Macau - March 2012

Well the Budgen’s are on the go again...this time we are in Macau. We have been here for a few days and have covered many things to see and do and found some out of the way places for local foods as we do so well.

We had a great flight from Melbourne... very easy, pretty good seats and reasonable leg room. We landed in Hong Kong mid afternoon on Monday and took the ferry directly from the HK airport to Macau. Before we knew it we were at our hotel on the southern island of Macau (on the Cotai Strip) and enjoying a nice drink with Laureen who had arrived a couple of hrs earlier.

DAY ONE we headed off, walking through the City of Dreams (where we were staying) and across the road to the Venetian (morning tea was a local delicacy of egg tart – yummy baked custard tart – not too sweet and deliciously warm.

From there we jumped into a cab to the historic Portuguese centre and found it quite fascinating. Amazingly Macau was under Portuguese rule until 1999 and now it is a special administrative region (SAR) of the “People’s Republic of China” (PRC), and like Hong Kong operates as part of the one country but has two systems.

This is the view from the front of the facade below.

Many of the old Portuguese buildings are painted in lovely pastel colours, are very well looked after and are located in the central region on the northern island of Macau.

This facade is St Paul's cathedral which was destoyed by fire in 1835 (?) and they have maintained the facade since then.

Tiled panels in a laneway.

St Dominic's

Senado Square.

So pretty!

We stumbled across a doorway to municapal offices which lead in to this quiet tiled courtyard. Very peaceful for sure....

That night we had drinks in the lobby lounge bar and dinner in the hotels, Beijing Kitchen restaurant. Delicious cuisine from north China region!!

DAY TWO we jumped into a cab and went straight to the southern end of the south island to a region called Coloane Village. We explored the old Portuguese settlements to get a feel for the more traditional Macau and the simple way of life.... we found fascinating old Chinese temples - hundreds of years old. We challenged ourselves to try yet another Lord Stowe’s...... egg tart to ensure they were OK.....I can tell you...they are OK...... (today we have gone from buying one at a time each to now buying a six pack to ensure our stocks don’t run out...they are sooo delicious).

Next was a bus trip to Hac-Sa beach. Recommended as it is apparently famous for its black sand. Well let me assure its no Aussie beach. The black sand just looked like dirty brown to us and the water seemed full of minerals and the little waves rolled in. We were on the lookout for a little restaurant we had heard about called Fernandos. After a short walk past a few beach huts/BBQ’s stalls selling all sorts of BBQ’d items....the only one I could identify was octopus...and I was tempted....but alas lunch was not far away and there is only so much we can eat.

Note the thick layer of ash from the incense!

On searching for the restaurant we navigated around approx 2000 school kids on the beach having bbq lunches before we found our destination at Fernando’s. It was great, huge menu and busy which is always a good sign....we ate whole grilled sea bream, wood fire roasted Portuguese chicken, Macanese fried rice (has chorizo in it) drank sangria and rolled merrily back onto the bus and headed home to recover.

That night we headed back into the south of the north island to visit Wynn and the MGM casino’s....thankfully our hotel concierge wrote where we were going in Chinese so I only needed to give the card to our driver and away we went. The money spent on the casinos is amazing; it must be hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. They just go on and on, they have shopping centres around them with all the name brands, cinemas, restaurants of all types etc.. There are many unique attractions in the front entrances and its a competition as to whose is the best. Every casino has one to two each, from the “Dragon of Fortune”, “Tree of Prosperity” and one that fascinated me was the massive diamond at Galaxy casino which rises out of the crystal swan lined pond with the water fall following it skyward with the ever changing light show and dramatic music. All so tackily fabulous!!!

Tonight we are off to see “The House of Dancing Water” and later I have booked a table at the Beijing Kitchen restaurant (yes again) under the name of Mr Mark,( long story) and have pre-ordered Peking duck.....will let you know how it goes....
We wish you were all here to share this with.... take care
Much love
M&D xx