Chapter 7
Day 8
Macau – The Mirror Sea
It was early morning when my alarm clock rung. I checked it, and it was 6.30. Slowly I stood up, switched the TV on a music channel, wandered a little in my room and then, still dizzy, watching Hong Kong waking up through the window, I got dressed. My backpack was still undone from the previous evening, so I took the cameras, water and all the stuff that I needed and I tossed it all, carelessly, into my backpack. By luck, the previous evening I’ve had already placed both the ferry ticket and passport on the backpack, so I couldn’t forget them. Now I was ready to go, and I went fast out of the room. It was the day that I should go to Macau.
The trip to Macau was a part of my trip since the beginning. When I decided to visit Hong Kong, I already decided that, seen that I was so close to Macau, I shouldn’t miss the chance to visit it. So, I bought a ticket online for the price of about 15 Euro each way.
As soon as I went out the hotel I turned left and I followed Austin Road until Nathan Street, and I entered the Metro where I took the Tsuen Wan Line, the Red Line, until the Central Metro Station. From the inside of the Central Metro Station, I followed the boards showing the way to the Ferry Piers. It’s hard to believe, for those that were there yet, that below that part of Hong Kong there is another city. A city made of brightly lit tunnels, shops food stalls, LCD TVs and metro trains. From the station to the very pier, that isn’t right across the street, I did all the way underground, and easily, I arrived at the piers with large advance.
And to be in large advance of time it’s quite unusual for me. Hong Kong makes me feel weird.
Once at the Ferry Pier, that looks more like an Airport than a boat station, I turned my electronic ticket into a real one, and then I had to wait. It was the right time to go to have a breakfast. So, I wandered around until I found, in one of the many floors of the station, a nice Korean looking bar. I entered and a waiter drove me across lines of empty tables until she made me sit into a precise one. Then she took me a menu written both in Korean, English and Chinese. I checked it, and I ordered a Latte, that is Coffee and Milk with scrambled eggs and bacon. She left and I searched for my camera. I wished to see again the nice pictures that I took the previous night. As soon as I took the camera from the backpack, still with the cap on the lens, the girls started to scream that I couldn’t take pictures. I told her that I was just watching at my own pictures, and now was joined by another waiter which screamed along her that I couldn’t take pictures. Ok, now it was definitive, Hong Kong people has big problems. Bigger than the skyscrapers all around. Anyway, to prevent to see some security officer to come here to mess with me, I placed again my camera in my bag, took out my mobile phone, and as soon as they turned around, I pictured them with it. Just as a vengeance. Later, the same day, I deleted that picture. The food came and it was quite a good coffee and average eggs and bacon. I missed the fact that they didn’t take to me even a slice of bread. I like bread with the eggs and bacon.
I tried to waste as much time as I could at that bar, but then, I couldn’t make it longer, so, finished my coffee and I left the place and I headed to board the boat. I had to pass through some gate, like those in the airports where my bag was X-Ray scanned and I had to pass under a metal detector. After this procedure, I was free to enter the waiting room.
This time I was lucky, in fact, after few minutes after that I sat down, we were called to board the speed boat. While on the way to my speedboat, I checked it from close and it was so beautiful. It was all red and it had such a beautiful line. I liked it.
Once I boarded, I discovered that my seat was in the central line, and it means quite far from the windows. I tested my camera, but any time I tried to zoom out of a window, the guys sitting next to them were turning into the middle of the same window, obscuring my picture.
We left Hong Kong in perfect time. We first left the port going very slow, and then, as time passed by, we gained speed, until we reached the top cruise speed heading to Macau. Next to me there was an old Chinese man that, first took his shoes off, and then fell asleep. I was missing my MP3 player and I found nothing better than trying to sleep myself too. It worked perfectly as I woke up that we were about 10 minutes far from Macau. Out of the window I could clearly see a beautiful volcano.
Wait, a volcano? I didn’t know about the Macau volcano. Who parked a volcano in Macau?
The boat passed by the volcano and soon later docked at the “Terminal Maritimo de Macau”, that is the new pier of the city. Here we went out of the speedboat and we were gathered into a passport control room where we had to fill the immigration form and have our passports controlled. After this, I was free to enter Macau.
The “Terminal Maritimo de Macau” is looking, more or less, like the airport of my city, but more modern and a little bigger. I went out the customs and I kept on my way to the sliding doors. This was a problem. How could I keep a straight line if it looked like half of the tourists of the world and almost every gambler on the surface of the planet decided to have a convention in that hall? It was the chaos. But a silent one. People were going in every possible direction, defying the rule of the physics that say that two or more things can’t occupy the same place in space and time in the same moment. No, they were. Fat men, children, women, trolleys were all together in a swarming mass, but barely touching each other. They reminded me those mosquito swarms that you can see in the summer evenings under the lamps along the streets. But the noise was low, nobody was screaming. Or better, somebody was. Just outside the customs a very sexy girl, with short turquoise skirt and jacket and perfectly combed hair offered me the unmissable chance to buy a car from her shop. Then, a girl, still looking like a model in black and yellow outfit offered me a pamphlet with written that, if I went gambling at her casino, I’d have some Hong Kong Dollar, not Macau Patacas, free to play. Sorry, I’m not a gambler. Then, a boy in white shirt and tie stopped me offering me to go to his casino too, and then, again, another beautiful girl in some kind of a sexy version of a Japanese kimono, and again other boys with broad smiles but with teeth in display that looked like their parents had thrown them randomly in their mouths. I imagine the scene, the mom say to dad “We have to put teeth in the mouth of our boy!”, the dad takes the teeth, shuffles them into a cane section and throws them, with the same gesture of when you roll the dice in a casino, in the baby mouth, and the teeth go to their definitive place, just randomly and pointing every possible direction. Anyway, after having won the both the “crossing the hall” and “resist the beautiful Asian girls” challenges, I reached for the sliding doors and I was free.
I was free to enter Macau.
Outside of the “Terminal Maritimo del Macau” there is a very efficient bus station and also a taxi stop too. I went at the bus station and I took a bus of the line 10A that took me in short from the Ferry Terminal to the centre.
Even not to say, Macau isn’t Hong Kong. They are two worlds apart, probably on the route to collide, some day, when the regional autonomy granted by China will expire. More plausibly, they’ll shift into the Chinese average galaxy earlier than the end of the regional autonomy that should be, for Macau set in the 2049, and for Hong Kong 2047.
After having seen the chaotic and not much clean Hong Kong, Macau is more tidy, tiny and brighter. The huge casinos are scattered in an ideal donut strip all around the historical centre of the city, even if, some new casino towers are being built next to the existing ones, closer and closer to the centre, announcing an upcoming change of the Macau skyline.
The trip to Macau was a part of my trip since the beginning. When I decided to visit Hong Kong, I already decided that, seen that I was so close to Macau, I shouldn’t miss the chance to visit it. So, I bought a ticket online for the price of about 15 Euro each way.
As soon as I went out the hotel I turned left and I followed Austin Road until Nathan Street, and I entered the Metro where I took the Tsuen Wan Line, the Red Line, until the Central Metro Station. From the inside of the Central Metro Station, I followed the boards showing the way to the Ferry Piers. It’s hard to believe, for those that were there yet, that below that part of Hong Kong there is another city. A city made of brightly lit tunnels, shops food stalls, LCD TVs and metro trains. From the station to the very pier, that isn’t right across the street, I did all the way underground, and easily, I arrived at the piers with large advance.
And to be in large advance of time it’s quite unusual for me. Hong Kong makes me feel weird.
Once at the Ferry Pier, that looks more like an Airport than a boat station, I turned my electronic ticket into a real one, and then I had to wait. It was the right time to go to have a breakfast. So, I wandered around until I found, in one of the many floors of the station, a nice Korean looking bar. I entered and a waiter drove me across lines of empty tables until she made me sit into a precise one. Then she took me a menu written both in Korean, English and Chinese. I checked it, and I ordered a Latte, that is Coffee and Milk with scrambled eggs and bacon. She left and I searched for my camera. I wished to see again the nice pictures that I took the previous night. As soon as I took the camera from the backpack, still with the cap on the lens, the girls started to scream that I couldn’t take pictures. I told her that I was just watching at my own pictures, and now was joined by another waiter which screamed along her that I couldn’t take pictures. Ok, now it was definitive, Hong Kong people has big problems. Bigger than the skyscrapers all around. Anyway, to prevent to see some security officer to come here to mess with me, I placed again my camera in my bag, took out my mobile phone, and as soon as they turned around, I pictured them with it. Just as a vengeance. Later, the same day, I deleted that picture. The food came and it was quite a good coffee and average eggs and bacon. I missed the fact that they didn’t take to me even a slice of bread. I like bread with the eggs and bacon.
I tried to waste as much time as I could at that bar, but then, I couldn’t make it longer, so, finished my coffee and I left the place and I headed to board the boat. I had to pass through some gate, like those in the airports where my bag was X-Ray scanned and I had to pass under a metal detector. After this procedure, I was free to enter the waiting room.
This time I was lucky, in fact, after few minutes after that I sat down, we were called to board the speed boat. While on the way to my speedboat, I checked it from close and it was so beautiful. It was all red and it had such a beautiful line. I liked it.
Once I boarded, I discovered that my seat was in the central line, and it means quite far from the windows. I tested my camera, but any time I tried to zoom out of a window, the guys sitting next to them were turning into the middle of the same window, obscuring my picture.
We left Hong Kong in perfect time. We first left the port going very slow, and then, as time passed by, we gained speed, until we reached the top cruise speed heading to Macau. Next to me there was an old Chinese man that, first took his shoes off, and then fell asleep. I was missing my MP3 player and I found nothing better than trying to sleep myself too. It worked perfectly as I woke up that we were about 10 minutes far from Macau. Out of the window I could clearly see a beautiful volcano.
