It was a nice fine day. Alan, Winnie, Joseph, Yolander, my wife and I were to meet at the pier to Macau at Shun Tak Building at 10 a.m. We boarded a jetfoil at 10:45 p.m. Winnie invited me and my wife to eat her boiled eggs. Fung, Yolander and Alan had no interest at all. I gobbled two, not because I was hungry, but of courtesy.
After an hour, we reached the pier at Macau, a new and modern one. We first fetched maps of Macau from the Travel Department Office at the pier. We boarded two different taxis (taxi-fare: about $20) to 議事亭(在Av Almeida Ribeiro(大馬路)附近) to take lunch at Restaurante Platao (九如坊) which served Portuguese food. We ate clams, rice, sweet puddings, bloody duck. Winnie refused to eat the duck because she was scared by its name and its muddy look. The rest of us tasted it without fear. To me, there was no smell of blood but soy sauce! The bill was around $800.
Having fed-up with food, we walked to de S. Paulo(大三巴) and then we turned right to climb a little footpath to a fortified castle with a big cannon and later on to Museu De Macau (澳門博物館) at the top of a small hill. We descended from the other side of the hill back to the square surrounded by the old classic buildings at the time under Portuguese rule.
We took a bus to Taipa (氹仔), an island connected to Macau by 3 bridges. The bus climbed the tallest one with a big arch at its centre. I liked this bridge because when I was travelling on it, it was as if I was sitting in a roller-coaster going to a great height and then dropping back to earth! We got off in a narrow street and found our way to a park with a small church. Photos were taken there and then we walked down to some other narrow streets on the island. Winnie, my wife and Alan tried the “Lau Lin” flavoured ice-cream. They said it was good, but Fung and I refused to taste!
We then walked to a roadside café famous for its pork-chop buns (豬扒包). The buns were sold out, instead we had pork-chop sandwiches (豬扒三文治) and milk-tea. The food was okay, but not outstanding. The scariest things to see were the massive number of ants crawling on the wall a few feet away from us.
Soon we returned to the city proper and dropped off at the bus-stop at Hotel Lisboa (葡京酒店) and crossed the road to the new Wynn Hotel(永利酒店+賭場). As we were taking photos outside this hotel, the 007 theme song“Diamonds are forever” started to raise. The fountains of water waved about and shot up at times. It was an amazing sight! Entering the hotel, we turned to the casino to have a look. It was comfortable inside with people gambling. We did not bet because we believed we had no such luck. Anyone could take drinks of water or soft-drinks inside, free of charge.
On we went to Macau Fisherman’s Wharf (漁人碼頭) by taxi. We did not take many photos there because it was already dark. Surprisingly, we found very few people in this area. Although the sea-food restaurants had opened, many of their tables remained unoccupied. There was a street singing at a corner. We acted as their audience. Winnie was the one who enjoyed the music most. She even requested the singers to sing the songs she liked to hear! I guessed these songs were those of the Brasilians (森巴舞曲).
We walked to the Sands (金沙娛樂場) and had a look inside. The casino was too crowded with people gambling. We did not stay long because it was not comfortable at all to be there!
Soon we drew back and took a taxi to dine at a Chinese restaurant in a side street of (大馬路). There we ordered Chinese dishes such as steamed fish, shark fin soup, salted chicken and vegetables. After dinner, Winnie was a big spender. She bought bags of food gifts, major in peanut candies from Pastelaria Koi Kei (鉅記餅家). Fung bought some. We did not buy any because we did not want to carry. We rushed to the pier by taxi hoping to get an earlier ferry, but, to our disappointment, we could only get the 11:15 p.m. tickets although it was just 9:30 p.m. Helpless in thought we walked past the immigration counters and headed for the gates to see if we could get an earlier ferry by queuing before the gate for the 10:30 p.m. ferry for substitution seats. My colleagues were so kind to let my couple go first to the gate because they knew that we lived farther than they did. Although we had to wait for some time, all of us were able to board that jetfoil back to Hong Kong. We believed we were the last few to board. The feeling was really like that of refugees running away from their motherland.
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