7NNT25: Day 31 – Macau
Soundtrack: “Money Changes Everything”, Cyndi Lauper (and any other song with money in the title really)
Macau for a full day. I’m sure there are people for whom Macau is their favourite place in the world. Some of them might even be from outside of Macau, who visited and found this former Portuguese colony to be all they’ve ever looked for in a holiday destination.
I’m not one of them. I gave it a good shot, but it just possesses a level challenge that doesn’t mesh well with my style of travel.
Today didn’t start well. My goal was to get a shave, as it’s humid and I’m getting a bit or stubble. It’s one of the joys I find in travel, getting a straight razor shave, aside from the occasional massage it’s my pamper treat. I found a well-reviewed place in the older part, and when I asked the barber if I could get a shave, he nodded and pointed e at the chair. I tried my best to gesture the areas I wanted shaved, excluding the goatee. He pointed at the goatee and said, “Trim?” and I said, “Yes, trim.” Out came the clippers, which is usual, my other shaves on this trip the barber has hit the stubble with the clippers before getting out the razor. Today’s barber was doing this fine and then, with one big swipe, took out 60% of my goatee. I immediately responded with a very shocked look, and got out my phone and the translate app to indicate I just wanted the beard trimmed, not gone. He looked apologetic and gestured it I wanted to keep the rest of the beard. You’ll note that I previously mentioned the swipe took out more than half of the beard, so unless he had some neat beard combover magic trick to make it vaguely symmetrical, the only way forward was to lose it all. So he did, and then indicated if I wanted him to shave the moustache. I was beginning to feel like I was dealing with the Mad Barber of Macau. I managed to salvage the mo, then he indicated the shave was done, no razor, just the clippers. I handed over the money, and fled.
I then had a long walk, between taking the side of the barber as language differences do make this hard; taking the side of me who thought I’d gestured quite clearly and the hari length difference between cheek and chin should have at least given pause for thought; and the voice of reason, in that it’s hair that will grow back so it’s not like there’s permanent harm (STFU voice of reason, the harm is in the 6 days of forthcoming holiday selfies that are only going to capture my face from the nose up). Sigh. I like the way I look with a beard, I don’t like the way I look with an exposed chin. Smile, you’re travelling.
Wandering around the old, non-touristy parts of Macau was okay, a wonderful mix of different architectural styles and brightly painted buildings. Heading north, I briefly toyed with the idea of walking as far as the border with mainland China to check it out, but after a while the path went from mostly flat to a bit of an incline, and I really had no inclination to do an uphill stroll in 80% humidity.
Instead I thought it might be a good time to see if I can work out Macau’s bus system. Various travel sites suggest this to be one of the better ways to get around Macau, and fortunately I could get at least some route details from google, so I took the opportunity to hop on one that might be heading near my hotel. A Macau bus ride costs 6 MOP (around $1.15 AUD) and if paying cash you put your coins in the little plastic box near the driver. They don’t give change, so exact fare is advised. Then you find a seat or a stand (they are only small, 36 seat buses) and hope. Fortunately the internet was right this time, so I ended up in the vicinity of my lodgings.
Macau is basically a place with two parts, there’s a chunk on the mainland, and then there’s the island. I figured I’d be remiss if I didn’t check out the island half, so after some further internetting, thought I’d worked out where I could catch the bus to take me there (after first buying some iced tea so I had correct change). I misread the directions and ended up walking a lot further than I intended to get to the right stop, but I found it eventually (Macau buses are also a bit confusing in their route numbers, so a 25B doesn’t go quite the same way as a 25 or a 25X, like I said, it’s a challenge).
I hopped off near the Venetian Hotel/Casino, and then wandered to the little tourist village in the middle of the island, full of insta-worthy opportunities, old painted houses, and food places proclaiming to be the originators of various local cuisine. I found a queue for an egg tart place proclaiming to be the first place in Macau to make these, even though their claim dates back to the 1980s and I would have thought that the Portuguese would have been making these here long before then, but I’m no expert on either the Portuguese nor egg tarts. But I do know how to eat, and I do know how to queue, so I queued up to buy an egg tart (now that’s a phrase I don’t use everyday). Because this place has the big claim to fame, they charge 11 MOP/tart (I paid 10 each for yesterday’s tart crawl, and I’ve seen them for 9 each in places a little further from the big attractions). They had a decent queue and were churning out the tarts, the queue might have moved even faster if the cashiers weren’t forever having to make change. As egg tarts go this one was pretty good. It probably wasn’t my favourite, but between the decent pastry, sweet filling, and little crunchy top, it ticked the boxes.