Wait, a volcano? I didn’t know about the Macau volcano. Who parked a volcano in Macau?
The boat passed by the volcano and soon later docked at the “Terminal Maritimo de Macau”, that is the new pier of the city. Here we went out of the speedboat and we were gathered into a passport control room where we had to fill the immigration form and have our passports controlled. After this, I was free to enter Macau.
The “Terminal Maritimo de Macau” is looking, more or less, like the airport of my city, but more modern and a little bigger. I went out the customs and I kept on my way to the sliding doors. This was a problem. How could I keep a straight line if it looked like half of the tourists of the world and almost every gambler on the surface of the planet decided to have a convention in that hall? It was the chaos. But a silent one. People were going in every possible direction, defying the rule of the physics that say that two or more things can’t occupy the same place in space and time in the same moment. No, they were. Fat men, children, women, trolleys were all together in a swarming mass, but barely touching each other. They reminded me those mosquito swarms that you can see in the summer evenings under the lamps along the streets. But the noise was low, nobody was screaming. Or better, somebody was. Just outside the customs a very sexy girl, with short turquoise skirt and jacket and perfectly combed hair offered me the unmissable chance to buy a car from her shop. Then, a girl, still looking like a model in black and yellow outfit offered me a pamphlet with written that, if I went gambling at her casino, I’d have some Hong Kong Dollar, not Macau Patacas, free to play. Sorry, I’m not a gambler. Then, a boy in white shirt and tie stopped me offering me to go to his casino too, and then, again, another beautiful girl in some kind of a sexy version of a Japanese kimono, and again other boys with broad smiles but with teeth in display that looked like their parents had thrown them randomly in their mouths. I imagine the scene, the mom say to dad “We have to put teeth in the mouth of our boy!”, the dad takes the teeth, shuffles them into a cane section and throws them, with the same gesture of when you roll the dice in a casino, in the baby mouth, and the teeth go to their definitive place, just randomly and pointing every possible direction. Anyway, after having won the both the “crossing the hall” and “resist the beautiful Asian girls” challenges, I reached for the sliding doors and I was free.
I was free to enter Macau.
Outside of the “Terminal Maritimo del Macau” there is a very efficient bus station and also a taxi stop too. I went at the bus station and I took a bus of the line 10A that took me in short from the Ferry Terminal to the centre.
Even not to say, Macau isn’t Hong Kong. They are two worlds apart, probably on the route to collide, some day, when the regional autonomy granted by China will expire. More plausibly, they’ll shift into the Chinese average galaxy earlier than the end of the regional autonomy that should be, for Macau set in the 2049, and for Hong Kong 2047.
After having seen the chaotic and not much clean Hong Kong, Macau is more tidy, tiny and brighter. The huge casinos are scattered in an ideal donut strip all around the historical centre of the city, even if, some new casino towers are being built next to the existing ones, closer and closer to the centre, announcing an upcoming change of the Macau skyline.
Macau – The Old City
The bus started and as soon as it left the Ferry Terminal we took a road that connects it to the main land. It was the time that I’ve seen the Macau volcano again. This time, passing by it, I discovered that it was the Macau Fisherman’s Wharf, a famous theme park. It doesn’t need to say that it is huge, with, on a side, a Old Chinese style palace, then the volcano which erupts every night, and then a modern building. This theme park houses games, a casino and a hotel too.
Along the streets to the centre I met almost no traffic and the sight out of the bus windows alternated beautiful Chinese-pagoda styled bus stops, skyscrapers and old slums doomed to be obliterated soon.
My bus stop was in the centre, at the Largo do Senado, the Senado Square. Seeing that until 1999 Macau had been a Portuguese land, in our days the city still keeps traces of the European influence. Largo do Senado is one of the best ones.
I went off the bus with some other tourist, wore my sunglasses and crossed the street. I looked around, but I could only see people. No, I had to find a better point of view. That’s one of those moments that I wish I were taller. Ok, these moments are daily. I looked all around myself until I seen a small wall at the closer end of the square. I went there, and staying on the top of it, I looked around. The square is very famous for the pavement, which is decorated in fat twisted black and white stripes, like a wavy sea. In the centre of it, there is fountain in red garnet with a modern statue that reminds a globe, a stylized Planet Earth. I guess that I would have preferred a Morisco styled fountain, but it’s still the superstar of the square, where most of the tourists take a picture of themselves. On the sides of the square there are bright colored buildings and something that looks like a Church. Actually, it just looks like a Church, but it’s something different. It’s the “Holy House of Mercy” or “Santa Casa da Misericórdia”. The Holy House of Mercy was build in the early Macau in the 1569 by the Bishop of Macau to be used as an hospital. Later it was changed of use, but kept in the social welfare field, and later again it was again turned into an orphanage and house for the widows of the sailors lost at sea. Now this stern building, ignored by most of the tourists, is standing on the right hand of the square with its fierce columns and arches.
I went down of my wall and mixed again into that sea of tourists. I started to move forward to the opposite end of the square. It was a quite hard task as many groups of tourists were moving into the square. Those people were standing so close that they were looking like those bison herds from the Western movies. One close to the other, without losing the eye contact with the people of the same group, in fear to get lost in such a place.
To get lost in Macau. It’s sound like a title of a romantic novel, or a spy story.
But you can’t get separated from your group if you travel alone, and I love this part of my lonely travelling too. The absolute freedom and the lack of tour guides. Just these two things are worth a trip with the risk of getting lost in Macau, hoping to get lost in Asia.
Until now, I never got lost in Asia, but never say ever.
I forced myself to cross the square staying in the centre of it, far from the arcades of the left-hand side and staying in the strong sun. I wished to be in the middle of the square, to live it, feel it, and smelling some food that was being roasted at a stall. It was still too early to eat, so I passed it by and I went toward the fountain. Now this was the moment that I lost control. I went at the fountain, almost running and I stopped an Asian girl, I think Japanese and I asked her if she could take me a picture. She opened her eyes wide, opened slightly her mouth that was like she was giving a little kiss at the thin air, and said “Hi” that in Japanese means “Yes”. I jumped on the edge of the fountain and I pretended to fall inside. The girl laughed, covered her mouth and took a picture, then one more and, gladly, she was free to run away, and mix with all hundreds other Asians. Then, with my camera in hand, I jumped down.
If you have to jump down a fountain, in spite of all the attention you can use, you’ll hit the worst point. For me it’s always like this.
I jumped down and my right foot hit with the sole against the step next the fountain, and as a result, I kept my way staggering down the square instead of walking. I thought that it had been idiot of me to hurt myself for just a picture, but it wasn’t the first time. Actually it’s becoming an habit for me.
I went down the square and finally the square turned into a street and the old buildings at the sides started to give some shelter from the strong sun. Here I started to notice people wandering around the street, some of them in couples, while the most of them were in huge fat groups of tourists shepherded by some flag wielding tourist guide, but every each of them was carrying a yellow and brown plastic bag.
Never show many people with the same yellow and brown plastic bag at a shoppingholic.
I wondered what was that plastic bag about, and I needed to discover it fast. I went down the street and I was curious about the narrow streets at the sides of the main street. The houses had such a peculiar balconies. They looked like beaten-iron cages installed before the windows. I guess they are both useful to hang things outside of the window and to prevent that the same things will fall off the balcony on the passersby.
I kept on my way and I arrived into a crowded square, or more likely, a crossroad in the pedestrian area, it’s Largo de São Domingos. The same square is surrounded by shops aimed to a tourist audience, but on the left hand side, there is also a Christian church. It’s the St. Dominic Church, or Igreja de São Domingos. The Church was built 1587 by three Spanish Dominican priests. It’s quite an important landmark as in the 1822 this was the exact place where was printed the first newspaper in Portuguese language in China called “A Abelha da China”. The Church itself has a clean façade painted in yellow and white. At the ground floor there are three wooden doors, while in the upper floor there are three wooden windows towered by an higher storey with the symbol of St. Mary.
I visited the Church, the inside were nice chilly against the heat outside. As it’d be predictable, many Asian tourists were taking pictures with their “V” shaped fingers. I circled it and I found some nice draws of the “Via Crucis” all around the Church, even if, much different than the ones in my country. These weren’t just about the last days of Jesus, but they portrayed the main events of Jesus life. It was interesting this different interpretation of the “Via Crucis”.
Along the streets to the centre I met almost no traffic and the sight out of the bus windows alternated beautiful Chinese-pagoda styled bus stops, skyscrapers and old slums doomed to be obliterated soon.
My bus stop was in the centre, at the Largo do Senado, the Senado Square. Seeing that until 1999 Macau had been a Portuguese land, in our days the city still keeps traces of the European influence. Largo do Senado is one of the best ones.
I went off the bus with some other tourist, wore my sunglasses and crossed the street. I looked around, but I could only see people. No, I had to find a better point of view. That’s one of those moments that I wish I were taller. Ok, these moments are daily. I looked all around myself until I seen a small wall at the closer end of the square. I went there, and staying on the top of it, I looked around. The square is very famous for the pavement, which is decorated in fat twisted black and white stripes, like a wavy sea. In the centre of it, there is fountain in red garnet with a modern statue that reminds a globe, a stylized Planet Earth. I guess that I would have preferred a Morisco styled fountain, but it’s still the superstar of the square, where most of the tourists take a picture of themselves. On the sides of the square there are bright colored buildings and something that looks like a Church. Actually, it just looks like a Church, but it’s something different. It’s the “Holy House of Mercy” or “Santa Casa da Misericórdia”. The Holy House of Mercy was build in the early Macau in the 1569 by the Bishop of Macau to be used as an hospital. Later it was changed of use, but kept in the social welfare field, and later again it was again turned into an orphanage and house for the widows of the sailors lost at sea. Now this stern building, ignored by most of the tourists, is standing on the right hand of the square with its fierce columns and arches.
