goodbye Macau

A lot of people complain about leaving places like mainland China with missing livers. It’s a running joke among Asia ex-pats. I even made that joke last night to the Philippino bell-hop who escorted me to the hospital in Macau. The hospital let me keep my liver but I returned to Hong Kong today with 4 stitches in my elbow, of all places.

This morning, the bell-hop who walked me to the local pharmacy was convinced that I was drunk and that was why I had four stitches in my elbow. He was not the same Philippino who guided me through the emergency room the night before because that bell-hop could clearly see that I was stone sober. His eyes still questioned me beneath a gold embroidered hat

I omitted details (I’m becoming more Chinese every day) and told both bell-hops that I had an “accident” in my hotel room and left it at that. Neither asked further questions even though the one bell-hop was convinced that I was a crazy party girl from the U.S.A.

Of course a crazy party girl would stay at The Casa Real, a casino/hotel with noon checkouts. But the boring truth is that I was only in Macau to get the proper stamp on my passport. Aaron had a conference near The Casa Real so everything coincided beautifully with our night away…except for my elbow in shattered glass.

What really happened in my hotel room last night was that I was spinning around the room, showing off a new outfit I had bought. Aaron and I will forever claim that the wall jumped at me and that is how my elbow collided with a picture frame on the wall. I cut through my muscle so after a 2 hour ER trip, a tetanus shot in my thigh, and a $100 USD bill, I was back in my hotel room. Too late for dinner, too late to fool anyone that I was a crazy party girl from California or New York. That would have to wait until the morning.