Macau

Today the trip went from Hong Kong to Macau, a one hour trip by boat.

When we arrived it was already mid-day and so we hurried into mid town by taking the Empire hotel shuttle bus (as hotel/casino shuttle buses don’t cost money to ride). It brought us only a few minutes walk away from Senado Square, our first stop.

We hurried to find a restaurant to get some food. Unfortunately I feel that our choice could have been better, but although the honey soft-drink tasted like chlorine,  I  still got to try a camel meat sandwich.

After lunch we headed up the streets towards St. Paul’s cathedral. There were so many people and small shops selling food. We got to try a whole lot of samples of different kind of sugary pasties as well as dried meat. It all tasted delicious, after the tastings I had better a better understanding of why Macau is known for its food.

We stopped at st. Paul’s for a short while to take photos but the sun was burning hot, so even though we had sunscreen on, both of us feared that spending much longer in the sun might cause burns.

After visiting st. Paul we headed further up the road to the old Fortress: Monte Fort.

A tiresome walk up the stairs that was rewarded with a nice view of Macau.

As we headed down the stairs again we found a small workout place, and suddenly remembered a certain day from our stay in Korea where we had taken tons of pictures on just a such work out place, this one called for a revival.

I felt quite odd in Macau at first, it almost looked like Europe, yet the people all acted like Chinese mainland people (a lot of them were mainland people too). The air wasn’t as good as in Hong Kong, and even worse than in Kowloon. I noticed this right away when we arrived with the boat, since I could barely see Macau from the boat at first because of the bad air. So at first my impression of Macau wasn’t at its best, yet, as we walked away from the most touristed areas Macau became quite a comfortable place, and reminded me so much of southern Europe, in so many ways, that it was almost scary.

We quit St. Paul and headed back where we came from, towards Senado Square where we visited St. Dominic’s church. This was also where I decided to buy Macau egg tarts, these are quite different from the Hong Kong style, I must admit that I like the Hong Kong style better, as it is sweeter, but these ones still tasted great. Actually I bought them from a shop that I knew about because of a Korean drama: Boys over Flowers, a famous scene from the drama was shot at that shop and so I remembered it right as I saw it.

We wandered a bit away from the over-toursity areas and walked towards St. Lawrence church that I wanted to visit. And finally we got to see some of the real Macau, not the grand hotels and casinos, no busy tourists, just Macau, its residents and hundreds of scooters.

When we reached St. Lawrence church we discovered that there was a wedding so we couldn’t enter, yet it still looked pretty from the outside (second photo from the left).

After that we only had one last destination left and one hour left. Seems easy enough, yet our last destination was at the other end of Macau. A hotel and Casino at the other side of the harbor: The Venetian. We walked in the right direction for a while until we were lucky to stumble across a shuttle bus to the Galaxy hotel, the hotel right next to the Venetian and a hotel that I have seen a lot of commercials for in Hong Kong, so a place that I had also grown curious about. We skimmed inside, but nothing more as we ran to the Venetian, because although the two hotel/casinos are right next to each other they are both so big that it took us a good 10 minutes to run from one to the other.

We ran through the doors of the Venetian with only half and hour to find the shopping hall and take some photos. Thankfully we got to see the Casino (that I had also been curious about) on the way up to the streets of Venice.

With five minutes to take photos we just managed to get back down to the shuttle but after having visited Venice. Having been to venice myself I must admit that it was a pretty admirable reconstruction. And although it looks very dark in the photos the painted ceiling really does look like a real sky.

Finally the sun was setting on Macau as we got on the boat back to Hong Kong.

We headed straight to Tai Koo after passing through customs in Hong Kong to meet Kei’s mother and grandmother for dinner.

I’ve eaten a lot of delicious things during my 19 days in Hong Kong, my last night in the city was no exception.

I will miss every single food I have tried out here.

And because it was my last night in the town I decided to take the tram home to Causeway bay for the very last time, I’l miss the tram, no better place to space out and think about everything there is to think about.