Not surprisingly, hana and I got out the door later than intended the last day we were in hong kong…it took us a while to figure out what we wanted to do, then took us longer to get going for the day…oh well…we decided to go to macau…like hong kong, macau is a SAR – special administrative region of china…like hong kong, macau hasn’t always been ruled by the Chinese…for over a century, macau was ruled by the Portuguese…it wasn’t until 1999 (two years after hong kong) that macau was given back to the Chinese…and like hong kong, macau has the same provision in the handover agreement: the government of the area is to stay the same for 50 years…I wonder what changes china will make in each region after the 50 years are over…
To get to macau from hong kong you have two options…fly, or ferry…we took the ferry, as it’s only an hour, and not very expensive…finding where to buy tickets was probably the most complicated part of the day…though hong kong is really good about signage just about everywhere else, once you’re in the subway station you know is the correct station, there isn’t much signage telling you where to go…we got turned around several times before finding where to get our tickets…oddly enough, when you buy tickets for the ferry, you aren’t assigned seats…you only get seat assignments a few minutes before you board…I don’t know why…going through emigration was easy…the worst part of the day for both of us was sitting on the boat and waiting for it to get going…it was rocking all over the place; I don’t know about hana, but I was quite concerned as to whether it would be like that for the rest of the journey as well…that would’ve been miserable…absolutely miserable…fortunately, the actual ferry trip wasn’t so bad…not great, but not bad…
Once we docked, we went through immigration again, another quick process…then out the door of the ferry terminal…we didn’t have the whole day to spend wandering, but we had a few hours, and decided to take local public transport to the center of town…bus fare was 3.20MOP…macau patacas…they’re tied to the hong kong dollar at the rate of 103MOP to 100HKD…the atm dispenses 100s…I was able to break it into 10s…but the bus doesn’t give change…argh…hana had to go buy another sprite and ask for small change…we were worried about figuring out where to get off the bus, but that ended up being okay…the official languages of macau are portugese and Chinese, though not many people speak Portuguese there anymore…English is more common…but even English isn’t that greatly used…the Chinese influence seems so much stronger on macau that on hong kong…(though they’re both very Chinese in nature)…fortunately, I had slight memories of my visit to macau in 2007, so it was easy enough to know when to get off the bus…
We alighted at largo senada…it’s a large public plaza…easily identifiable by the pink and yellow building, as well as the zebra striped sidewalk…there is a small market on one side street, and while we were there, a display of macau history in another area…while waiting for the ferry we’d looked at the map mom gave us, and figured out a couple places that sounded interesting…there is tourist signage for various sights, so it was easy enough to figure out which way to go…
Our first stop was the ruins of st pauls…probably one of the most famous sights of macau…though if you’ve never been to macau, it isn’t really known outside of the colony…originally built as a church, that’s what it was used for in different denominations for years…then, at one point it was turned into army barracks…how or why that happened I don’t know…then a fire burned it all down…what you see now is all that was left after the fire…in other words, all but the front façade was burned…still, the front façade, with the steps leading up to it is a pretty photo…we posed for pictures of our own and pictures for a random Chinese man in front of the church…(both of us have been in tons of photos for strangers over the years, we don’t much care anymore)…lol…under the ruins, at the back of the church is what used to be the crypt…we were the only ones in there at the time, which was a bit of a surprise, simply because the air con was going strong, and with the swampy feeling of the weather outside, I’m surprised people hadn’t found the aircon for a brief respite…there were displays of various bones up the walls on either side, I didn’t know whether to be creeped out or not…
After the ruins, we walked back down the steps, and I convinced hana to get one of the Portuguese egg tarts…everywhere the Portuguese colonized then left, they left behind these tasty egg tarts…a sweet egg custard tart…with buttery, flaky crust…yum…I could eat tons and tons of them…especially when they cost less than $1USD!...clearly, some people buy a lot of them, as all the places that sell them have boxes of different sizes to make it easy to carry a lot of them…the other food we noticed for sale all over the place is pork jerky…there are tons of different flavours, some more spicy, some more salty, some more sweet…I like it, but didn’t want to buy any…
Then we found what was just called the cathedral…I don’t remember the history behind this one…since the Portuguese colonized macau, and the Portuguese were catholic, macau was catholic too…that’s one legacy that is still there, all the churches…I liked this church, but wasn’t able to stay in there long, as there were no fans going, so the hot muggy air just sat on your shoulders…when hana first walked in she was just wearing her sundress, which has no shoulders…the nun motioned to me that hana needed to cover her shoulders…thankfully, she’d brought a sweater along that day for just that reason…after coming out of the church, she couldn’t get that sweater off fast enough…
From there we wandered down a lane on which was a typical mansion back in the day…I think it was two stories, though you’re only allowed to go in the first story…there were stained glass windows in the house, I thought they were gorgeous…not much about the rest of the house made me think it was very fantastic…anywho…we enjoyed the sidewalk in the lane outside…mosaic tiles made up designs in the sidewalk…lovely…
The next church to see was st dominics…this one is on a lot of postcards as well…a bright yellow on the outside…the church is nice, but the best part is the museum of “costumes” they have displayed on three floors…I don’t know the correct words for a lot of the stuff…chalices and communion serving sets, the robes the priests wear at various times of the year, especially those worn by higher ranking priests…a couple paintings…I liked walking around that area, though hana probably appreciated it more, knowing what all the stuff was…
By this point I was starting to get nervous about catching the bus back to the ferry terminal…we got some food to go at a popular eatery, and in a quick walk through the start of the market I mentioned earlier, hana got some fruit she’d enjoyed while living in the Philippines…lanzonas, I think she said? I have no idea if I’m spelling that right…then we got back on the bus (having prepared correct change ahead of time) and went back to the ferry terminal…I wanted to exchange the patacas I had left, but that proved to be more difficult than I thought was worth it…I guess cousin Kevin will be getting more patacas than I originally intended…
The boat ride back went just as smoothly as did immigration on both sides…and again, we had trouble getting out of the building, and down into the hong kong subway system…go figure…we made it back to the hotel in time for a brief rest, then went to mom’s room to go for our last outing in hong kong…
One of the most famous sights in hong kong is the city skyline…and the best place to see that is from Victoria peak…I reckon most visitors to hong kong go to the peak while they’re in the city…there are three ways to the peak…one, hike…two, bus…and three, the peak tram…we’d intended to take the tram both ways…it’s quite steep, to say the least…howeva, when we found a bus we thought would take us to the base of the peak tram, it turned out to take us to the peak itself…along a really windy road…which meant hana felt like crap again…I wasn’t feeling so well myself…mom wasn’t feeling great knowing that both her daughters were suffering and there wasn’t anything she could do to fix it…it seemed like the bus ride went on and on and on…finally, it ended…when you get off the tram or the bus, you’re directed into a plaza area, with two large malls on either side…going into one of them, you have the opportunity to buy tickets to get out on the viewing platform…I think they call it the sky terrace? Those tickets are $30HKD each…from previous experience, I thought it was worth it…you don’t get that view from anywhere else…there ended up being a lot of fog the night we went, but we all still enjoyed the view…that skyline, both at day and night, is on a lot of hong kong postcards…we took the tram back down, then the subway back to the hotel…
The next afternoon we flew back to seoul…
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