I went down of my wall and mixed again into that sea of tourists. I started to move forward to the opposite end of the square. It was a quite hard task as many groups of tourists were moving into the square. Those people were standing so close that they were looking like those bison herds from the Western movies. One close to the other, without losing the eye contact with the people of the same group, in fear to get lost in such a place.
To get lost in Macau. It’s sound like a title of a romantic novel, or a spy story.
But you can’t get separated from your group if you travel alone, and I love this part of my lonely travelling too. The absolute freedom and the lack of tour guides. Just these two things are worth a trip with the risk of getting lost in Macau, hoping to get lost in Asia.
Until now, I never got lost in Asia, but never say ever.
I forced myself to cross the square staying in the centre of it, far from the arcades of the left-hand side and staying in the strong sun. I wished to be in the middle of the square, to live it, feel it, and smelling some food that was being roasted at a stall. It was still too early to eat, so I passed it by and I went toward the fountain. Now this was the moment that I lost control. I went at the fountain, almost running and I stopped an Asian girl, I think Japanese and I asked her if she could take me a picture. She opened her eyes wide, opened slightly her mouth that was like she was giving a little kiss at the thin air, and said “Hi” that in Japanese means “Yes”. I jumped on the edge of the fountain and I pretended to fall inside. The girl laughed, covered her mouth and took a picture, then one more and, gladly, she was free to run away, and mix with all hundreds other Asians. Then, with my camera in hand, I jumped down.
If you have to jump down a fountain, in spite of all the attention you can use, you’ll hit the worst point. For me it’s always like this.
I jumped down and my right foot hit with the sole against the step next the fountain, and as a result, I kept my way staggering down the square instead of walking. I thought that it had been idiot of me to hurt myself for just a picture, but it wasn’t the first time. Actually it’s becoming an habit for me.
I went down the square and finally the square turned into a street and the old buildings at the sides started to give some shelter from the strong sun. Here I started to notice people wandering around the street, some of them in couples, while the most of them were in huge fat groups of tourists shepherded by some flag wielding tourist guide, but every each of them was carrying a yellow and brown plastic bag.
Never show many people with the same yellow and brown plastic bag at a shoppingholic.
I wondered what was that plastic bag about, and I needed to discover it fast. I went down the street and I was curious about the narrow streets at the sides of the main street. The houses had such a peculiar balconies. They looked like beaten-iron cages installed before the windows. I guess they are both useful to hang things outside of the window and to prevent that the same things will fall off the balcony on the passersby.
I kept on my way and I arrived into a crowded square, or more likely, a crossroad in the pedestrian area, it’s Largo de São Domingos. The same square is surrounded by shops aimed to a tourist audience, but on the left hand side, there is also a Christian church. It’s the St. Dominic Church, or Igreja de São Domingos. The Church was built 1587 by three Spanish Dominican priests. It’s quite an important landmark as in the 1822 this was the exact place where was printed the first newspaper in Portuguese language in China called “A Abelha da China”. The Church itself has a clean façade painted in yellow and white. At the ground floor there are three wooden doors, while in the upper floor there are three wooden windows towered by an higher storey with the symbol of St. Mary.
I visited the Church, the inside were nice chilly against the heat outside. As it’d be predictable, many Asian tourists were taking pictures with their “V” shaped fingers. I circled it and I found some nice draws of the “Via Crucis” all around the Church, even if, much different than the ones in my country. These weren’t just about the last days of Jesus, but they portrayed the main events of Jesus life. It was interesting this different interpretation of the “Via Crucis”.
Macau – Ruínas de São Paulo
Once outside of the Church, I went up the street following the boards that were marking the direction to reach the Ruínas de São Paulo. The street narrowed and it was surrounded on both sides by tourist-oriented shops as well as with bakeries. Until that moment, for me, it had been quite unusual to find bakeries and sweets shops in Asia, but probably, this was part of the Portuguese heritage. I went down the street and it was, finally, the beginning of a new part of my trip. Something that I was longing for.
Have you ever experienced that feeling of when you plan, wish and work to reach a certain goal, and you keep on waiting, like a cheetah ready to catch its prey? And then when your moment arrives, all changes. I'm not talking about something material, but emotionally. This was the place. At half way of Rua de São Paulo.
And here my career of food explorer had a twist with new foods.
As a kid I never dreamt of being a football player, a singer or the owner of a huge car. I dreamt of being a mud dirty, wet in the Amazon River water, brave explorer. Lately, when rose both my passion about food and awareness that only few corners of pristine forest are left on the planet, among them, I could enlist also the uncared flowerbed of my garden, I found a new myth. He's Andrew Zimmern. In every episode of his show “Bizarre Foods” he says that the best way to know a culture, is to share food with people. These are damn good words, and while traveling across foreign countries you could bump into some food that you could find weird, but then, if you'll try it, it's likely that you'll find it very good or even fantastic. Ok, some times, some food can be horrible, but it might happen also in the Italian restaurant around the corner. Anyway, I believe that if a food is eaten by thousand of even million of people, it shouldn't be so bad, and it's worth to give it a try.
Up the Rua de Sau Paulo, I was circled by the Koi Kei shops selling a reddish thing layered over and over that was given away in samples as small dices cut with scissors dirty in some sticky juice. Looking it from far, it was some kind of a sausage that was sweating a thick sticky liquid. I asked what it was, as for me it was tempting. The girl said “Bakkwa! …Pohk!”, “Bakkwapok?”, “Noo! It’s Pohk!”, “Pok?” my Thai friend is named Pok… Too bad she ended like that… She wished to get a diet to get slimmer indeed. Then, I understood, it was Pork! I said “Ah, Pork!” and she nodded with a broad smile, a smile with nice straight teeth in display. I took a dice of pork and put it in my mouth. It felt like it was candied pork. I bitten it, it was, in the beginning gummy, like a toffee, but then it literally melted in my mouth mixing the basic salty meat taste with the sugary taste of the icing. And explosion of good taste was in my mouth. The pork taste vanished in a matter of seconds leaving a very sweet back-taste. It was so good that I came back to take one more piece. Then, weeks later, when I told this to the people back home, they shivered in horror thinking of candied pork meat. But they don't know what they missed.
Bakkwa
Bakkwa, also known as rougan, is a Chinese salty-sweet dried meat product similar to jerky, made in the form of flat thin sheets. Bakkwa is made with a meat preservation and preparation technique from China. The method for production have remained virtually unchanged throughout the centuries, but has been improved. It is often made with beef, pork, or mutton, which are prepared with spices, sugar, salt, and soy sauce, while dried on racks at around 50°C to 60°C. However, nowadays, products with a softer texture, lighter color, and less sugar are preferred.
In Malaysia, Singapore, Riau Islands and the Philippines bakkwa or bagua is the most widely used name derived from the Hokkien Chinese dialect. Cantonese speakers use the term yuhk gōn', Anglicised version long yok, while in China and Taiwan the product is more commonly known as rougan. Commercially available versions are sometimes labeled as "barbecued pork," "dried pork," or "pork jerky." Bakkwa is particularly popular as a snack in East Asia and Southeast Asia. In Beidou, Taiwan, it is regarded as one of the three pork delicacies.
I kept my way up the street for a few meters when my attention was recalled again. It was a bakery. They were making some pastries. Somebody, near to me, said that they were the traditional food of Macau. Traditional? Food? Could I ever miss it? I'm a professional, and even in holiday if the duty calls, I've to do my job. To explore foods and broaden my food knowledge. At least, I've to say that I've a good excuse to taste it!
I went at the shop next-door and I asked for one of those typical pastries. The pretty black haired girl gave one to me into a small paper bag.
It was warm.
I opened the brown little bag, and the pastry was laying on the end of it. I took it and I checked it. It was a shell shaped puff-pastry filled with some yellow cream. It smelled of baked sweets, cream and vanilla. I bitten it and the pastry crunched under my teeth. The cream was custard-cream a little burn on the top. Just a moment before that I bitten my pastry a girl next to me did the same. She was an Asian, probably a Japanese, and as soon as she bitten it, she close her eyes and as she munched it, she shivered. What the hell was it? I bitten it, and the only thought that exploded in my mind was “Wow”. Fantastic. The base of puff-pastry was the base for that symphony of milk, sugar and vanilla. Bite after bite, wave after wave the multi sensorial experience refreshed, but only for short moments. A culinary lovemaking. A shiver that last a Macau pastry. No, it's not simply the pastry. It's Macau and not only that. It's the chance. The moment. It's one of those time that you think “Goddamn, it was the right time for the right thing”, and the rest doesn't matter much, because it touches deeper than just a food can make.
The pastry was so short that felt like vanishing in a blink of an eye. But I didn't want to buy one more, I've had to keep with my exploration. So, I kept on following the street. On the way I've bought a postcard for a friend of mine, and I kept going on. The street was narrow, going up, and made of small squared cobber stones, over which endless streams of people were going one against the other, without a precise order. Just with the thought “I’m going in that direction and everybody has to get off my path” or with the thought “I’ve to not lose the eye contact with the other members of my herd or I could end lost in the dangerous streets of Macau”. And it’s a challenge to make your way when tens of herds of Asian tourists are going in your opposite direction, all following small-flag armed guide, and each of them carrying several yellow and brown bags form the Koi Kei shop. Yes, Koi Kei was the home of the yellow and brown bags. My need of shoppingholic were, for now, satisfied.
I kept following the street until when it turned and all of a sudden, it broaden into a square at the feet of a stairway. She was there, on the top of the stairway. An ancient queen called people to her, in spite of race or religion. It was the façade of the Ruínas de São Paulo.
The Cathedral of St. Paul was built by the Jesuits between the 1582 and 1602. In the beginning it was the biggest Church of this part of the world, but then with the falling of Macau economy against the growth of Hong Kong, the same Church became overlooked. It was when in the typhoon of the 1835 that a fire burnt the Cathedral down leaving only the façade standing. In our days, the façade is still the main landmark and symbol of Macau.
