Macau day trip

My wife has a habit: no matter whether we are at home or on holidays, invariably she would be the last person out of the door whenever we need to go somewhere. It was the same again when we were readying ourselves to buy our turbojet tickets to Macau in March this year. We were staying in Sheung Wan and I had to hurry her out of the hotel early enough to have our breakfast before walking over to the Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal. Once the tickets were bought, we were on our way.

The one-hour journey was smooth and uneventful, and soon we arrived at the Macau Maritime Ferry Terminal. And immediately, we hit a problem: hardly anyone we met outside the Macau Government Tourist Office at the terminal spoke English, and with us not speaking Portuguese, Cantonese or Mandarin, our only course of action was to arm ourselves with one of their tourist maps so that we could point and gesticulate to the destinations we wanted to go.

So what's available in Macau that could interest us immediately? When I was younger several decades ago, I had already known that Macau was the centre of legalised gambling in this part of the world. In the same breath, whenever Macau's name was mentioned, visions of roulette tables, blackjack tables and slot machines would spring to mind. The Casino Lisboa was practically the face of Macau from the 70s till the 90s. It's that famous, see?

In 2001, the Macau government eased restrictions on casinos operating here and today, I've been reading that there are as many as 33 casinos in this Special Administrative Region.

Unfortunately, I've never been a gambling man and my forays into casinos anywhere have always been out of curiosity than anything else. Same as in Macau, the only casino that we wandered into briefly was the Casino Lisboa and that was only because it was located down the road from the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro. But I'm sure that many other people would have found entertainment inside the many other big-name casinos here.

So there we were, we hailed a taxi at the ferry terminal and pointed out to the driver that we wanted to go to the ruins of St Paul's. Well, maybe not exactly to the ruins itself, but maybe, just drop us off a distance away so that we could walk and have a look around one of Macau's busy commercial centres. We got off at the Avenida do Infante Dom Henrique, got our bearings correct and strolled to where the Largo de Senado (Senado Square) was.

The direction to the ruins couldn't be any simpler to ascertain. We simply had to follow the crowd. Everyone in the square was practically heading in the same direction as us or they were heading back. But actually, if we were just to walk directly to the ruins without stopping to observe the culture and activities around us, we would have missed a lot about everyday Macau street life.

Obviously, we weren't interested in the big business outlets with their branded goods; they were more or less the same everywhere. Instead we were more curious about the little mom-and-pop shops along the way: the little shops selling souvenir items and the little shops selling tasty snacks like dried sweet meats, meatballs on a stick, grilled pork chops in crispy buns, almond cookies and of course, their famous Portuguese egg tarts, It would be unforgivable to leave Macau without eating two or three or even more of these egg tarts!

Macau is actually much more than the casinos or the ruins of St Paul's. As my wife and I were only there on a very crowded day trip, we never got the chance to move far from the Senado Square or the ruins. Nevertheless, we did manage to visit the St Dominic's Church, the nearby Na Tcha Temple, the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau building and Mt Fortress.

We came away from our brief trip to Macau convinced that next time around, we must stay here for a couple more days. After all, Macau is an amazing place, both historical and modern, and visiting this place can be a great experience, especially if your first visit was short or incomplete or if you haven't been here before.  So if my wife and I were to visit Macau again, what will we be doing?

First thing is to explore the Macau historical centre again which incidentally, is also a UNESCO world heritage site. Apart from the ruins of St Paul's, there are so many more attractions such as the St Joseph's Church, the St Laurence's Church, Dom Pedro V Theatre, Mandarin's House, A-Ma's Temple and the Guia hills.

But history and culture aside, Macau has other modern-day attractions. I'm talking casinos now. Yes, the casinos. We'd certainly like to step foot into the casinos - yes, really visit them intentionally - not to gamble but to enjoy the side attractions like the gondola ride at the Venetian Macau and the Wynn Macau's water fountain show which I hear is rather spectacular.

And above all, there are also equally charming tourist alternatives such as the wine museum, the Macau Grand Prix and the grand prix museum, Fisherman's Wharf or the Macau Tower with its bungee jumping attraction, not that I'm game enough to try it (but my wife may want to).

In the early evening as we took the same turbojet ride back to Hong Kong, we looked back at this former Portuguese colony and saw Macau's newest casino, the Sands Macau, fading away into the background. Hopefully, we'll be back in the foreseeable future to explore more of this place.

Disneyland: Feeling younger again

Not long after we had returned from Hong Kong, my wife was telling me that someone she knew had been so amused when he learnt that we had visited Disneyland there. Of course, what he was implying was that we should be too old to have enjoyed Disneyland. It's a park for children, that's what he meant but was too polite to say out loud.

