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Macau

We took the ferry service by hydrofoil to Macau. It took about an hour to get there, not too bad. It took a lot longer the first time I visited. When we got there, the first thing I noticed was that it has changed so much in 13 years. I’m going to have to dig up my old pictures to compare the differences. We got on a hotel/casino shuttle and ended at some casino, but I don’t remember which one it was. We were going to go in but there were metal detectors so we left. We got onto another shuttle but it ended up bringing us to the place where immigrants come in from, not where we really wanted to be. Then we got on a bus and eventually ended up at the Mandarin Oriental for some dim sum. The food was pretty good and the service was good too. We went into their casino (had to go through metal detectors) and it was pretty empty in there. I’ve never seen a casino that empty and with that little cigarette smoke in the air. We walked over to Sands, which is HUGE in comparison and it was packed and was filled with cigarette smoke.

Next to Sands was the Macau Fisherman’s Wharf. It is the first theme park in Macau. I think it opened recently because there are parts of it that was still under construction. We caught the jet-ski stunt show while we were there. I felt bad for the three performers, there was under 20 people watching and one of the guys was actually sleeping, across the seats. It was only 20 minutes long! There were miniature versions of the Roman Ampitheatre, Aladdin’s Fort and Vulcania. I t looked like it could be a fun place for families, once it is all built and ready to go.

We walked around Macau and visited parts of Macau that reminded me of what I saw the first time I visited. We also did some clothes shopping and food shopping. We got some jerky and cookies from some famous bakery. And of course, I had a Portuguese egg tart, similar to the Chinese egg tarts, but they look a little singed on top and tasted more buttery.

One of the historic stops we made was to the Saint Paul’s Cathedral (or officially called the Cathedral of Saint Paul). It was a 16th-century cathedral, built from 1582 to 1602. In 1835, it was destroyed by a fire during a typhoon, and only the facade remains. I took a few pictures of it, but (again), it was night time and windy and I have very unsteady hands. Some of my pictures made it look very ghostly and kind of scary.

The last stop on our Macau trip was to see the Casino Lisboa. It was built in the late 1960s. There kind of have their own mini museum inside the hotel where there are a lot of historic artifacts that were very interesting to see.

We also saw Wynn Macau, but it wasn’t open yet. It looked a lot like the Vegas Wynn. It is scheduled to open in September.

We didn’t do any gambling. It was another long day, and I also got a few laps in at the pool.

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