I made my way toward the stairway, but it was so hard to go toward the façade without crossing the path of somebody taking a picture. For a moment, I decided to indulge in one of my favorite activities. To picture people taking silly pictures. Just before me was a group of Japanese girls, and it became even far too easy to get them while taking some stupid picture. This time, again with the help of my super zoom camera, I got a picture of a girl that was taking a picture at the ruins of St. Paul while holding, with the other hand, a small action figure of some manga character next the Ruins themselves. Of course, still not much satisfied of her, I even pictured the screen of her digital camera. Yes, that was a really silly picture. Then, feeling like a superstar surrounded by thousand paparazzi, aware that probably before evening I’d be in hundreds of pictures, I started to walk up the stairway.
The façade is made of a thick wall, with three doors in the lower floor and three huge windows in the upper floor. On the sides of the windows and between them, there are four different statues. Above the three windows there are three more ideal storeys. In the third and fourth there are two central niches with statues, and in the fifth floor there is the statue of a Dove.
When I was just before it, I felt that it was so big. I tried to take a picture with my wider lens, but it was impossible. Even from the farthest place in the terrace before the façade, I couldn’t make it fit into a single image. It was a picture frenzy. Everybody was picturing and the sound of shutters and beeping from the cameras was becoming and uniform, single, sound. I went through the central gate and I entered the Cathedral. The inside part was made of just a square with, every now and then, some parts of the floor made of glass with some stones and pieces of walls in display below them.
At the opposite end of the square, that lies where once was the nave of the Cathedral, there is the so called “Crypt”. I went down there, and I went in the depth of the inner secret of the Cathedral. That means, a flight of stairs down. While there, there were lots of people in the single big room used as a museum. On the outside of the room people has to pass by what look ruins. Like to remember that 200 years before the Cathedral was burn to ashes and Macau people were so busy, or lazy, to not clear the crumbled walls.
Inside the same museum there are some old Christian artifacts, like crosses and relics. Probably the most important one is a very huge statue of Francis Xavier. While there a girl asked me if I knew him. I said “Yeah, he's Saint Francis Xavier, we share the same name, how to you know him?” and she told me that in Japan, as turned out that she was Japanese, kids learn at school that Saint Francis Xavier took the Christianity in Asia, Japan too. Probably that's why she stared at me with big eyes when I told her that I've the same name. Actually, now, after such a long time, I wonder if she thought that my name was Xavier and not Francis. I'll never know. Unless I'll bump into her before another Saint Francis Xavier statue.
The visit lasted short, and I came back to the surface. I went up the flight of stairs and I crossed the nave-square. Before leaving this place, I noticed that there were stairs that took at the first floor of the facade. I couldn't miss it. So, I went there, and I climbed the very crowded stairway. People were walking up and down with quite a confusion. I guess that the main rule was “I'll go straight, or you'll dodge me, or I'll push you off the railings”. Once on the upper floor, my superstar inner feelings did their best as I went to a window aware that so many people were picturing me. I felt like a Prime Minister or a King that it approaching to talk at a window.
Ladies and Gentlemen... Ahhh... Hmmm... Well...
I guess that it'd be the start of one of my speeches. Anyway, the legend says that, when you're up there, if you throw a coin through the central window, it'll bring you good luck. Perhaps, that's the reason why there were so many coins around. But I still wonder if it's enough to put a coin on the wall, like many coins were, or if I've to hit a tourist on the head. Like that old Chinese-looking guy with beige hat, a camera stuck on his face and smile without two single parallel teeth. I wonder what a good luck to hit him.
I looked around, took some pictures and I went back. I went down the steel stairs, still with the same rule of putting all that tourists-herd off the stairs. Then, back to the square, and again across the facade. At this point, I turned around and I wished “See you again” to the facade of the Ruínas de São Paulo. And I left them, to come back by the same street from where I arrived.
I couldn't be more right to say “See you again”, but I didn't know yet.
I went down, first the stairway and then the same street with the sweet shops. At this point, after the fulfillment of my second objective of the day, the first was reaching Macau, while the second was reaching for the Ruínas de São Paulo, I decided to get free my shoppingholic instincts. And which better place than the Koi Kei shop. I entered it, and in spite it was crammed with Asians buying any sort of sweet, it was still plenty room to move and to enough samples to taste. The shop itself was a sort of a huge big room with two counters with the casher, one next the entrance and one in the middle. All around the walls that circled the room, shelve after shelve, layer by layer the walls were covered with boxes of any kind of size, color and shape, filled with sweets of any kind, from candies to chocolates and to biscuits of any kind of ingredient. A sugary maze, a chocolate galore, a psychedelic combination of colors and Asian writings. I didn’t think of Macau like this, but this was a shape of it reality too. At least, a piece of a tourist-oriented-retailer-reality. Most of the waiters were focused on the Asian clients, while the few others were interested in nothing at all. This means that I could wander around freely without having a waiter-shaped shadow. I guess that Asians tourist, especially those from the big herds, are good clients, ready to buy any sort of thing there inside. On the other hand, we Westerners, owner of a fine sweets culture, are harder to be satisfied and we buy less. I checked around and in the end I decided to buy some typical toffee sweets made with peanuts. I bought a very nice big bag and I stuffed it into my nice backpack. Now my shoppingholic instinct was satisfied and I could keep going with my exploration of Macau.
I went all the way back, with the street still fully crammed with people. There were moments that we were looking like being in queue waiting to enter somewhere, there were too many people, and I only wished to escape that crowd madness. The beauty of Macau had been spoiled by so many tourists, and I guess that probably, at night when most of the day-trippers would be back in their fancy hotels or dining in their perfect-for-group-tourists restaurants, Macau would take back part of her beauty.
Have you ever experienced that feeling of when you plan, wish and work to reach a certain goal, and you keep on waiting, like a cheetah ready to catch its prey? And then when your moment arrives, all changes. I'm not talking about something material, but emotionally. This was the place. At half way of Rua de São Paulo.
And here my career of food explorer had a twist with new foods.
As a kid I never dreamt of being a football player, a singer or the owner of a huge car. I dreamt of being a mud dirty, wet in the Amazon River water, brave explorer. Lately, when rose both my passion about food and awareness that only few corners of pristine forest are left on the planet, among them, I could enlist also the uncared flowerbed of my garden, I found a new myth. He's Andrew Zimmern. In every episode of his show “Bizarre Foods” he says that the best way to know a culture, is to share food with people. These are damn good words, and while traveling across foreign countries you could bump into some food that you could find weird, but then, if you'll try it, it's likely that you'll find it very good or even fantastic. Ok, some times, some food can be horrible, but it might happen also in the Italian restaurant around the corner. Anyway, I believe that if a food is eaten by thousand of even million of people, it shouldn't be so bad, and it's worth to give it a try.
Up the Rua de Sau Paulo, I was circled by the Koi Kei shops selling a reddish thing layered over and over that was given away in samples as small dices cut with scissors dirty in some sticky juice. Looking it from far, it was some kind of a sausage that was sweating a thick sticky liquid. I asked what it was, as for me it was tempting. The girl said “Bakkwa! …Pohk!”, “Bakkwapok?”, “Noo! It’s Pohk!”, “Pok?” my Thai friend is named Pok… Too bad she ended like that… She wished to get a diet to get slimmer indeed. Then, I understood, it was Pork! I said “Ah, Pork!” and she nodded with a broad smile, a smile with nice straight teeth in display. I took a dice of pork and put it in my mouth. It felt like it was candied pork. I bitten it, it was, in the beginning gummy, like a toffee, but then it literally melted in my mouth mixing the basic salty meat taste with the sugary taste of the icing. And explosion of good taste was in my mouth. The pork taste vanished in a matter of seconds leaving a very sweet back-taste. It was so good that I came back to take one more piece. Then, weeks later, when I told this to the people back home, they shivered in horror thinking of candied pork meat. But they don't know what they missed.
Bakkwa
Bakkwa, also known as rougan, is a Chinese salty-sweet dried meat product similar to jerky, made in the form of flat thin sheets. Bakkwa is made with a meat preservation and preparation technique from China. The method for production have remained virtually unchanged throughout the centuries, but has been improved. It is often made with beef, pork, or mutton, which are prepared with spices, sugar, salt, and soy sauce, while dried on racks at around 50°C to 60°C. However, nowadays, products with a softer texture, lighter color, and less sugar are preferred.
In Malaysia, Singapore, Riau Islands and the Philippines bakkwa or bagua is the most widely used name derived from the Hokkien Chinese dialect. Cantonese speakers use the term yuhk gōn', Anglicised version long yok, while in China and Taiwan the product is more commonly known as rougan. Commercially available versions are sometimes labeled as "barbecued pork," "dried pork," or "pork jerky." Bakkwa is particularly popular as a snack in East Asia and Southeast Asia. In Beidou, Taiwan, it is regarded as one of the three pork delicacies.
I kept my way up the street for a few meters when my attention was recalled again. It was a bakery. They were making some pastries. Somebody, near to me, said that they were the traditional food of Macau. Traditional? Food? Could I ever miss it? I'm a professional, and even in holiday if the duty calls, I've to do my job. To explore foods and broaden my food knowledge. At least, I've to say that I've a good excuse to taste it!
I went at the shop next-door and I asked for one of those typical pastries. The pretty black haired girl gave one to me into a small paper bag.
It was warm.
