what a weekend in Hongkong and Macau!

I spent one of the most wonderful weekends in HK and Macau with Susanna. I think the both of us have been having similar living/working environments in a sense we have been starved of REAL company. I don’t mean company as in meeting new people, I think both of us have had no shortage of that. I mean company as in real friends, real conversations, in a language we’re comfortable with.

The trip to HK was interesting. It didn’t take long to cross the border. The bus trip to the Lo Wu train station was only 30 minutes from my place, direct bus some more. Once I crossed immigration, I hopped onto the KCR East Rail. That was when the trip started to get long. I always thought HK was a small place, but the train ride to East Tsim Sha Tsui was about 1 hour or so. And quite ex, the train ride was 36.5HKD, which is about 7 bucks sing. I don’t know about you, but I’m not really used to taking a 7 bucks train ride. And when I changed to the MTR to Causeway Bay I had to buy another 11HKD ticket. All in all it made me feel traveling by train in HK is ex man. But on hindsight, 10 bucks to go to HK, cheap as hell. And it was really intuitive too, with plenty of signs all over the place.

HK is a world of difference from Shenzhen man. The streets are so vibrant, the environment is clean, the people don’t spit, they can understand English, there’s so much to shop and eat! I felt happy being there. It’s like getting back to civilization a bit. And I felt so safe walking there, like I didn’t have to worry about pickpockets and stuff. No wonder Sue wants to work there next time if she can. I can see Singaporeans fitting in seamlessly.

I met Sue after locating a public phone. Thankfully the station staff knew how to speak English! We went up to her room to put my stuff down, and man, her room is SMALL. It’s really cozy, but the floor space was the size of the bed and the attached toilet the size of half the bed. And that was it. But coz I expected it to be like that I wasn’t the least bit surprised. For 500 bucks a month, for sure she’s paying for the location more than anything else.

We set off again on the MTR and found ourselves a nice Mexican restaurant. The nachos and beef was excellently complemented with the jug of frozen margarita. The fajitas were great too, all in all for a reasonable price. We realized the locals we knew in HK and Shenzhen respectively didn’t really drink, so we were both happy to finally have a drinking buddy. Brings back memories when we used to chiong a lot in year 1, just that we’re a lot more chill than jumpy now.

The next day we set off to Macau. The boat ride was about an hour and it was totally comfortable. One thing about the transport throughout the whole trip is the vehicles are sooooo clean, I felt safe to put my bag on the ground. Try doing that in Shenzhen, you might get yourself a bout of rabies for all you know. We found out there was a free shuttle to our hotel, which was a pleasant surprise. As we checked it, we asked the front desk staff for directions to places of interest, and again, I was pleasantly surprised by their fluent English and how the lady was so informative. She drew on a map certain directions to the key shopping district and we were on our way.

Through no fault of the nice front desk lady, we got lost. The map was screwed. It had its orientation of buildings and stuff totally wrong. And we didn’t have a grasp of how near or far the places would be. But somehow after trudging along for a while we ended up visiting a cemetery and the St Paul’s Ruins, which is one of the major tourist landmarks in Macau. The place was nice but a little too “renovated” for my liking.

Found a nice 茶餐厅 for lunch. The portions were absurdly small, so small when both our food came I thought it was all for Sue. But soon we realized there was noodles in her curry, and the plate of dried noodles was mine. But at least the price was affordable. We almost ended up eating at a place selling 10 sing dollars fried rice. We then visited the Macau Museum which was again a little too commercialized. But I kinda liked it. I realized Macau is quite like Singapore because of its international influence. Macau was formally occupied by the Portuguese so you’d see colonial looking buildings next to Chinese architecture. So the museum looked a bit confusing at first, introducing European influences and Chinese influences at the same time, but after a while you accept it’s because the people have accepted both cultures as their way of life.

Both Sue and I liked the fact that we didn’t have to pay for a lot of things, you visit a place, you pay the ticket price and that’s it. Not the kind like “oh if you want to see this it’s another additional 10 bucks”. And most places were walking distance from our hotel, so transport was really cheap. We went back to our hotel, took an afternoon siesta, then headed out again for dinner.

I mean after all being formally occupied by the Portuguese we thought it would be an excellent place to try Portuguese food right? A Portuguese restaurant was harder to find than we thought it would be, but our perseverance paid off when we finally found a Portuguese restaurant called Cameos. We ordered a nice pot of baked seafood and Sangria! There was a mixed meat platter as well but that was disappointing. The Sangria – Wine with fruit cubes in it – was just simply excellent. We then walked to this open air bar to have a beer and to my surprise a band started to play. The band was excellent, better than the crowd deserved. The crowd was just simply unappreciative, but I really enjoyed myself a lot.
You don’t go to Macau without going to the casinos, and so that’s what we did. We visited the one at Hotel Lisboa, coz the pineapple (黄梨, ong lai, geddit?) loking building was just opposite our hotel. I took Sue through the whole casino, explaining how to play the different games, but Sue I guess is just not the gambling type.

I managed to irritate myself at the casino. I initially won enough to cover more than half of my hotel and ferry expenses, and should have called it a night there and then. But it was only 1am, and I figured I went all the way just to gamble right? So I stupidly went back and blew my winnings, plus another 200 sing. Lesson – know when to quit. Seriously.

On the second day in Macau, me and sue took the opportunity to sleep in a little bit, but woke up just in time for breakfast. We then went goodies shopping! The small cookies and tidbits there were so nice and fresh, you can literally feel the crisp when you bite down. I bought some 老婆饼 and peanut biscuits for my colleagues and I tried the famous Portuguese egg tarts. Ok lah, quite good lah. I can’t tell the difference between good and bad Portuguese egg tarts. But apparently I didn’t eat the famous one at Coloane. Maybe next trip after I get my allowance!

After checking out we decided there was still a bit of time so we wanted to check out the wine museum. Man, that was one silly museum. I thought they’d at least tell me what is good and bad wine, how to do wine-tasting, or at least how is wine made. But all we saw were some lame displays of wine making tools, with hardly any explanations. Quite a silly museum. But at least we tried some of the wine they were selling and sue bought 2 bottles of red. Damn cheap if you ask me. One of the bottles cost only 13 bucks sing. Go figure.

Shortly we braved the rain to catch our ferry back to HK where I simply knocked out for the entire journey. I think I’m just not used to late nights anymore after sleeping at about 12 and waking up at 7 on Mondays to Fridays. We spent the rest of the afternoon finding lunch/dinner and walking Mongkok. I bought myself a cheapo mp3 player coz I found the lack of music in my life absolutely painful to endure. 80 bucks for a 1 gig Phillips mp3 player. Ok lah, for a brand I recognize and won’t spoil after 2 times of using, quite cheap le ba.

I miss HK and Macau already. The atmosphere is just so much more happening/chill than Shenzhen. I think it’s a cultural thing as well. The people are just more fashionable and civilized across the border. Highly recommended to all who are thinking of going on a cheap holiday.