Since in the previous four days we'd pretty much done everything that can be done in Hong Kong, yesterday we decided to visit China's other Special Administrative Region, Macau.
It was a Portuguese colony from 1557 until 1999, and it really shows in the architecture and ambiance of the place. It's kind of like what I'd expect to see in a Chinatown in Lisbon, only much bigger and smoggier. Oh, and there are lots of flashy casinos. So, it's like of like what I'd expect to see in a Chinatown in Lisbon, if Lisbon were in Nevada.
Anyway, after breakfast at Délifrance, we went to the ferry terminal at Sheung Wan and got tickets on the 12:30PM ferry to Macau. At 1:25, we were there.
Our first stop was the Fisherman's Wharf, a vaguely Epcot-like theme park with areas representing cities and regions of the world. After wandering through a random Middle Eastern place ("Aladdin's Fort") with an attraction apparently based around a downed American Army helicopter (it's some kind of wargame thing), we passed by ancient Rome (complete with Colosseum) and stopped at Miami, which featured stereotypical pink and light green Art Deco buildings. It was just like the real Miami, but covered with Chinese characters.
Then we crossed the street and went to the Museu de Arte de Macau. A good bit of it was under renovation, but we got to see some interesting photographs and paintings of old Macau, as well as some stupid-looking modern Chinese art.
By this time, we were hungry, so we went next door to the Sands casino and ate lunch at the McDonald's inside. After that, we rode the Sands' free shuttle bus back to the ferry terminal, where we'd be sure to find lots of public buses.
Sure enough, we found one that took us to Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, about a block away from Largo do Senado. We walked through the square (which was actually a triangle) and up a hill toward the Ruins of St. Paul's. On the way, we passed by half a dozen stores selling various flavors of almond cookie, including Almond Cookie with Pig Fat and, fortunately, plain almond. Those stores also sell many different kinds of jerky, made from beef, "veal of meat", pork, etc., and there are hawkers who chase you down the street trying to get you to try a free sample of their jerky.
After turning a few corners to lose the crazy jerky hawkers, we arrived at As Ruínas de São Paulo, the huge façade of a Catholic cathedral that burned down during a typhoon in the 1800s. While there, some schoolkids came up to us and asked if they could interview me (on film) for their English homework. I consented, and tried to answer the boy's questions, but I couldn't really remember the names of all the places when he asked what I'd seen so far; I hope his teacher doesn't count it against him.
It was hot and muggy out, so we stopped for some Häagen Dazs. While we were eating our ice cream, a police band started to play in front of St. Dominic's Church. After we finished, we walked around the hill to the back side of St. Paul's, where there was another bus stop. Our plan was to take a bus to the Macau Tower; instead, we ended up taking a bus going completely the wrong way, because when we asked the driver whether he was going toward the tower (I asked in English and Bob asked in English and in Mandarin), he said nothing in reply. Fortunately there was a passenger who heard us and told us to get off and which bus to take instead. So, we got off. At the bus stop we saw that our desired bus only came every 75 minutes. :-(
We waited for more than half an hour before deciding it was silly to spend all our time in Macau sitting at a bus stop watching the sun go down. Of course, as soon as we had walked away, the bus showed up and drove past us on its way to the tower. Lame!
We saw a shiny building down the street and started walking toward it, figuring it would be something touristy; instead, it turned out to be an amazingly large elementary school that hosts exhibitions. In front of it is Vasco da Gama Garden, with a big statue of (obviously) famous Portuguese explorer dude Vasco da Gama. Across the street was a hotel, so we hailed a taxi there and had him drive us to Macau Tower (finally!).
At the bottom of the tower they have some stores, and next to one they had a neat big Lego model of the tower. After admiring that, we went up to the top of the real tower. There are two observation decks, an indoor one on the 58th floor, and an outdoor one on the 61st floor. Unfortunately, the outdoor deck still has a bunch of glare-causing glass between you and the world, and it's not air conditioned, so we spent most of our time on the indoor deck. There was a lot of smog in the air, so we couldn't really see too far, but all the hotels had their neon lights going, so we could at least see them.
When we were done observing stuff, we took a taxi back to the Sands and walked across the street to see the Lotus Square. Then we took the Sands' free shuttle bus over to the Venetian Macau (they're owned by the same company), the largest casino in the world.
When we got there, we were hungry, so we went upstairs to the food court. On the way, we saw an indoor replica of St. Mark's Square (it was like something from Disney World, but with cigarettes and gambling everywhere). We chose to eat Hainanese chicken rice at the Rasa Singapura; we gambled that it would taste good, and we lost. :-( The chicken was cold (Bob, who has been to the real Singapore, says it isn't supposed to be), and the soup just tasted like salt water.
After we ate, we walked through the main hall to the front entrance (the shuttle had dropped us off on the back side) to see the casino's larger-than-life-size replicas of various Venetian buildings, including the Campanile di San Marco and the Ponte di Rialto. Thoroughly exhausted by now, we walked back through the casino to the bus stop and took the shuttle back to the ferry terminal, and took the 12:15AM ferry back to Hong Kong.
By the time we got back, the MTR had stopped running, so we had to take a taxi back to the hotel. We got into a taxi at the ferry terminal in Hong Kong, but the taxi driver started yelling at us in Cantonese when we told him where we wanted to go. I guess he was looking for a fare going across the harbour to Kowloon. We had better luck with our next taxi, and soon we were fast asleep in our hotel room.
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