I opened the brown little bag, and the pastry was laying on the end of it. I took it and I checked it. It was a shell shaped puff-pastry filled with some yellow cream. It smelled of baked sweets, cream and vanilla. I bitten it and the pastry crunched under my teeth. The cream was custard-cream a little burn on the top. Just a moment before that I bitten my pastry a girl next to me did the same. She was an Asian, probably a Japanese, and as soon as she bitten it, she close her eyes and as she munched it, she shivered. What the hell was it? I bitten it, and the only thought that exploded in my mind was “Wow”. Fantastic. The base of puff-pastry was the base for that symphony of milk, sugar and vanilla. Bite after bite, wave after wave the multi sensorial experience refreshed, but only for short moments. A culinary lovemaking. A shiver that last a Macau pastry. No, it's not simply the pastry. It's Macau and not only that. It's the chance. The moment. It's one of those time that you think “Goddamn, it was the right time for the right thing”, and the rest doesn't matter much, because it touches deeper than just a food can make.
The pastry was so short that felt like vanishing in a blink of an eye. But I didn't want to buy one more, I've had to keep with my exploration. So, I kept on following the street. On the way I've bought a postcard for a friend of mine, and I kept going on. The street was narrow, going up, and made of small squared cobber stones, over which endless streams of people were going one against the other, without a precise order. Just with the thought “I’m going in that direction and everybody has to get off my path” or with the thought “I’ve to not lose the eye contact with the other members of my herd or I could end lost in the dangerous streets of Macau”. And it’s a challenge to make your way when tens of herds of Asian tourists are going in your opposite direction, all following small-flag armed guide, and each of them carrying several yellow and brown bags form the Koi Kei shop. Yes, Koi Kei was the home of the yellow and brown bags. My need of shoppingholic were, for now, satisfied.
I kept following the street until when it turned and all of a sudden, it broaden into a square at the feet of a stairway. She was there, on the top of the stairway. An ancient queen called people to her, in spite of race or religion. It was the façade of the Ruínas de São Paulo.
The Cathedral of St. Paul was built by the Jesuits between the 1582 and 1602. In the beginning it was the biggest Church of this part of the world, but then with the falling of Macau economy against the growth of Hong Kong, the same Church became overlooked. It was when in the typhoon of the 1835 that a fire burnt the Cathedral down leaving only the façade standing. In our days, the façade is still the main landmark and symbol of Macau.
I made my way toward the stairway, but it was so hard to go toward the façade without crossing the path of somebody taking a picture. For a moment, I decided to indulge in one of my favorite activities. To picture people taking silly pictures. Just before me was a group of Japanese girls, and it became even far too easy to get them while taking some stupid picture. This time, again with the help of my super zoom camera, I got a picture of a girl that was taking a picture at the ruins of St. Paul while holding, with the other hand, a small action figure of some manga character next the Ruins themselves. Of course, still not much satisfied of her, I even pictured the screen of her digital camera. Yes, that was a really silly picture. Then, feeling like a superstar surrounded by thousand paparazzi, aware that probably before evening I’d be in hundreds of pictures, I started to walk up the stairway.
The façade is made of a thick wall, with three doors in the lower floor and three huge windows in the upper floor. On the sides of the windows and between them, there are four different statues. Above the three windows there are three more ideal storeys. In the third and fourth there are two central niches with statues, and in the fifth floor there is the statue of a Dove.
When I was just before it, I felt that it was so big. I tried to take a picture with my wider lens, but it was impossible. Even from the farthest place in the terrace before the façade, I couldn’t make it fit into a single image. It was a picture frenzy. Everybody was picturing and the sound of shutters and beeping from the cameras was becoming and uniform, single, sound. I went through the central gate and I entered the Cathedral. The inside part was made of just a square with, every now and then, some parts of the floor made of glass with some stones and pieces of walls in display below them.
At the opposite end of the square, that lies where once was the nave of the Cathedral, there is the so called “Crypt”. I went down there, and I went in the depth of the inner secret of the Cathedral. That means, a flight of stairs down. While there, there were lots of people in the single big room used as a museum. On the outside of the room people has to pass by what look ruins. Like to remember that 200 years before the Cathedral was burn to ashes and Macau people were so busy, or lazy, to not clear the crumbled walls.
Inside the same museum there are some old Christian artifacts, like crosses and relics. Probably the most important one is a very huge statue of Francis Xavier. While there a girl asked me if I knew him. I said “Yeah, he's Saint Francis Xavier, we share the same name, how to you know him?” and she told me that in Japan, as turned out that she was Japanese, kids learn at school that Saint Francis Xavier took the Christianity in Asia, Japan too. Probably that's why she stared at me with big eyes when I told her that I've the same name. Actually, now, after such a long time, I wonder if she thought that my name was Xavier and not Francis. I'll never know. Unless I'll bump into her before another Saint Francis Xavier statue.
The visit lasted short, and I came back to the surface. I went up the flight of stairs and I crossed the nave-square. Before leaving this place, I noticed that there were stairs that took at the first floor of the facade. I couldn't miss it. So, I went there, and I climbed the very crowded stairway. People were walking up and down with quite a confusion. I guess that the main rule was “I'll go straight, or you'll dodge me, or I'll push you off the railings”. Once on the upper floor, my superstar inner feelings did their best as I went to a window aware that so many people were picturing me. I felt like a Prime Minister or a King that it approaching to talk at a window.
Ladies and Gentlemen... Ahhh... Hmmm... Well...
I guess that it'd be the start of one of my speeches. Anyway, the legend says that, when you're up there, if you throw a coin through the central window, it'll bring you good luck. Perhaps, that's the reason why there were so many coins around. But I still wonder if it's enough to put a coin on the wall, like many coins were, or if I've to hit a tourist on the head. Like that old Chinese-looking guy with beige hat, a camera stuck on his face and smile without two single parallel teeth. I wonder what a good luck to hit him.
I looked around, took some pictures and I went back. I went down the steel stairs, still with the same rule of putting all that tourists-herd off the stairs. Then, back to the square, and again across the facade. At this point, I turned around and I wished “See you again” to the facade of the Ruínas de São Paulo. And I left them, to come back by the same street from where I arrived.
I couldn't be more right to say “See you again”, but I didn't know yet.
I went down, first the stairway and then the same street with the sweet shops. At this point, after the fulfillment of my second objective of the day, the first was reaching Macau, while the second was reaching for the Ruínas de São Paulo, I decided to get free my shoppingholic instincts. And which better place than the Koi Kei shop. I entered it, and in spite it was crammed with Asians buying any sort of sweet, it was still plenty room to move and to enough samples to taste. The shop itself was a sort of a huge big room with two counters with the casher, one next the entrance and one in the middle. All around the walls that circled the room, shelve after shelve, layer by layer the walls were covered with boxes of any kind of size, color and shape, filled with sweets of any kind, from candies to chocolates and to biscuits of any kind of ingredient. A sugary maze, a chocolate galore, a psychedelic combination of colors and Asian writings. I didn’t think of Macau like this, but this was a shape of it reality too. At least, a piece of a tourist-oriented-retailer-reality. Most of the waiters were focused on the Asian clients, while the few others were interested in nothing at all. This means that I could wander around freely without having a waiter-shaped shadow. I guess that Asians tourist, especially those from the big herds, are good clients, ready to buy any sort of thing there inside. On the other hand, we Westerners, owner of a fine sweets culture, are harder to be satisfied and we buy less. I checked around and in the end I decided to buy some typical toffee sweets made with peanuts. I bought a very nice big bag and I stuffed it into my nice backpack. Now my shoppingholic instinct was satisfied and I could keep going with my exploration of Macau.
I went all the way back, with the street still fully crammed with people. There were moments that we were looking like being in queue waiting to enter somewhere, there were too many people, and I only wished to escape that crowd madness. The beauty of Macau had been spoiled by so many tourists, and I guess that probably, at night when most of the day-trippers would be back in their fancy hotels or dining in their perfect-for-group-tourists restaurants, Macau would take back part of her beauty.
Macau – Deusa A-Ma Temple
I went to the Largo do Senado, I crossed it, and I went down the street, that is Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro, from where came my bus from the Terminal Maritimo. Here I checked casually the windows while going to take a bus that would take me to the Deusa A-Ma temple, but I found an offer that I couldn’t refuse. It was a silly restaurant that worked also like an Ice-Cream Parlor, which was offering noodle soups at ridiculous price. I had to take one, especially, because it was past midday. So, I entered the place, I took a tray, I placed my order, a noodle soup with maize, spinach and an ingredient with a weird pink color, a Coke and I took a seat next to the window on Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro. I waited short, then I took my postcard out of the backpack and I started writing it. As soon as I placed the pen on the card, my food arrived. It was smoking, nice smelling and colorful. It was at that point that I wondered what was that bizarrely pink colored thing in my dish. It was shaped like a chunk something. It was white with a pink spiral spinning wildly to the centre. Some sort of a lollipop shaped thing, but I doubted it was a lollipop.
Then, the song by Alexandra Stan exploded in my mind… It says with flat, boring uninterested voice (I hate that song!)
I like the candy, I like the chocolate…
The ice cream is very good but…
I just love my lollipop Because I'm delicious just when…
When I lick,
I lick my lollipop.
I should add, I don’t like that song as much as I don’t like lollipops. And the problem is that the song pops-out in the worst moments. Like in a serendipity of when, you sit on a side of Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro, watching the daylife of Macau to flow slowly in front of you in a glowing daylight. You’re writing a postcard to a friend, trying to describe some of the emotions that you feel in that moment, while a smoking dish of noodle soup comes to you, and when you watch it, you find inside of it a lollipop looking ingredient. That’s a serendipity. Quite useless serendipity, but still one. And a second later, like a thunderbolt, you start to remember “…I'm delicious just when… When I lick, I lick my lollipop…”.
The noodle soup was very good. It had some seafood inside too. The mysterious ingredient was some sort of a tasteless surimi, a fish paste that instead of being white, it was made of two layers, one white, one pink, and then rolled over and over. Probably it’s more popular in China and Japan than in SEA, as I never found it before in Thailand or Malaysia. Malaysia, I was missing her. I liked Macau, but were a couple of days that I was keeping on thinking that I’d better to stay longer in Malaysia, and have some beach life, for example in Penang, at north of Kuala Lumpur. Yes, that’d sound like a smart idea that I missed.
