a monster of a hotel. So big in fact - that the walk from reception to my room was a good 15 minutes. The below picture is taken in Bellini, which is a lounge bar with live band, and it literally sits smack in the middle of the Venitian’s casino floor.

We used this bar as our base camp while some of us ventured into the casino to wager some bets.

Unfortunately the drinking bills equalled or exceeded any gambling profits so financially this seems to be a zero sum game…

Nadine brought some milk from a trip to Canada… I don’t think this would sell in Holland.