One of the other Macau “delicacies” I hadn’t yet tried was the pork chop bun. Apparently a bunch of years ago a stall owner was doing their thin, when they decided what they really needed to be selling were bread rolls with extra sharp contents. Why waste time de-boning pork, when you can stick the whole chop in the roll and make the customer do the hard work? Pork chop buns are exactly that, a pork chop between two halves of a slightly toasted bread roll. No pickles, no onions, no special sauce, mustard, mayonnaise or tomato sauce, just a well seasoned fried chop, and bread product. Though if you’re really feeling exciting, you can have pork chop pineapple croissant (non-spoiler alert, I didn’t, as I wanted to try the original recipe, and I’m not a huge fan of pineapple croissants without pork chops). And just for the kids, there’s a big pink pig statue in the doorway. They either cook the chops fresh or churn through a lot, as mine was straight off the grill hot, so I had to wait a little while before eating. And it was good, no complaints, yummy pepper pig in a roll.
Full of local food, it was time to brave the huge casinos, just to say I’d been there. The Venetian is apparently the world’s second largest casino. Before I could set foot inside, I had to work out how to cross the road from the old tourist village to the huge tower of gambling. Some parts of Macau are like that, full of mid-street gardens and fences, and to cross the road it’s a walk until there’s an overpass. Being honest, I get that kind of vibe from Macau, that it’s all about the cars and roads, and pedestrians are just inconvenient.
Having crossed the road, I swanned through the opulence that is one huge casino. Tables, slot machines, roulette wheels, big dice-juggling columns, the Venetian definitely has it. The whole area has, outside there are replicas of Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, St Mark’s Square in Venic (complete with a basketball ring for reasons unknown). Then it dawned on me, so many of the tables and slot machines are all the same, some tables had different minimum gambling limits, but overall, there might have been 6 or 7 different games, just hundreds of them. I guess that’s kind of sad, to have so much space devoted to gambling games, and so little variety. I headed over to the next biggest casino, City of Dreams, and again, it was all of the same dreams, though with a short walk to the big pond with an impressive water and light show.
Full of Macau, I found a bus stop and headed back to the mainland for dinner, having skipped the various opportunities to have fine dining in among the opulence. I had a mission, as I’d seen a restaurant near my hotel advertising what looked to be the same pork dish I was served last night, and I wondered if they were the source of the plastic bags. Here they called if “grandma’s pork dish” or something like that, which sounded like a good thing (I’m a sucker for anything that’s advertised as mama’s or grandmother’s food, even the pork chop bun place I went to had a picture of an elderly woman out front). So I ordered the pork and a beer. When it came out, it certainly looked the same as last night’s dinner, smelt the same, and when I tried it, it tasted the same. In fact, if anything, it wasn’t quite as good as last night’s straight from the microwave version, as this was a little chewier, maybe a little overcooked. So either the mystery was solved, or perhaps, as I wasn’t looking straight at the kitchen in this place, there’s a third restaurant making this pork dish and supplying the others.
I wasn’t watching the kitchen as I was trying to work out how I could leave Macau tomorrow and get to my flight on time. My initial plan was based on the internet telling me it was possible to catch a ferry from Macau straight to Hong Kong International Airport, but today the internet was saying no. No ferry. It looked like I’d have to ferry back to the HK terminal, then hop on a train to central station, and then transfer over to the airport express train. Not impossible, but not ideal having to do it all while pushing a suitcase.
Finally the internet decided to show me a different way, a shuttle bus from Macau to HKIA. This sounded a lot better. All I needed to do was work out where to catch the bus from, which took a while as the official website that lays this all out doesn’t come with a handy map. But I think I’ve got it worked out, so we’ll see how that works out. So it’ll be up at a decent time, head out to airport, then jump a plane to the last stop of the trip, Singapore.