I finished my dish of noodle soup and I left the shop, coming back into the heat of the day. I made my way down the street until I met a small park that fully equipped with fitness tools. I wonder how many people would fancy to make some fitness in that small park, about the size of a big flowerbed, placed in the middle of a large round point. But the shadow provided by the trees was tempting.
I crossed the street and I found a board with written the bus lines. Here I found the one that would take me to the place that I wished to visit, that was the Deusa A-Ma temple. So, I took the first bus of the line 5, and I left the centre. The bus run first went through normal neighborhoods, and then it went through some slums. It didn’t take long, and soon, the bus arrived on the coastline, then a marina, a finally at the square before the temple.
The square was mostly deserted, except for some tourist that was trying to reach for the Temple entrance keeping under the shadow of the trees. As the tourists, as I’m one too, I also kept track of my way following the shadow spots on the way to the temple entrance.
The temple itself is quite important. It was build in the 1448 as a place of worship of the Goddess Matsu, the Goddess protector of fishermen and sailors. The legend says that when the first Portuguese sailors arrived on the island, they asked at the indigenous people what was the name of the place, and they replied “Matsu”, and it was understood by the Portuguese sailors as “Macau”, and since then, they kept on using this name.
The entrance of the temple is free. You’ve to approach it, and enter it. Once inside, you can follow an ideal track that will lead you, like following the stones of a rosary, up and down a small hill visiting all the shrines along the way. During the visit is quite peculiar to find huge stones, like cliffs of the hill, carved in neat Chinese symbols. I don’t know what they meant, but really a lot of Asians were queuing, not much patiently, to take a picture with the symbols. Of course, as the “Rule of the big camera” states, as soon as many people seen me with my camera, I was stopped by a horde of Chinese people to take them pictures.
Rule of the big camera 1: It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional photographer or not. The bigger is your camera, the more cameras you’ve hanging on you, the most people will think of you like a genius of the photography. And then, everybody will stop you to take them a picture. So, hide your cameras.
I was there, when a Chinese guy seen me and came to ask me to take him a picture. Then came a girl, then some white-shirt-black-tie guys, again some your guy and then some older too. It was long, and in the end, when somebody approached again, I went away.
The more you’ll wander around this temple, the more interesting places you’ll see around. Many shrines are scattered all around, most of which are dedicated to the Goddess Matsu. Then, there are some smaller temple and also bigger ones with the typical incense. This incense is shaped like huge hanging spirals. Since they are ignited, they last about a month, and the air all around has a very strong smell of them. At some point, they even form some sort of a incense-smelling mist. It feels really like in some holy place. If it weren’t all those people around, it’d look like a place taken straight from a fantasy movie.
While there, I found some nice places to picture, and then a beautiful circular gate too. I wished to have a picture with it too. So, I looked around, and I found a person to ask to take me the picture.
Rule of the big camera 2: If you need that somebody will take you a picture, stick to people with the biggest cameras, or the bigger number of cameras hanging on themselves. They’ll surely be genius of photography.
She was a huge camera wielding girl. I asked her to take me a picture, and I gave her my smaller camera. She took me the picture, gave my camera back and sprinted away. I checked the picture and it was perfectly done wrong. I’m glad that I’m not the friend of that girl that will not have to undergo her show of holiday-pictures. All out of focus, all pending on a side, none of them nearly nice. Like that time that I was invited by a friend from her trip to Paris with her boyfriend. She just downloaded the pictures on her laptop and I was the lucky first viewer. She started the pictures and all of them was blurred on the right hand side. She didn’t notice that in the beginning of her trip she had stuck a finger on the lens of the camera and dirtied it. As result all were blurred.
I kept on wandering around the temple and I found some very nice spots. My favorite ones were those with the incense spirals. Then, as following the suggested way, I came back to the main gate. The visit, in the end, didn’t last much. Now it was time to come back to the centre, as the area didn’t look so interesting. I went by a small shop where I bought a can of ice-cold green-tea drink, and I went to wait for my bus. On the other side of the street, some Westerner people were walking down the street, in broad daylight, wearing black clothes, black hats and black raincoats.
My bus arrived after such a long wait, and then, I made the way back to Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro, where I went down the bus.
Then, the song by Alexandra Stan exploded in my mind… It says with flat, boring uninterested voice (I hate that song!)
I like the candy, I like the chocolate…
The ice cream is very good but…
I just love my lollipop Because I'm delicious just when…
When I lick,
I lick my lollipop.
I should add, I don’t like that song as much as I don’t like lollipops. And the problem is that the song pops-out in the worst moments. Like in a serendipity of when, you sit on a side of Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro, watching the daylife of Macau to flow slowly in front of you in a glowing daylight. You’re writing a postcard to a friend, trying to describe some of the emotions that you feel in that moment, while a smoking dish of noodle soup comes to you, and when you watch it, you find inside of it a lollipop looking ingredient. That’s a serendipity. Quite useless serendipity, but still one. And a second later, like a thunderbolt, you start to remember “…I'm delicious just when… When I lick, I lick my lollipop…”.
The noodle soup was very good. It had some seafood inside too. The mysterious ingredient was some sort of a tasteless surimi, a fish paste that instead of being white, it was made of two layers, one white, one pink, and then rolled over and over. Probably it’s more popular in China and Japan than in SEA, as I never found it before in Thailand or Malaysia. Malaysia, I was missing her. I liked Macau, but were a couple of days that I was keeping on thinking that I’d better to stay longer in Malaysia, and have some beach life, for example in Penang, at north of Kuala Lumpur. Yes, that’d sound like a smart idea that I missed.
I finished my dish of noodle soup and I left the shop, coming back into the heat of the day. I made my way down the street until I met a small park that fully equipped with fitness tools. I wonder how many people would fancy to make some fitness in that small park, about the size of a big flowerbed, placed in the middle of a large round point. But the shadow provided by the trees was tempting.
I crossed the street and I found a board with written the bus lines. Here I found the one that would take me to the place that I wished to visit, that was the Deusa A-Ma temple. So, I took the first bus of the line 5, and I left the centre. The bus run first went through normal neighborhoods, and then it went through some slums. It didn’t take long, and soon, the bus arrived on the coastline, then a marina, a finally at the square before the temple.
The square was mostly deserted, except for some tourist that was trying to reach for the Temple entrance keeping under the shadow of the trees. As the tourists, as I’m one too, I also kept track of my way following the shadow spots on the way to the temple entrance.
The temple itself is quite important. It was build in the 1448 as a place of worship of the Goddess Matsu, the Goddess protector of fishermen and sailors. The legend says that when the first Portuguese sailors arrived on the island, they asked at the indigenous people what was the name of the place, and they replied “Matsu”, and it was understood by the Portuguese sailors as “Macau”, and since then, they kept on using this name.
The entrance of the temple is free. You’ve to approach it, and enter it. Once inside, you can follow an ideal track that will lead you, like following the stones of a rosary, up and down a small hill visiting all the shrines along the way. During the visit is quite peculiar to find huge stones, like cliffs of the hill, carved in neat Chinese symbols. I don’t know what they meant, but really a lot of Asians were queuing, not much patiently, to take a picture with the symbols. Of course, as the “Rule of the big camera” states, as soon as many people seen me with my camera, I was stopped by a horde of Chinese people to take them pictures.
Rule of the big camera 1: It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional photographer or not. The bigger is your camera, the more cameras you’ve hanging on you, the most people will think of you like a genius of the photography. And then, everybody will stop you to take them a picture. So, hide your cameras.
I was there, when a Chinese guy seen me and came to ask me to take him a picture. Then came a girl, then some white-shirt-black-tie guys, again some your guy and then some older too. It was long, and in the end, when somebody approached again, I went away.
The more you’ll wander around this temple, the more interesting places you’ll see around. Many shrines are scattered all around, most of which are dedicated to the Goddess Matsu. Then, there are some smaller temple and also bigger ones with the typical incense. This incense is shaped like huge hanging spirals. Since they are ignited, they last about a month, and the air all around has a very strong smell of them. At some point, they even form some sort of a incense-smelling mist. It feels really like in some holy place. If it weren’t all those people around, it’d look like a place taken straight from a fantasy movie.
While there, I found some nice places to picture, and then a beautiful circular gate too. I wished to have a picture with it too. So, I looked around, and I found a person to ask to take me the picture.
Rule of the big camera 2: If you need that somebody will take you a picture, stick to people with the biggest cameras, or the bigger number of cameras hanging on themselves. They’ll surely be genius of photography.
She was a huge camera wielding girl. I asked her to take me a picture, and I gave her my smaller camera. She took me the picture, gave my camera back and sprinted away. I checked the picture and it was perfectly done wrong. I’m glad that I’m not the friend of that girl that will not have to undergo her show of holiday-pictures. All out of focus, all pending on a side, none of them nearly nice. Like that time that I was invited by a friend from her trip to Paris with her boyfriend. She just downloaded the pictures on her laptop and I was the lucky first viewer. She started the pictures and all of them was blurred on the right hand side. She didn’t notice that in the beginning of her trip she had stuck a finger on the lens of the camera and dirtied it. As result all were blurred.
I kept on wandering around the temple and I found some very nice spots. My favorite ones were those with the incense spirals. Then, as following the suggested way, I came back to the main gate. The visit, in the end, didn’t last much. Now it was time to come back to the centre, as the area didn’t look so interesting. I went by a small shop where I bought a can of ice-cold green-tea drink, and I went to wait for my bus. On the other side of the street, some Westerner people were walking down the street, in broad daylight, wearing black clothes, black hats and black raincoats.
My bus arrived after such a long wait, and then, I made the way back to Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro, where I went down the bus.
