macau round 3
I’m no stranger to Macau but was keen to show it to the fam, so we planned a day in the Vegas of the East. With the recent opening of the “worlds longest sea crossing” bridge we decided to check out what all the fuss is about and take the bus over this bridge to Macau. There is a bus station just beside the airport where you clear immigration and buy tickets, there are these gold coloured buses running 24/7 every 5-20 minutes so we jumped on one of those. The bridge is crazy long and it was interesting to be out over open water for so long in a bus. There is also a weird bit (see the photos) where the bridge becomes a tunnel so it basically heads underwater for a while (to allow large ships to sail overhead) then comes back up and carries on being a bridge, quite the engineering feat.
Arriving in Macau we had a bit of a mare with passport control - note to future travellers do not go where most people go, they have these special cards to get in. You need to go to the visitors queue but not the one for “registered” visitors, you basically can’t use the machines, you have to see a person to get in. Trust me.
Anyway, we made it through, jumped in a taxi and headed to the old town to check out the classic St Pauls’ facade and wander the streets. We ate the obligatory egg tart (a slightly disappointing one unfortunately) and gawked at all the pretty european style buildings before grabbing taxi number 2. This time we headed to part of Macau I hadn’t seen before, Taipa Village, it’s also an old town but over by the casinos. On previous trips I had somehow assumed it would be seedy and not that nice. I was wrong, Taipa is lovely.
Very cute colourful buildings, only a couple of stories high with lots of neat little alleways and crumbling facades. We started trying to find somewhere to eat and were spoilt for choice but it was all kinda pricy, or full, or food we didn’t feel like. Close to giving up and just eating at one of the expensive places I noticed a chalk board in front of what looked like a vending machine. I went to check it out, and realised that there was a sign on the vending machine with opening hours on it… I found a handle, gave it a tug and … voila… a japanese restaurant was hiding behind it! We were taken up to a table on the 2nd story with wonderful air conditioning and sky lights and a huge menu to choose from. We ended up with a great feast of grilled meat and veges on skewers, wraps, dumplings with yummy icy-juicy-smoothy type things. Highly recommend this place if you are looking for lunch in Taipa.
From Taipa Village there is a moving walkway that takes you across to the Venetian Casino. We decided we should try and see what this whole casino thing was all about so attempted to use one of the slot machines. We had NO clue what we were doing, basically just fed in some money and pressed buttons until all our money was gone. I have no idea why people want to do this for fun. We of course did the obligatory walk through to check out the crazy indoor canals and marvel at the looney amounts of riches on display. To finish our Macau adventure we found our way to the Parisian where we saw the Eiffel tower, indoor fountains, and chandeliers on painted ceilings galore. We tried our luck with another egg tart and hit the jackpot, just the right pastry and that custardy eggy filling was spot on. A free bus to the ferry terminal then we all napped our way back to Hong Kong.
