Macau

Visited Macau on Sun, Feb 1. Took the ferry at Tsim Sha Tsui, trip was around an hour and not eventful. Well, mainlanders are real interesting to watch but to be involved with.

Kinda disappointed with Macau, in a nutshell, yes it's Vegas of the east, but nothing close. The casinos are scattered all over the place, only the Venetian looked nice. The others Grand Lisboa and Lisboa are just sad looking, at least from the outside. In Vegas, you'd be able to play slots and win some, but not here, and it's not only me, I've heard from others that you can't win here playing slots.

Venetian has awesome food court with restaurants providing wide arrays of food ranging from Singaporean, Indian to middle Eastern and hamburgers. We opted for Taiwanese where Tal had Hainan chicken with ube boba and I had fried oyster. The place doesn't take CC, bummer and we spent all our cash at the slots. The currency is Potaca MOP, almost same rate as HKD.

Colleague gave really good tips - hotels provide frequent shuttles at the ferry terminal. The downside is most everyone know this and the lines are long but move swiftly as busses are frequent, best is free wifi on board!

We visited Venetian first and was there till noon, after lunch and headed back to ferry terminal to catch another bus to visit the ruins of St Paul cathedral. Based on map, the closes hotel with available shuttle is Grand Lisboa but boy the line at terminal was crazy long. I looked hard at the map on my ipad, and Wynn is just situated across the street and there wasn't any line for the hotel and their busses were more frequent.

So we hopped onto the Wynn's bus and sure enough, we could see Lisboa from there. Wynn looks like their Vegas counterpart, just wasn't sure if it's as big. And apparently they have water fountain show because outside the hotel, there's this huge pond... But didn't see such thing.

According to the map, it should take us about 15min walk to the St Paul ruins. There were a lot of people on the streets, most don't pay much attention to traffic lights. And there weren't too many signs to guide us to the righ direction, so we tried to walk north-ward based on what we remember seeing on map. 

A few long minutes later, we bumped into this square where's it's nicely decked out for CNY. There's an insane amount of locals and tourists.

From there, we start noticing signs to St Paul, but bumped into St Dominic church first.

From here, it took us about another 20mins to get to St Paul because of human jam! It was packed like sardine, we had to stay real close to avoid getting separated. There were a lot of restaurants, deli, bakeries but with so many people it's just impossible but I always extend my hand out for free bak kua samples.

And finally, at the end of this tunnel, we caught a glimpse of the famous landmark. Upon reaching the top, it realized it is literally that front layer of cathedral is left standing, not spectacular or anything but looked nice from afar, would have been nicer if the steps were empty!

We hanged out for an hour at park nearby, catch a nap. Weather was gloomy, but sun tried to peek through the heavy clouds a couple times. 

We traced our way back and stopped at the square because we saw smaller hidden shops out of the main view and decided to check them out. So glad we did because they were really hidden gem! Tal bought a really nice military green jacket and only cost MOP69 without haggling, well, he tried to haggle, but it was the only style/color/size available and all fits perfect, so no haggling needed. He found same style in different color at another store but didn't buy because worried of luggage limitation, after all, it was only his 2nd day in HK. Now we regret that we didn't purchase it. What a steal!

At another corner, saw a flurry of people lining up to grab some grub. After taking a closer look, they were all innards... I'm no big fan of organs, but I've learned to eat tripe and begun to love it, only if it's prepared correctly which is cooked a few times until the off smell is gone. Surprisingly, I did not smell anything off and tempted to try some the stuff they have brewing in a big pot. So, I asked for a small cup and they squeezed two different sauces into my cup and the result:

OMG! This was so fudging awesome!

We were early for our ferry ride back to HK - the return ticket bought was for around 10PM and we got to the terminal around 6PM. My colleague said that we could get on an earlier ferry as long as it's not later than the ticket. We were surprised to see a long line formed for standbys. We waited about 45mins because the first ferry was filled. We managed to get into the second ferry fine and it wasn't as packed as the first one. The ride back was really choppy, so glad we arrived safely.