Chapped in Macau

On Monday morning we packed up our rental apartment in Hong Kong and the doorman hailed us a taxi down to the ferry terminal so we could get tickets to Macau. Of course, since it was a holiday, a lot of other people had the same idea, so we wound up waiting a little over two hours for the next available ferry. Luckily, there's a decent mall attached to the ferry terminal so we checked our bags in a locker, got some breakfast and shopped around. A combination of the heat, denim shorts and all the walking had given me a nasty diaper rash, and I had to shop for a remedy! TMI?

I get sea sick pretty easily so I felt pretty doomed when I stepped on the ferry. It hadn't even left the pier yet and it was SO choppy! The three of us had to get into "the zone"- the "I'm-not-gonna-barf-I'm-not-gonna-barf-I'm-not-gonna-barf" zone- so we put on our headphones, took some gravol, and tried to stare at the TV in an effort to ignore the rocking. With a chapped ass AND nausea, the day was off to a good start! Lucky for us, the waves settled down within a few minutes of the ferry starting up, so we didn't wind up using the provided barf bags. Less than an hour later, we'd arrived!

When I booked our room at the Ole London Hotel, I'd read comments on tripadvisor that it was hard for some taxi drivers to find. Our driver had no clue where it was... he tried his best too, by calling dispatch for directions (no help) and calling the phone number Expedia gave us for the hotel (invalid number). It was my own fault for not printing out the address in Chinese. I know better than that!! I'd read that the hotel was within walking distance to Senado Square, the center of tourist activity on Macau, so we had the driver just take us there. We hoped we'd see it when we arrived, but of course it wasn't that easy. I asked a few traffic police for directions (there were SO MANY people around, and naturally many cops too) but they had no clue. We walked towards the square with all of our bags when Mel noticed a tourist information building. Phew! Lucky for us they knew how to get there and had the address is Chinese. We got another taxi (it wasn't close enough to walk with all our bags) and got there no problem within a few minutes.

After we checked in, we walked back to Senado Square to start our sightseeing. This is the area with the majority of the Portuguese architecture you see in pictures of Macau. While most of Macau definitely looks just like any other Asian city, this square certainly has a unique look and atmosphere. Being there on both a national holiday and the day of an international fireworks festival, we got to share that atmosphere with about a million other tourists. I mean, it was TIGHT trying to walk around. The square leads to the Ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral, and only goes for a few blocks, but it must have taken more than 20 minutes to push our way through. It was nuts.

St. Domingo's Church in Senado Square.

STFU in the church.

We pushed our way to the street's grand conclusion: the Ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral. As you can see, it was as if we had the whole place to ourselves.

 

The ruins are basically just the front of a burnt down church from the 16th century, and here's what the ruins look like from behind.

Behind the ruins and down the stairs is a small, free museum and crypt.

Hungry after what we'd seen in the crypt, we decided to try some street food at a stall next to the ruins. I got Macau's famous pork sandwich (needs some sauce).

And Mel tried an egg tart.

We snacked in the doorway of an apartment- the only spot that wasn't over-run with tourists!

After getting a little turned around in our effort to use side roads to avoid walking back through the square, we got back on the right track and headed for the casinos! Macau is known as the Las Vegas of Asia, and while it's definitely lacking the party atmosphere of Vegas, it does indeed have casinos... many of them are replicas of the famous Vegas casinos. The first one we went in, the Lisboa, was closest to the square and it was was kind of dingy and wayyy too busy so we walked a bit farther down to the Wynn.

The Wynn was a much nicer casino, and there were actually some available slot machines to play at! The fun thing about playing with such a cheap currency is that I got to play for a little while and it only cost me two or three dollars.

We enjoyed pressing this button many times, even though none of us were very lucky on that day.

We'd considered getting something to eat at the casino, but it was predictably pricy, so we decided to head over to the Macau Tower area of town to eat before the fireworks show that was going on there later night.

Rather than walk or take a taxi, we decided to get an old Chinese man to drive us on his bike. He had a giant laminated map of local sights and we were able to just point to where we wanted to go for 200 MOP($30). We decided to have him drop us off a temple that wasn't too far from the Tower so we could have a look around there before dinner.

Powerless, on the back of a bike, in Macau traffic. It was a pretty awesome way to see a lot of the town that we wouldn't have found on our own!

The temple was a bit farther away than we'd pictured so we were really glad we didn't try to walk there... especially since it was closing when we got there! It closed at 6pm. We got to walk around the front grounds a little bit but they wouldn't let us in to the main grounds even though we could totally see a bunch of other people still sightseeing around inside. Mel and I weren't too bothered because we've seen a million temples, but I wanted Jason to be able to check it out. Oh well, we were able to visit some other temples later in his visit.

The temple closed at 6pm, but  the restaurant next door didn't open until 7pm. So, since there was nothing else in the area, we started walking to Macau Tower.

 

On our walk to the tower we passed by a number of murals which teach proper conduct, such as cleaning up after your dog and recycling your waste. Not sure if this is directed at changing local behaviors or correcting tourist's bad manners?

Jason, Mel and I on our way to the tower.

As we walked around the lake we saw a lot of people fishing, despite the fact that we counted at least half a dozen dead fish washed up along the shore. Here's a guy fishing right next to a "no fishing" sign.

Macau Tower is connected to something that looks like a mall, but is more like two restaurants and a Toys R' Us plus a lot of empty commercial rental space. I got a pretty decent dinner of coconut chicken, herbed potatoes and cheesecake from a "pay by the pound" sort of restaurant.

Chilling out in the park in front of the Tower, waiting for the fireworks show.

Fireworks pictures always suck, so I'll skip posting them... but it was a good show. The performance was Italy's entry into the festival, and the show was a good 20 minutes long. It was really nice. We decided to walk back to our hotel via Senado Square so we could see how it looked lit up at night. Plus, we had to walk because there was no way we'd ever get a taxi back anyway... it was so busy there! Above is the casinos all lit up along the lake. It was a nice walk.

Here's Senado Square at night, lit up quite nicely with its' Veggietales hanging lanterns. We hung around until Daiso chased us out of their closed store and we finally walked back to our hotel. Why are there no Daisos in China?? Everything from Daiso is made there LOL!!

At our hotel, they'd kindly set up a cot for Jason. What were we thinking booking single beds?? Anyway, that was our day in Macau! It was time for me to slather some more cream on my ass, get to sleep, and then head back to Hong Kong at 10am the next morning...