Food in Macau

Usually food doesn't warrant its own blog post, but a day in Macau meant highlighting its food.
I have also noticed, that if I travel alone, I end up eating more maybe because
 a) There is no one to judge me
 b) No one to discuss with on what to buy/when to eat
 c) I can eat when I am not hungry just because something looks good

So it may be biased that Macau gets a whole food blog post, but whatevs, the food was delish.

Since I knew I had to take a ferry, I decided to not eat breakfast. Things churning around in tummy is no good while on sea. But I did buy some fresh mango juice for the 30 minute walk to the ferry. After enjoying the mango goodness, I refrained from eating till I safely arrived in Macau and the ground was steady. Soon after reaching Macau, my first treat for myself was an egg tart ! Brought by the Portugese to Macau, the Macanese version is a slight deviation from the traditional pastel de nata but at 3HKD a piece it was a treat. Wiki'ing it later, I found out that it is ranked #16 on CNN go's most delicious foods !



For lunch, I decided that the place with the longest line has to serve the most delicious food. I ended up with a porkchop burger and milk tea. The milk tea was great with the dry burger though the burger itself wasn't too bad. My hands were too greasy to take a picture, so here is one shamelessly stolen from google.



I continued my walking tour with nai cha  in hand. After exploring more of the city, I was ready for some snacking. To my surprise, there were vendors offering free samples of different kinds of meat jerky and cookies. And there were rows of shops doing the same thing. Also, people were especially nice about offering samples to me compared to the mainland Chinese people. I guess it was the brown skin combined with the skinny girl look. I don't know if I had worn my panda hat,would I have gotten more cookies.

The famous Macau almond cookies were buttery, crunchy deliciousness. I do prefer the American style chewy cookies, but the almond cookies being crunchy and hard reminded me more of my ever favorite Danish butter cookies (speaking of which I hope Costco has available the big box for sale when I go back!). After my free snack time, I started to head back towards the city. I was heading back to the city center where I saw this food cart hot pot esque place.

From what I learned, observing from my strategic "next to the cart but not a customer" location was that you pick out what you want and place it in a plate. Then the lady cooks it in a boiling soup. But she has a different soup for seafood and a different one for meat. She uses only a pair of tongs (+hands) for cooking and then serves it steaming hot. She also believes that hairnets and gloves are over-rated when everything is going to be boiled at the end. The portions were huge and I believe it was only 15 HKD.

Instead of a giant hot pot thing, which would require mad skills to consume with chopsticks, while standing and people jostling you, I went ahead with another bun variety because all that observation made me hungry. However, this one was better than bun #1 and was actually a pan fried stuffed buttery bun filled with chopped pork, scallions/cilantro and something else which I couldn't figure out. Again, greasy hands = stealing picture from google. Washing that down with another milk tea, I headed to the casinos.

After a couple of hours at the casinos, I finally was at a huge food court, under the fake blue sky at The Venetian. Keeping in mind to have time to digest the food before ferrying it back, I decided to eat at the food court rather than near the ferry terminal.

After walking around, I saw a sign for original Macanese cuisine. I ordered the baked seafood curry rice and was delighted to see some cheese in it. It was very similar to Goan food, which was not a suprise considering the Portugese influence. However, they did not have any milk tea to offer and I had to go settle for water, though to their credit it was cold water (which is a rarity in China).  I am glad I ate my fill because with the queue, it took me another 2 hours before boarding the ferry. 

  

It was a fun filled delicious day. I think I succeeded in eating most of the things Macau is famous for :D
Though I will miss quite a bit of the Eastern food, I can't wait to gorge on cheese and chocolates when I get back !

A day in Macau

The day after Christmas, I went to Macau for a day trip from Hong Kong.

Knowing it had been a Portugese colony and now a casino haven, I was expecting it be a good mix of a quaint town with opulent luxury. Which was true and it was a great city to visit. Catching a ferry from Hong-Kong to Macau, I boarded on what seemed like a luxury jet and entered Macau at the ferry terminal. It was the first time I did immigration on a sea port ! The nice thing about Macau were free buses by the casinos. I decided to first check out the old Central square also known as Senado square.



It was very festive and there were Christmas decorations everywhere. The square itself is charming with its undulating cobblestone paths and old architecture. An Indian family talked to me on the bus (probably concerned that I was traveling alone) and offered me to tag along.They were nice, but I lost track of them soon after when I was at St. Dominic's Church taking pictures.



The square was crowded and you had to fight crowds to get to the ruins of St. Paul's and that was quite a sight. Only having the facade and the entire building destroyed, gave it an interesting look, almost 2 dimensional when looked at with one eye and at a particular angle. I couldn't capture that shot, so instead here is a standard picture !



There were a lot of tourists, but the best part was watching wedding pictures being taken in front of the ruins - the photographer lying on the ground and his assistants hovering around asking people to move and shouting out poses for the couple.



Having had my fill of people watching, I headed to nearby Mount Fortress from where you could view almost all of Macau.



After chilling on the fort, I went on one of the parallel streets and away from the crowds. Suddenly, the place was deserted. Antique shops and art galleries lined the small cobblestone streets with compact cars parked on the side. I ended up reaching a garden where locals were exercising, watching construction and not selling things to tourists.

In the evening, decided to take a bus to one of the casinos to check it out. I ended up getting off at the Fisherman's wharf  to take some pictures.

 Sands casino happened to be close by and I walked in there. It was grand. Granted, I have never been to Vegas but this place could probably compare to Vegas (minus the throngs of Asian crowds and serving chocolate milk at casinos). Regardless, very entertaining and opulent. I then went to the Venetian (yay for free bus rides across islands) and that resort was extravagant. Similar to The Venetian at Vegas, there was a canal, gondola rides, upscale shopping etc right inside the resort. I was tight on time, but to tour all the casinos would probably be a day trip in itself.

On the way back, I stood in a stand by line for an hour before boarding a not so nice ferry back. I am prone to motion sickness and the ferry ride was not fun. Add to that 4 people barfing around me, and the crew walking around collecting barf bags and handing out new ones. With my headphones on full blast and keeping my eyes closed, I warded of sea sickness successfully and was back in Hong Kong at night.

It was an adventurous day but I wish I had more time to spend in Macau. And maybe money like some of those Chinese women on the slot machines, whose credit showed 50,000 HKD...on a slot machine.