Last week we took a day trip over to Macau (or Macao)  which apparently nicknamed the “Las Vegas of Asia”.  I’ve never been to Las Vegas.  I’m not sure why people are so surprised when I say that, because I am not much of a gambler.  Then they follow it up with, “Nicole, you would love the food.” Good point.  I do love food.

I love food to the point that I’m going to do a separate post on the food we brought back from Macau, so follow the link to hear about the non-food related highlights of the Macau trip.

Macau lies across the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong, and only takes about an hour by a fast ferry to get there.  This means that it goes so fast that I forget I’m on the water and think I’m in a car.  What I am saying is that I was sleeping the whole trip out there, a result of my mom’s Pavlovian conditioning from when I was a baby.  Anyone else’s mom rock them to sleep via car trip?

Macau used to belong to the Portuguese, but is now one of China’s Special Administrative regions, which is like Hong Kong.  Part of China, but not completely.  I was able to enter with just my American Passport, something I cannot do in Mainland China.  Anyway, if you want to know more about Macau, just Google it or head down to your local library.  I’m moving on.

My fella and I have made some poor decisions on days to go sightseeing, we seem to pick the days with the crappiest weather.  This trip was no exception.  It wasn’t cold, but it was rainy and foggy.  We had to buy another umbrella, despite having a small collection of them at the apartment.  We also failed to remember it was a holiday week– with China’s Qingming (memorial of family members) and Easter coming up, a  lot of people were vacationing.  Which means when we went to buy our tickets they were sold out until 2 and a half hours from that point.  Killing time with food is one of our fortes though, so no worries shrimp curry.

There was a lot to see in Macau, but being it was rainy we didn’t do all of the outdoor tourist buisness, and spent some time indoors.   We did walk around, look at the amazing architectural feats, gawked at some of art work, snooped through some ritzy casinos, and checked out the ruins of Saint Paul.

Being that Macau used to be Portuguese territory,  you can see a strong influence of the past colonization.  Large catholic churches, cute little European-esque walk ways, mosaic work on the sidewalk and walls.  Side by side, you might see an old Chinese antique shop, across from a Nike store while  walking on a mosaic tiled seashell.  It’s really beautiful.

I kept trying to simultaneously walk and attempt to take hurried pictures, because we were losing daylight and still had so many things to see.  My fella mentioned that if I didn’t stop taking pictures that we were never going to get anywhere.  He did have a point, and my pictures were coming out crappy anyway.  Read: I’m apologizing for my lack of quality in these photos.

Like I said before, I’m not a gambler, but eventually the dark closed in and we ushered ourselves inside.  My fella and I played a little blackjack and roulette, which really means that I sat next to him and gave him “advice” as if I knew what I was talking about.  We had a really great time.

I wish that it wasn’t so foggy, because I believe the view back to Hong Kong would have been really dazzling with all the lights.  We live and die by the Lamma Island ferry schedule, so eventually we had to make a mad dash back to catch our boat home. When I say mad dash, it really was.

For some reason, I had insisted on bringing a really large bag, which I then handed over immediately to my fella to carry around.  It held a large camera that we didn’t use (I was afraid to get it wet), tour guide books (helpful with maps), Cantonese phrase book (not used at all), and two bottles of water (of which we drank one).  It ended up being useful because we bought some food back, but when we had to sprint through customs and on the pier to catch our ferry, we looked like fools.
Humidity had taken a hold of my hair; it was like a lion’s mane, my shoes were literally swampy as it was raining all day and so they were squish-squeaking with every step.  Got the picture?  Imagine her sprinting, followed by a lumbering white guy carrying the world’s largest day trip bag, clothes sopping wet because she had hogged the umbrella all day.

From what I hear it’s no Vegas, I am sure we will go back another day, a with better weather, but it’s a day trip I would recommend.

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