whiplash.

It's only been two days since escaping Wan Chai, it feels more like three weeks. It takes a monumental amount of effort to move through this city, magnified tenfold by the zombie-esque plague of the iDevices. One step forward two steps back isn't very far off - dodging old people and children is the hardest part of it all, every major street simply packed with people of various speeds and attentiveness. If I would have brought my FitBit I would have earned 20% in sideways bonus steps, no doubt. The exhaustion of movement is a big reason I can't picture myself staying for more than a few months in Manhattan, or even San Francisco. It makes our outings four hours at most before our brains demand reprieve, ending our evenings early back in our 6' x 10' room.

The cost of any big city is an easy price to pay for what we've done in those two days. Rode the roller coaster of a cable car up to The Peak, the tallest vantage point a tourist can get to. We saw a whole different side of commerce with PMQ, an old six-floor apartment building turned into dozens and dozens of high-design, hand-made storefronts. And the food, my god the food here has surpassed all of the hours and hours of YouTube anticipation. Tiny velvety egg tarts with their crumbly crusts, sugar-crusted baked BBQ buns at the best dim sum I've ever eaten, cold milk tea served atop bowls of ice, experiencing childlike novelty popping off individual orbs from various flavors of egg waffles, mouth-watering Peking duck three ways (AND MY FAVORITE SOUVENIR BOWL EVER EVER EVER PLEASE DON'T BREAK), introducing Mr. M to Din Tai Fung, beef brisket soup noodles at Mak An Kee, steamed custard buns, whole chickens fried before my eyes within an open-air food market amidst raucous tables of smokers and gamblers, on and on and on and on. My advice: skip the plethora of worthless junk markets and just, eat.

Worth the effort or not, the question remains: should vacations be relaxing? Is it even possible to "get away" while mimicking the rat race back home? I contemplated these questions when planning this trip. The expense and red tape to leave Hong Kong for mainland China just didn't seem worth it - why would I spend $140 for the Visa when I'd be there a few days at most? That left the only other loose border city an easy ferry ride away: Macau.

After being wished farewell by our new friends-actually-employees at our regular nearby coffee shop we packed our bags, solved the daily destination maze, and caught our hour-long ferry across the water. As the bus pulled up the Galaxy Macau we were engulfed in the ridiculousness of this five-star hotel - walking through gilded gates as a giant diamond descended from above the lobby fountain. The vast difference between our crushed city days and this casino WITH A WAVE POOL ON THE ROOF is mind-boggling. Our HK shower was a sink-attached head sitting feet above the toilet as a single stall - great care was taken to prevent our toilet paper from getting wet. Now not only do we have a separate shower and bathtub, we have a mini-fridge stocked with grocery store sundries and two fully-charged Kindles just begging for some quiet time. The next 48 hours of relaxing are upon us, we the harbingers of indolence!