Budget: $200; Spent: $219
Jeff here.
By the time we reached our hotel today, we had been traveling for 24 hours straight. Again. China is just too bloody big! Though I have to say that my sleep on the overnight train was much better than the last time. We arrived in Guangzhou at around 9am this morning and weren’t really sure what to do. All we knew is that we needed to get to Macau.
After talking with a couple different train station workers, and then another person at a tourist information booth, we decided to take a bus to Zhuhai, which is very near Macau. Luckily, the bus station was near to the train station, so it was only a five minute walk, or so. We bought tickets no problem and were on our way to Zhuhai. It wasn’t until we had been on the bus for nearly two hours that we realized that the cheaper, faster light rail option (that took only 29 minutes!!) would have been the better choice. Not to mention the bus was playing more horrendous Chinese movies. At least the characters weren’t screaming every line like they were being tortured, like yesterday.
By the time we arrived in Zhuhai, we wanted to kill our bus driver and perhaps ourselves as well. I don’t know how many busses passed us on our way into the city, but probably 50 is a good guess. He was certainly in no rush. Anyway, we were so disgruntled at this point that we decided to take a taxi to the port where we thought we’d be able to take a ferry to Macau. We got the taxi no problem, he even didn’t overcharge us, but we went to the wrong port. Sigh.
Turned out, though, that busses left from that facility and that we could walk across the border into Macau. So, we said, why not? At least we saved ourselves a couple bucks. Did I mention the bus ride to the border was free? Even better!
The bus ride to the border was less than 5 minutes and when they let us off we had no idea where the heck to go. We were dropped off outside a mall, but we were dropped off in an underground stop for the busses. So we entered the mall and looked for signs and saw none. We asked a young-ish looking kid who was working at the mall the direction to Macau and Oman, which is what they call Macau in China. Anyway, I think this kid was so terrified that we were talking to him that he didn’t process a thing we said because he just shook his head. Turns out the way we wanted to go was directly up the escalator that he was literally standing right in front of.
Upon exiting the escalator we saw two beautiful, yellow arches, connected, of course. Our stomachs knew before our brains that we had stumbled upon McDonalds. We hadn’t really eaten anything all day (by this time it was well past noon) and we were starving. One Big Mac Meal and one Spicy Chicken Meal later, we were off to find the border crossing. Little did we know this was also the intention of approximately three million other people.
The lines were immense. We had been anticipating this, because although Macau is technically China, it’s not mainland China. So we were leaving the China that is hard to get into and entering the China that is really really easy to get into. We waited in line for about 45 minutes and had no problems getting through. We were getting ready to celebrate when we saw more lines of even more people. Oh yes, the line-up for getting into Macau. Lovely! Thirty minutes later we were through this line and finally on the streets of Macau! Yay!
We had no idea how to get to our hotel, but we knew the area it is in so we decided to take a bus to the area and find our way from there. It wasn’t too difficult to find the right bus. There were actually some very helpful people that poked and prodded us in the right direction. Once we were on the bus, of course, we had no idea when to get off. We were heading to a part of the city called Taipa, but didn’t actually know the location of our hotel. Our bus driver couldn’t help us either, and just shook his head when I said anything.
The bus passed by the Macau airport and we knew our hotel was relatively close by, so we decided to taxi it the rest of the way. We had to get our hotel’s name translated for the taxi driver, but once we did we were at our hotel in no time! Good thing we stopped at the airport, actually, since we would have had no other way of explaining our hotel to a taxi driver!
Once we arrived at the hotel, a concierge came out to grab both our bags. Poor guy. He was definitely struggling with those behemoths. Anyway, turned out our room wasn’t ready so we decided to go change some of our Yuan to Pataca (a name that we find hilarious, by the way) and to buy some water, which we desperately needed. Unfortunately, when we returned, our room still wasn’t ready! We had to wait another 20 minutes. Thankfully, the lobby had wifi, so we distracted ourselves with that while we waited.
When we finally made it to our room (the same guy carried our bags up, of course, and we gave him a nice tip) it turned out to be pretty spacious and clean. Far more modern looking than our stay in Yangshuo, but lacking the character. Don’t get me wrong, though, it’s a very nice room, and would be a great room if we didn’t have to pay to get internet up here. That’s very bothersome to me.
We both decided to shower and change and look more presentable for our night on the town. We read that casinos here have a dress code, which is essentially that shorts are not allowed, so I had to toss my shorts for some jeans! Unfortunately, by this time it was pretty late in the day. We didn’t leave the hotel until about 6pm and decided to just head straight to dinner.
Unfortunately, we weren’t in the correct area of the city for the recommendation from our book that had caught our eye, so we inquired to the hotel staff how to get there by bus. Turned out that we only had to take one bus to its ending point. Easy enough. The walk to the bus stop was no more than 10 minutes, although there was some confusion regarding which side of the street to catch the bus from. Patty eventually grabbed a white-looking guy and asked, and it turned out he was a really polite Portuguese fellow. He was heading in the same direction as us, so he told us to follow him. He told us that his family had moved to Macau from Portugal when he was six years old and that he had been living in Asia ever since. Living in Macau, of course, he had to learn Cantonese, which is the main language spoken here. Portuguese is one of the official languages in Macau, but few people speak it. He offered to take us to what he deemed to be the best restaurant in all of Macau for sea food, but we declined, having already set our stomachs on a place called Restaurante Fernando.
After saying goodbye to this gentleman, it was only one or two stops before the end of the line. We hopped off the bus and directly in front of us was our destination. Very handy. It was a beachy looking place and there were quite a few people in there. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait for a seat and opened up the menu.
By this time we were starving and probably would have eaten anything. But this menu had some of the yummiest looking seafood we’d ever seen. We ended up asking for some advice on the dishes to pick, and went with three and, of course, a pitcher of sangria. It was going to be a good dinner! Here are some pics:
Here’s Patty preparing to eat the final shrimp. Just look at that focus:
I don’t know about you, but that looks like a good bite.
It was as good as it looks. Fantastic. We were giddy at the very thought of eating good food. We were giggling and soaking up all the broth from the dishes with the wonderful fresh bread they brought us. Oh man, I’m hungry just thinking about it.
I think we decided it was one of the best overall meal experiences we’ve ever had. We’d go back…I guess.
After this, we took the same bus back in the direction of our hotel, but this time we hopped out near the casinos. Macua is, after all, the Las Vegas of Asia. Our first stop was the Venetian and it was spectacular. In front of the hotel were canals with gondolas and replicas of the bridge Ponte Vecchio and that huge tower by the Doge’s palace, whatever it’s called! Oh, and it was all covered in this white snowy-looking stuff for Christmas. Surprisingly, none of it looked overdone. It was nice to feel the Christmas spirit! There’s none in mainland China, I can tell you that!
Here are some pics. The first is me with Gingy from Shrek and some miscellaneous princess. How could we resist?
We then wandered around inside the casino for a bit and tried our luck at some of the video terminals. Naturally, we didn’t win anything. Actually, we lost about $4. Stupid casino. It was very nice inside.
We decided that we’d walk back to our hotel from here and stop at any casinos along the way. It took about 10 minutes jus to walk around the Venetian, but once we finally had, we came to a casino called the Galaxy. Beautiful place!
And that was our night in Macau! It’s a place we’ll have to spend more time in another trip!
No comments:
Post a Comment