The Great Escape: Macau

The third day is a short trip to Macau.

Macau is derived the the word ‘Magao’ (A-Ma Temple), a shrine dedicated to the sea goddess named Mazu. Macau is also well known for its luxurious hotel housing and gambling casinos. The Portuguese ruled the country for nearly 400 years until it was returned to China on 1999. There are interesting attractions in Macau and that’s where I am going to take you. πŸ˜‰

Heading to Macau from Hong Kong, we went to the Ferry Terminal to let the ferry take us to the City of Dreams.
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Tickets to Macau
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Busy inside the terminal
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Going inside the Cotai Water Jet

The inside of the ferry is okay. I was not used to riding ferry, so I slept during the travel. And because I was so exhausted.

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Inside the Cotai Water Jet

But before I slept, I enjoyed the view first as I was sitting on the window side. Yay! I really want on the window side – every single time. πŸ˜€

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Upon arriving at Macau Ferry Terminal, our tour guide, Mr. Kenny, brought us to the first stop: Ruins of St. Paul. Ruins of St. Paul was considered the greatest church in Macau, but it was burned down. Built again and burned down. According to Mr. Kenny, it happened several times.

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back side of Ruins of St. Paul’s

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We entered at the back side so we did not take the stairs going to Ruins of St. Paul’s. But when Mr. Kenny said that there’s a shop near the attraction which sells Portuguese Egg Tarts and Moon Cakes, I run happily. πŸ˜€ Besides, what’s the trip to Macau without Portuguese Egg Tarts?

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After getting Portuguese Egg Tarts and Moon Cakes, we headed to our lunch.

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Well, that was supposed to be noticed before leaving the table. But because we were too hungry, I did even see that there’s something like this on the table and left our bags on the chair. Lucky, nothing bad happened.

Oh my! The foods were amazing!! If only we planned to stay until the next day in Macau, I should have stayed in this restaurant a little longer and ate a lot. πŸ˜€ The good thing was, I did not eat a lot. But I really enjoyed everything I ate.

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Noodles, pineapple rice and fried fish fillet. The pineapple rice was so insanely good that I am planning to make my own pineapple rice at home. (Stay tuned! Haha!)

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And if I remember it correctly, this is something called Portuguese Chicken Curry… which I am also planning to recreate. Oh so delicious!!

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After lunch, we went to see Macau Tower and we passed by the statue of the sea goddess.

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So I tried to take photos of Macau Tower and I mean I tried many shots to get the full tower, but I failed… only to pass by this view. I looked like a crazy person who tried to get pretty shots, haha!

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On to A-Ma Temple…

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This is in front of A-Ma Temple which was used to be a pier during the Portuguese times in Macau.

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I was at first afraid to go inside. Maybe because I was wearing head scarf and I was not sure on how people would react if they see me inside, in case they’d react. Despite of that feeling, I still went inside. Well, there were people looking, but I really didn’t care. πŸ˜€

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Okay… So I was intrigued by what they were doing here. This family tried something really interesting. See that guy wearing blue shirt? He took a coin and threw it on this big bowl or and the water inside shook. And when the others tried, nothing happened. I don’t know about you, but it was my first time to witness something like this, so I was like ‘Wow! How that happened?’

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Last stop is at The Venetian. The place is very elegant and very crowded.

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And I think it’s because of this casino inside. I don’t do casino and of course, I haven’t went inside a casino. I just see such places in movies. We were allowed to go inside, but no taking of photos. And wow! Really a beautiful place. Maybe if only I knew how to play, I would have tried even the slot machine. πŸ˜€ You know, just for fun. But I don’t.

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Gondola ride at The Venetian

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Panorama shot – click to enlarge

So before heading back to Hong Kong for our last night, we stayed at the food court – not to eat, but to sit down and get a wifi connection. πŸ˜› There were so many foods to choose from, but I was too tired to eat.

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And I took photos of the Moon Cakes and the Portuguese Egg Tarts.

It was my first time to eat Moon cake and I didn’t know that there are various kinds of filling which I should have taken the red bean ones, if I knew. Moon Cakes are eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival and we were lucky that it was the time of the Moon Cake Festival when we went to visit Macau.

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The Portuguese Egg Tarts were buttery and egg-y. Of course, they’re Egg Tarts, you crazy! πŸ˜€ They were delicious… I think I ate eleven of them. Ssshhhh! πŸ˜€

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There’s a free shuttle from The Venetian to the ferry terminal.

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So… do you know the feeling of seeing these cute moon cakes while I have already got some? And I mean little expensive ones? No, I did not buy any of these… although I really wanted to. πŸ™ I saw these at Hong Kong ferry terminal. Of course, we got ourselves little treats but not one of these.

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It was funny that our tour guide did not mention that there are two ferry terminals – one in Hong Kong and the other one is in Kowloon. So we picked the one in Hong Kong. We spent minutes of finding the taxi stand where we were dropped in the morning, but we did not find it and even the place is somewhat different. So we guessed that we took the wrong one. πŸ˜€ It was tiring, but funny.

Again, thank you for taking your time to read. I hope you enjoy the post and the photos. I wish you all a fabulous week ahead. πŸ™‚

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