To this fella, I would like to dedicate this picture to him. It was taken of one of the popular rides there: the Dumbo flying elephant ride.

And there was this pair of senior citizens who got on board one of the Dumbo cars. So you see, there are young children and then there are older children. Older children of all ages. And we are proud to be classified here.

Anyway, visiting Disneyland was never on our minds until this opportunity to visit Hong Kong presented itself to us in mid-February. Once we had decided to visit the former British colony, it was just a matter of deciding how best to make use of our limited time there. Thus, Disneyland became a natural destination for us. To my wife, she had always dreamt of visiting a Disneyland somewhere in the world and this was a dream coming true.

The moment we stepped off at the Sunny Bay MTR station, it became clear that the Disneyland mood was already pervasive.

When the connecting train pulled up at the station, we were blown away by the coaches. Can you imagine that all the windows of the coaches were shaped as Mickey Mouse? Or that the handrails were all also shaped as Mickey Mouse too? Yes, they were.

The tickets cost us HKD450 each just to go through the turnstiles. However, once inside, all the rides and attractions were free of charge.

Food wasn't free, though and to our relief, the prices weren't that much more expensive than in the rest of Hong Kong itself, although quality wasn't up to our expectations. Other than that, we found that merchandise shopping was like a throw in your face. Everywhere we turned, there'd be shops and stalls selling souvenirs. In fact, even before we even gone through the turnstiles, we were confronted by this merchandise stall. That's how aggressive Disneyland is. (It is to be noted that Disneyland also have several off-site shops selling their souvenirs. There's one at the departure lounge of the Hong Kong international airport itself to cater for people with last-minute shopping pangs and who had regretted not buying enough stuff at the theme park itself.)

We took this taxi down Main Street, Disneyland

 Who can resist not getting off at the Snow White Castle, the entrance into Fantasyland?

Tell me, can't I enjoy a bit of the merry-go-round? Can I, can I?

One of the attractions that I'd fully recommend: the 12-minute-long PhilharMagic show featuring experience of 3D effects, scents and water amidst a number of characters from various Disney movies. Yesss, put on your pair of 3D glasses, please!

The entrance to "it's a small world" (all in small letters, no caps) which features a very long queue of people waiting patiently to board their boat rides that would take them to enjoy more than 300 brightly costumed audio-animatronic dolls dressed up as children of the world. A Wikipedia entry describes this attraction has children "frolicking in a spirit of international unity and singing the attraction's title song, which has a theme of global peace."

Yay, the afternoon Flights of Fantasy parade has started.

And from Fantasyland, we jumped into Adventureland where we took this jungle river cruise. We saw lots of audio-animatronic animals along the way and I must say that they looked very realistic. Pretty entertaining.

Tarzan's treehouse. Very realistic from across the water and in fact, also realistic when viewed up close until you touched the leaves and tree trunks and discovered that they were, after all, artificial. But the tree house and environs did fool me at first.

Have always enjoyed a roller-coaster ride and this one at Grizzly Gulch wasn't different. I really enjoyed the ride and would have gone for a second round if time had permitted it, but it was already turning dark and a slight drizzle had come.

Snow White castle at dusk.

An almost nine-minute-long impressive fireworks display nightly at 8 p.m., as viewed from the end of Disneyland's Main Street.

How to bring colour to your cheeks: a Hong Kong drama

For our first morning in Hong Kong's Sheung Wan district, we tried to wake up as early as possible in order to take the MTR to Sunny Bay station on Lantau Island. Sunny Bay station is where you alight if you want to catch the connecting train ride to Disneyland Hong Kong. (Yes, our destination today!)

Not knowing where to find breakfast, we wandered around Sheung Wan until we came across this eatery, Cafe de Coral, somewhere near the Western Market.

There seemed to be lots of patrons going in to search for a quick breakfast and so, we decided to join the crowd. We found out later that this eatery was never meant to be anything more than a place of convenience for fast food, Hong Kong-style. Their presence seemed to be everywhere. However, nothing was particularly good tasting.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed their glutinous rice steam-wrapped in a large lotus leaf, but our other fare was only quite average, in my opinion. Congee? Well, I can take it or leave it. So I left it. Anyway, we only wanted to fill our stomachs as quickly as possible.

We found our way to the Sheung Wan MTR station again and took a quick ride to the Central station. Unfortunately, I found that we still had to walk a fair bit to the Hong Kong station. We should have taken the free Airport Express shuttle bus but it was too late for that.

And so, we decided to walk through the business district area towards the Hong Kong MTR station. Pretty soon, we arrived at a small clearing where I saw some interesting sculptures. I drew near to admire them.