Macau – Sunset in Macau and coming back to Hong Kong
It was still too early to come back at the Terminal Maritimo. So, I wandered around. I first tried to reach for a huge casino that I’ve seen from far, but once I reached the grounds next to it, the casino didn’t look so pretty anymore. So, I came back to the Senado Square. Once in the square, I noticed that there were much less people around, and locals were setting up some sort of stalls. I went to look what they were doing, and they were displaying portraits of some people. I didn’t understand a single word of what they were saying, but by the large number of people gathering around and the tone of the speech of the people, it looked like they were talking about some local politician in the occasion of some local election.
I went down the square, now almost empty, I went on a side of it, and I entered an electronic shop. I wanted to see the prices. There were computers as well as mobile phones and other electronic devices. I wished to check for the price of Tablet computers, and I discovered that in spite Asia is known as a country where to save a lot of cash for electronic junk, in the end I’d save only a little money. So, I decided to not buy that sort of stuff there and keep my money for the trip. I still remembered when in Kuala Lumpur I refused to buy some lenses for my camera, where I’d save something like just 50 Euro, and I needed that money just few days later in Hong Kong. By good luck I didn’t buy them.
I decided to go back to the Ruínas de São Paulo. It looked like that my spell “See you again” worked properly. Along the way, I bought another Asian beverage. It was “Bamboo Water”. I took it as I thought it might be a lightly bamboo tasting mineral water, or maybe some sort of tea. It was nothing of them both. It was wood tasting mineral water. It was unbelievable. It felt like eating a wood pulp broth. I’m always open to try new foods, but this wasn’t actually my cup of tea, literally. So, I threw it in the garbage without finishing it, and I stuck at my warm water bottle.
I made all the way back to the Ruins, and when I reached there, the place was much less empty. I sat on a small wall and stared at the façade. The sun was starting to go down, and the façade was already beginning to turn its colors into more orange shades of its original ones. Every moment the place was beginning to be more quiet and all of a sudden, I sensed a thing that I missed before. The birds. All around there were many birds, and they were flying and tweeting. I missed them in the morning chaos of that place. I took my backpack off, I placed it on the wall and I laid on the same low wall using the backpack as a cushion. I looked at the façade and in short I briefly fell asleep at the sound of the birds and with the air was less hot than earlier.
I woke up that the façade was almost all covered in shadow. The sun was already going down fast. I checked my wristwatch to see what time it was.
Damn, I was going to be late.
I can’t believe that I’ve always to be late. Even in Macau. I wore my backpack again, I said one more time “See you again” to the Ruínas de São Paulo, and I went away. I went all the way back to Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro, along many other tourists carrying their yellow and brown bags from the Koi Kei shops. When I seen them, I thought “I’ve my Koi Kei bag in my backpack”. The pride of a shoppingholic.
I reached Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro and I waited for my bus. It wasn’t coming. I kept on waiting, keeping watch at my wristwatch. The time was ticking and I had to be soon at the Terminal Maritimo de Macau.
Then, slowly, like a slow motion appearance within the traffic, appeared my bus. I hopped in, and it left the centre. All the traffic around the city was jammed. The bus was running few meters and then it stopped, then again few meters and it stopped again, and like this over and over.
After such a long waiting for such a short way, the Terminal Maritimo appeared, but we weren’t there yet. The traffic in front of the Terminal Maritimo is arranged in a clockwise flow, in a way that, just outside the Terminal gates, the busses and taxis are ready to leave for the centre. It was again all stuck. The Terminal Maritimo de Macau was a mirage beyond the stained windows of the bus.
The bus arrived and I jumped outside. I started to run to the gates, I went speeding through the entrance room and dodging the tourist heading to the check-ins. I arrived, I checked-in, my backpack was X-Ray scanned and I was free to enter. As soon as I entered the waiting room, a sailor called for attention and said that they were boarding. I had just been in time. One minute later and I'd be stopped before the gates.
I entered the red, super fashionable, speed boat. The air was chilly and the inside were very clean. A sailor shown me the way to my seat, it was in the upper deck, still in the central row, in the back seats. Back seats, like in that song by Scissor Sisters “Lovers in the Backseats”, but I was there with old Chinese guys and not a lover. That's dismal.
She's quiet when she’s down
Strangers from other towns
Nowhere to be found
On this side of the scene
Would you like a cigarette,
Or my hand upon your shoulder?
I think we might have met
Would you like me to come over?
The speed boat started in perfect time. The engines thundered and the boat leaned forward. I sat comfortably and soon, as the boat was speeding off the harbor, I fell off to sleep. A dream, a song, a chilly tropical breeze. No, that was simply the air conditioning.
The boat arrived in Hong Kong in perfect time. We were disembarked and I had to undergo, one more time, the immigration procedures. The Chinese officer looked at my passport picture, then he looked at the less-shaven more-sweat version of the picture that he had before him. He glanced one more time at the picture with some doubt. For a second I thought that he took me for some sort of criminal, maybe a criminal that wandered around the world mistreating Old Chinese Men. But then, he stomped my passport and I was free to enter Hong Kong again.
The city was already under the coat of the night. Lights and neons were flashing everywhere, and the smell of food was starting to appear in the air of the night. My friend, the smell of fried rice, came to welcome me in Hong Kong.
I went through the underground city of the Central Hong Kong Station, which was lit with cold neon white lights. Lots of people were going in every direction, human shapes were appearing for a split second before melting again in this multidimensional cold chaos. The beehive, where bees fly in every direction, symbol of a natural innate organization was at the antipodes. This was a confusion witnessed only by the neon and the closing shops on the sides of the hallways. Everybody looked like commended by his or hers personal queen bee, perhaps, thanks also to the free Wifi connection. My smartphone looked happy to connect freely to my mail and so easily. My social network was starting to take over me too. After a second of weakness I turned the smartphone off, and I was again free.
I took the Tsuen Wan Line, the red line, until the Jordan station, where I went off. I came back to the surface and soon I arrived into my hotel and my wonderful room. It was time to relax a bit and to plan my next move.
First thing first, the shower. It felt wonderful. Then I hung my soaked in sweat clothes and I got fancily dressed again. My plan was to go first to a restaurant that was suggested in my guide book and then to go to dance some Latin Music in a club called “Salsa Passion @ Dancin' Jupiter” as “Dancin' Jupiter” should be the real name of the club.
I went again out in the Hong Kong night, I went down the street and soon I was again in Nathan Road. I went northward and very soon I arrived at the “Fung Shing Restaurant”. I entered it and I was welcomed by a middle aged lady at a front desk. She asked me if I wanted to go to the restaurant. I guessed that, probably, in the same entrance there were also the entrances for other places. Still the building reminded me of the “National Court”, but this entrance was really clean and people were dressed quite classy. A Chinese Classy style. A Chinese imitation of a Western Classy style.
The Classy Lady asked me how many we were.
“Two, me and my imaginary friend, three if you also count my smartphone”, that's what I wanted to answer. But I said “One”.
She looked with an half smile and replied “You're alone?”.
“No, we're two, but my imaginary friend is late as he's killing the Old Chinese Man”. I didn't say this, but I turned on myself like if I were looking if there was somebody behind of me, and I watched her again “Yes Miss, I'm still one”.
She said something in Chinese to a broad smiling boy dressed in a fake copy of a carnival fancy dress of a chef, and he welcomed me to enter.
The restaurant reminded quite much the one where I've eaten the day before near the Wong Tai Sing Temple. It was quite clean, bright, very noisy and damn cold. It looked like it had one thousand air-conditioning nozzles all pointing to my table.
I sat down at a table that could host at least four people all around and a lot of dishes in the middle. All the tables around me were occupied by large groups of noisy Chinese people, some were looking like people off from work, while others were looking like families. Then, among them, there was a Chinese couple, sitting next to a wall, they already had many dishes on the table, when arrived two new saucers with over two huge lobsters. The man looked like was enjoying the lobster, while the lady didn’t look very happy of that food. Soon later came to sit, at the table next to mine, a Western guy. More than a tourist, he looked like an expat and looked like he knew the waiters quite well as he was joking both in English and Chinese with them.
I relaxed a bit while texting home with my phone, then arrived the waiter that took me the Menu. The menu itself was extensive. I couldn’t believe that they could do all those things. I browsed it and I chose a large variety of Dim Sums. I decided to have a Dim Sum based dinner. So, I placed my order and while waiting, I checked at the other foods available in the shop. Unbelievably, they had also Bird Nest Soup and Shark Fin Soup, both with scary prices.
My food arrived and I started to pick my Dim Sums and eating them. They were all so much delicious that it’d be hard to write a chart of the best. Perhaps, the best one, for me, would be the Char Siu Baau, the roast pork Dim Sum.
The Char Siu Baau, is amazing. It's made with bread dough filled with minced grilled pork. Then, it can be steamed or stoven. I had the steamed ones. They come to you in a bamboo steaming box. They are white like snow, soft like clouds and mildly sweet. Biting this soft dumplings is like caressing your own lips with powdered sugar covered cotton. It's a feather caress to the lips. The mind can run wild with such sensorial experiences.
Dim Sum
Dim sum restaurants have a wide variety of dishes, usually several dozen. Among the standard fare of dim sum are the following:
Main
1. Gao, or Dumpling (Chinese: 餃; 餃子; Cantonese Yale: gaau; gaau ji): Jiao zi is a standard in most teahouses. They are made of ingredients wrapped in a translucent rice flour or wheat starch skin, and are different from jiaozi found in other parts of China. Though common, steamed rice-flour skins are quite difficult to make. Thus, it is a good demonstration of the chef's artistry to make these translucent dumplings. There are also dumplings with vegetarian ingredients, such as tofu and pickled cabbage.
Shrimp Dumpling (蝦餃 ha gaau): A delicate steamed dumpling with whole or chopped-up shrimp filling and thin wheat starch skin.
