Hong Kong Adventures: Hong Kong Day 34 -- Macau!

More pictures to come!!

Today was a lot of fun. Ciara and I left at 7 to go to Macau, we took the MTR down to the Macau Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan. When we got to the ticket desk, the lady asked if we had our passports. Ciara forgot to bring hers, so she had to go back to the apartment to get it. I stayed at the terminal and walked around a little bit, it is in a big mall, but pretty much everything but food shops were closed. I went outside where there was a view of the docks and took a few pictures of the dock and ferries and also of Kowloon across the harbor.

Ciara got back and we bought our tickets and then went to a sandwich shop to pick up some stuff for breakfast. We got the food to-go and then went over to line up for the ferry. We stood near the line that we thought we were supposed to be in, but then it turned out that we were in the wrong line. There were a couple of other girls also over there, and we figured out that we were all in the wrong place. We started to walk to another line, and one of the ferry employees came over to help us. He took all of our tickets and they assigned us 4 seats together, there was a line for that ferry, but I think we all looked confused enough that he just got us through. You buy a ticket for the ferry at the ticket counter, and then as you get to the place to get on the specific ferry, they assign you a seat.

We weren’t with these girls originally, but then our seats ended up being really nice, they were at the front of our level on the ferry, and were facing each other with a table between the two rows. Once we were sitting, we introduced ourselves and started talking. They are from Australia and are in Hong Kong for a week, Felicia and Kat. We got off the ferry, and went through immigration. They actually stamped our passports in Macau!!!

After getting through immigration, we walked down towards the exit where there were a bunch of people offering tours and information. One guy handed us maps, which we thought was great, but then he started to walk over towards a counter and I could tell we were in for a sales pitch. He opened up one map and started to circle landmarks and other things to see, which was nice, but then he started talking about how bad other tours are. His boss or someone came over and started to talk about how their group is government sponsored and they speak english while many of the other groups don’t, and also told us that nobody in Macau speaks english. He said that even though there has been a Portuguese influence for 500 years, nobody speaks Portoguese, so the only language that is spoken is Cantonese. The tour that they were offering was a part day bus that could stop as often as we wanted. We told him that we just wanted to go around and do our own thing and he told us how bad an idea it was. We didn’t get more details about the tour, so we don’t know how expensive it was going to be.

We left the tour desk, and walked outside. Once we were outside, we decided that we would just stay with Kat and Felicia for the day and sightsee with them. Like Vegas, there are a lot of free shuttles running from the ferry to the casinos, and also between casinos. We got on a shuttle to the Venetian hotel to get us further into Macau, and we also wanted to see what it was like. We went into the Venetian and walked to the canal. It was pretty cool to see and we took a bunch of pictures of the Venice set up and the canal. Then we went outside and caught a cab down to the Parque De Seac Pai Van and the Macau Giant Panda Pavilion.

We were dropped off near the park, and then walked in and found the ticket booth. It is a neat little park, has some statues, Bonsai and some other animals besides the pandas. We got there around 11:30 and got a ticket for the 12-1 window. While we were waiting we walked around a bit and went to the gift shop, the visitors center, and then saw some of the other animals. They have a deer, a few different birds, and some monkeys. There was a white checked gibbon that was VERY loud. You could tell that he was enjoying the attention he was getting when people were watching him. After seeing the other animals, we went inside the panda pavilion, but unfortunately they were both napping, so we didn’t get to see them that much, just saw them laying around. Luckily one was near the front of the enclosure, so we could see him, but the other one was up at the top and we could only really see a leg. The Panda Pavilion was only $10HK so it was really cheap to get into. Because of this we didn’t mind that we didn’t see too much. After the Panda we walked through the park to the entrance, and we walked past a lot of bonsai trees. Most of them looked really old, and they were very impressive.

We finished at the park and then got on a bus to go to a restaurant for lunch. The restaurant is Fernando’s, a portuguese restaurant, and they are really famous for their food. Almost everyone that I have talked to about going to Macau has said that we have to try Fernando’s. We had to wait for a bit, so we just sat at the bar until they had a table for us. Once the table was ready we went in and decided to just order a few dishes to share. We got fried rice, prawns and beef. The rice was Macau style fried rice, the prawns were cooked in garlic sauce, and the beef was a Portuguese style beef that was stewed or something similar. The food was delicious, and the plates of food were huge. It was definitely enough food for the four of us. They also gave us some fresh bread that had a really crispy crust and was nice and soft inside. On the walls inside the hallway between the two dining rooms, they had large frames full of money. The frames had money of all different values, from all over the world and each one was signed by one or many people. They were really cool to look at and see what money looks like around the world.

After lunch we got back on a bus and headed towards the old town Macau area. We went to Senado Square first and took a few pictures there. It is a really famous area, is a big tiled court yard area and it is in a wavy pattern, it looks pretty cool, but it was really crowded so it was a bit hard to see the tile. On the way to the Square we picked up egg tarts and ate them there. After we were done we walked from the Square through the town over to Ruins of St. Peter’s. It is the facade of a really old church, that has been standing since the 1500’s. The ruins were really, really awesome. It was huge, and so cool. Hard to believe that it is so old, it looks like it is in really good condition. We also walked over to the Guia fortress that is right near the ruins. It is way up on a hill, and has a really good view of Macau. The fortress is really big, and we took a bunch of pictures from there.

After we finished up there, we walked down through town to the Grand Lisboa Hotel. They have two, the old, original one, and a new one. We went into the newer one, and walked around the lobby for a bit. It was very impressive, almost over the top. They had a few different statues, some jewels, and a lot of carvings. Had a couple of mammoth tusk carvings and also jade and other stones. They had a bronze horse head in the lobby that was donated to the hotel. It was bought for $69.1 million HK, which is a world record for any Chinese Qing Dynasty Sculpture. There were also a couple of jewels, a Fortune Emerald that was 210.34 carats and 41.25 x 29.12 x 19.1 mm, and a D color diamond that was 218.08 carats and is 39.85 x 36.25 x 17.81 mm. We went out to the bus stop to try to go down to the A Ma temple. The person in the information booth told us which bus goes over there, so we got on that bus. All of a sudden it was back at the bus stop so we stayed on it thinking that maybe it would loop around and then go down near the temple.

We were on the bus and realized that it wasn’t going anywhere near the temple. The bus stopped and we were around the island, and then we got on one that headed back to the stop near the casino. During the first loop, the bus went past the Macau Tower so we decided to stay on it until it went to the tower. In the end, we were on the bus for an hour or hour and a half to go to a place that we passed 5 minutes into the ride. We had been planning to go to the A Ma temple and the tower on the way back, but by then it was dark so we decided to skip the temple.

At the tower we bought tickets to go up on the observation deck and took a bunch of pictures. Macau is really pretty at night, all of the casinos are lit up. The tickets we got are to go out on both decks, the “indoor deck” and “outdoor deck.” It was a little hard to take pictures because both of the decks are closed in, I think the outdoor one is called that because you can bungie jump off of it or go out onto the platform that circles around the tower (separate tickets). The decks are also pretty bright, so there was a bit of reflection from the inside, we were still able to get some pictures.

We finished with the tower and then went down to catch a bus back to the casino. We picked up food from a restaurant near the casino to bring onto the ferry, and then took the casino shuttle to the ferry and rode it back to Hong Kong. When we got through immigration we stopped and took another group picture and then took the MTR back from Sheung Wan to Causeway Bay, ended up getting home around 12:30.