All of a sudden, I heard a commotion behind me. A young couple was arguing very loudly in public. In their early twenties, I would believe. Facing one another and arguing, oblivious to their surroundings and people like us. Unfortunately, all were shouted in Cantonese and the reason for their altercation was lost on me.

Suddenly, all hell seemed to break loose. The young lady, possibly fed up to her false eyelashes, gave her boyfriend two to three tight slaps on the cheek. He stopped in astonishment and then continued yelling at her. One or two more slaps followed. I was wondering what would happen next, but without any more words, he turned and stormed away. The lady followed behind but at a much slower pace.

Surprisingly for a place like Hong Kong at a Friday morning around nine o'clock, this open walkway between the tall commercial buildings was rather deserted. I'm sure that nobody else seemed to have noticed this brief exchange of emotion. I looked at my wife, she looked back at me. Now, what was that all about???

Hong Kong's Time Square

From Sheung Wan, we took the MTR to Causeway Bay to meet some friends for dinner. This was our first underground journey since arrival and I had a bit of a bother trying to find the station. But eventually, we found the entrance. It was also the first time that we were using the Airport Express card to access the MTR network. The card didn't register any amount but all it required was for us to tap it on the card reader and the automated gate opened to allow us onto the train's platform. 

We ended here for dinner: a restaurant known as Crystal Jade located in the lower ground floor of Hong Kong's Time Square. The food wasn't bad but sorry, no pictures were taken at all of our dining experience.

According to my friend, rental rates at Hong Kong's Time Square are ridiculously high and thus there are huge overheads for the tenants. I really wonder how the shops here can make a reasonable profit with all the competition around them. Within the same block, I could sometimes find three or four identical outlets, possibly run by different owners.

 

As an aside, I was mentioning to my friend that I saw advertisement posters selling condominium units on the island for around HKD60 million. That's nothing, he replied. In the really high-end areas of Hong Kong, the price could go up to HKD200 million. Wow, that's really for the affluent, the rich and famous. Most ordinary people, even Hong Kong people, wouldn't be able to afford this type of high living.

Walking around Sheung Wan

I have to admit that the Ibis Hotel Sheung Wan and Central wasn't my first choice of hotel when my wife and I travelled to Hong Kong recently, but I am glad that I did choose it over many others.

Why wasn't it my first choice, you may ask. Well, in the first instance, I knew next to nothing about this part of Hong Kong island. I had only wanted to stay at a place which was near to the Hong Kong-Macau ferry terminal, and from the map, the Ibis was near enough.

In the second instance, I wanted a hotel that was on the route of the free shuttle bus service from the Hong Kong MTR station and I found that the shuttle bus would stop right at the hotel's doorsteps. How much more convenient could this be, right? The Ibis Hotel fitted both my needs.

The added bonus was that the price of the room was cheap enough. So that was where we stayed. And to our pleasant surprise, we found that the hotel was located right in the midst of old Hong Kong: surrounded by the Hong Kong that I had always imagined. A Hong Kong that is full of character and atmosphere.

After finishing checking into the hotel, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Sheung Wan. 

 

We came across traditional shops retailing dried seafood stuff like fish maw, abalone, scallops, shark fin, sea cucumber and salted fish. In addition, we found ourselves surrounded by traditional Chinese medical halls.

Everywhere we turned, we would find small shoplots selling all types of food. Nobody could ever go hungry here!

This lady was selling fresh vegetables by the roadside.

We found a coffin shop right in the midst of our walk. The coffins are all of the traditional designs, very unlike the versions we find here in Malaysia.

And suddenly, we found ourselves in Upper Lascar Row, also known as Cat Street. All types of antique dealers here.

When I saw this mask, immediately it reminded me so much of the British actor, Stephen Fry. Must be the prominent jowl.

And all too soon, we had reached the end of Upper Lascar Row and we descended the steps known as Ladder Street.

An interior of the Man Mo Temple, which is supposed to be one of the oldest temples in Hong Kong.

Anyway, it was built in 1847 and dedicated to the worship of Man Tai (文帝) and Mo Tai (武帝). That's how the temple got its name from.

Yes! We were in Hollywood. Hollywood Road, Hong Kong, that is.

Climbing further up Ladder Street, the roads became more empty and quiet.

And then we found ourselves inside the Sheung Wan Cooked Food Centre. The first floor was akin to a huge hawker centre with tables laid out in all directions. Patrons could sit anywhere they liked as none of the hawkers could claim any part of the floor to be their personal corner.

And these two pictures were taken on the ground floor of the same building. It was a market, actually, selling both dried foodstuff and fresh meat. Needless to say, there were rows of butchers even at this late hour but when we were there, they were like shaking legs waiting for people to come round to their stalls.