2. Chiu-chao style dumplings (潮州粉果 chiu-chau fan guo): A dumpling said to have originated from the Chaozhou prefecture of eastern Guangdong province, it contains peanuts, garlic, chives, pork, dried shrimp, Chinese mushrooms in a thick dumpling wrapper made from glutinous rice flour or Tang flour. It is usually served with a small dish of chili oil.
3. Potsticker (鍋貼, gwoh tip / guo tie): Northern Chinese style of dumpling (steamed and then pan-fried jiaozi), usually with meat and cabbage filling. Note that although potstickers are sometimes served in dim sum restaurants, they are not considered traditional Cantonese dim sum.
4. Shaomai (燒賣 siu maai): Small steamed dumplings with either pork, prawns or both inside a thin wheat flour wrapper. Usually topped off with crab roe and mushroom.
5. Haam Sui Gaau (鹹水餃, salt-water (i.e. savoury) stuffed-dumpling, alternatively 鹹水角 (haam sui gok): deep fried oval-shaped dumpling made with rice-flour and filled with pork and chopped vegetables. The rice-flour surrounding is sweet and sticky, while the inside is slightly salty.
6. Bau (包 baau or 包子 baau ji): Baked or steamed, these fluffy buns made from wheat flour are filled with food items ranging from meat to vegetables to sweet bean pastes.
7. Char siu baau (叉燒包, cha siu baau): the most popular bun with a Cantonese barbecued pork filling. It can be either steamed to be fluffy and white or baked with a light sugar glaze to produce a smooth golden-brown crust.
8. Shanghai steamed buns (上海小籠包 seong hoi siu lung baau): These dumplings are filled with meat or seafood and are famous for their flavor and rich broth inside. These dumplings are originally Shanghainese so they are not considered traditional Cantonese dim sum. They are typically sold with pork as a filling.
9. Rice noodle rolls or cheung fan (腸粉 cheung4 fan2): These are wide rice noodles that are steamed and then rolled. They are often filled with different types of meats or vegetables inside but can be served without any filling. Rice noodle rolls are fried after they are steamed and then sprinkled with sesame seeds. Popular fillings include beef, dough fritter, shrimp, and barbecued pork. Often topped with a sweetened soy sauce.
10. Phoenix claws (鳳爪 fung zao): These are chicken feet, deep fried, boiled, marinated in a black bean sauce and then steamed. This results in a texture that is light and fluffy (due to the frying), while moist and tender. Fung zau are typically dark red in color. One may also sometimes find plain steamed chicken feet served with a vinegar dipping sauce. This version is known as "White Cloud Phoenix Claws" (白雲鳳爪, baak wan fung jaau).
11. Steamed meatball (牛肉球 ngau juk kau): Finely-ground beef is shaped into balls and then steamed with preserved orange peel and served on top of a thin bean-curd skin.
12. Spare ribs: In the west, it is mostly known as spare ribs collectively. In the east, it is Char siu when roasted red, or (排骨 paai gwat, páigǔ) when roasted black. It is typically steamed with douchi or fermented black beans and sometimes sliced chilli.
13. Lotus leaf rice (糯米雞 lo mai gai): Glutinous rice is wrapped in a lotus leaf into a triangular or rectangular shape. It contains egg yolk, dried scallop, mushroom, water chestnut and meat (usually pork and chicken). These ingredients are steamed with the rice and although the leaf is not eaten, its flavour is infused during the steaming. Lo mai gai is a kind of rice dumpling. A similar but lighter variant is known as "Pearl Chicken" (珍珠雞 jan jyu gai).
14. Congee (粥 juk): Thick, sticky rice porridge served with different savory items. The porridge one will see most often is "Duck Egg and Pork Porridge" (皮蛋瘦肉粥 "pei daan sau juk zuk")
15. Sou (酥 sou): A type of flaky pastry. Char siu is one of the most common ingredient used in dim sum style sou. Another common pastry seen in restaurants are called "Salty Pastry" (鹹水角 "haam sui gok") which is made with flour and seasoned pork.
16. Taro dumpling (芋角 wu gok): This is made with mashed taro, stuffed with diced shiitake mushrooms, shrimp and pork, deep-fried in crispy batter.
17. Crispy fried squid (魷魚鬚 yau yu sou): Similar to fried calamari, the battered squid is deep-fried. A variation of this dish may be prepared with a salt and pepper mix. In some dim sum restaurants, octopus is used instead of squid.
· Rolls (捲)
1. Spring roll (春捲 cheun gyun): a roll consisting of various types of vegetables — such as sliced carrot, cabbage, mushroom and wood ear fungus — and sometimes meat are rolled inside a thin flour skin and deep fried.
2. Tofu skin roll (腐皮捲 fu pei guen): a roll made of Tofu skin
· Cakes (糕)
1. Turnip cake (蘿蔔糕 lo baak gou): cakes are made from mashed daikon radish mixed with bits of dried shrimp and pork sausage that are steamed and then cut into slices and pan-fried.
2. Taro cake (芋頭糕 wu tao gou): cakes made of taro.
3. Water chestnut cake (馬蹄糕 ma tai gou): cakes made of water chestnut. It is mostly see-through and clear. Some restaurants also serve a variation of water chestnut cake made with bamboo juice.
4. Chien chang go (千層糕 cin cang gou): "Thousand-layer cake", a dim sum dessert made up of many layers of sweet egg dough.
5. zh:灌湯餃(kwun tong gau or goon tong gau): soup with pork, shrimp and dumpling.
· Sweets
1. Egg tart (蛋撻 daan taat): composed of a base made from either a flaky puff pastry type dough or a type of non-flaky cookie dough with an egg custard filling, which is then baked. Some high class restaurants put bird's nest on top of the custard. In other places egg tarts can be made of a crust and a filling of egg whites and some where it is a crust with egg yolks. Some egg tarts now have flavors such as taro, coffee, and other flavors. There are also different kinds of crust. There is also a flaky crisp outer crust with layers and layers of crunchy crumbs.
2. Jin deui or Matuan (煎堆 or 麻糰): Especially popular at Chinese New Year, a chewy dough filled with red bean paste, rolled in sesame seeds, and deep fried.
3. Dou fu fa (豆腐花): A dessert consisting of silky tofu served with a sweet ginger or jasmine flavored syrup.
4. Mango pudding (芒果布甸 mong guo bou din): A sweet, rich mango-flavoured pudding usually with large chunks of fresh mango; often served with a topping of evaporated milk.
5. Sweet cream buns (奶皇包 naai wong baau): Steamed buns with milk custard filling.
6. Malay Steamed Sponge Cake (馬拉糕 ma laai gou): A very soft steamed sponge cake flavoured with molasses.
7. Longan Tofu: almond-flavoured tofu served with longans, usually cold.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dim_sum#Dishes
The food was amazing and in the end, when I left the place, I paid a ridicule low price. That was so good too.
I went out of the restaurant and I headed to the Jordan metro station. Here I took the Tsuen Wan Line, the red line, and I went again to Hong Kong Island. This time I got off the metro at Admiralty station, and I took a train of the Island Line, the Blue Line, until the “Fortress Hill” station.
Once in Fortress Hill, I went out of the station. Before leaving for my trip I drew a small map of the area in order to find the “Dancin' Jupiter”. I found easily the street, that is Jupiter Street and also the building, but it was all dark. So, I entered the building and I went to some guardians. I asked them for an information, and one of them, which spoke a very good English, told me that the club was close. I asked if he changed the night as, before leaving for the trip, it was advertised on internet as working. He answered “forever”. That means, that the club wouldn’t open anymore. It had been a waste of time.
I made my way back to the “Fortress Hill” station, and while going in that direction, in the almost deserted streets I considered that it was the second time that in Asia I looked for a Latin Dancing Club, which was advertised as working, and I found it closed. Actually, when I searched the dancing club in Thailand, I discovered that in the meantime it turned to be a GoGo Bar, a bar where customers can take home the waiters and dancers.
Seeing that the club was closed and it was still early, I decided to go for the “Plan B”, that means to go to D'Aguilar Street, not very far, which is known as the core of the young tourists nightlife.
I took again the “Island Line”, the Blue Line, and I went out at the Hong Kong Central station. Just nearby, some blocks uphill, there is the D'Aguilar Street.
The place that people call D'Aguilar Street, is just an area, with 3-4 small streets crossing each other, which are packed with clubs, bars and pubs. The crowd is impressive, the music is high everywhere and it looks just like an huge party in the streets.
I wandered a bit around and then I stuck at a club where I had first a “Sex on the beach” and then a Martini based drink. It was time to plan what to do the next day. That night would be my last night at the Hotel as there wouldn’t be more vacant rooms for the following night. The next day would be my last one in Hong Kong too. I sorted the options and I ideally wrote the plan of the next day.
I considered that the first day in Hong Kong I’ve had such an hard time to find free rooms, and moreover, if I found a Hotel, I’d have to make the check-in in the afternoon and not in the morning. This would mean, wasting another day. No, I was starting to get very irritated with Hong Kong. So, I decided that, the next morning I’d wake up early, I’d go to the Airport and see if the Hotel Association would help me to find a place somewhere in spite strolling again through all Hong Kong, but this time with both backpacks. If I’d find an Hotel, I’d come back in town, otherwise, I still had two options. The fist, to leave my luggage at a luggage depot, maybe to have a stroll on Lantau Island, where is also the airport, and visit the Buddhist Temple, then I could spend the night at the Airport. The other option would be to find a way to come back to Thailand earlier, and there I’d be easy for me to find a cheap accommodation.
I finished my drink and I went back the way to Central. Unluckily, I wasted my time and it was too late for the metro, so I had to take a taxi to come back. The driver was absolutely nuts. He was driving like a crazy down the dark streets at night. I guess that he wanted to make it fast in order to come back to D'Aguilar Street to make some more cash.
When I arrived at my hotel and I went up to my room. First thing I packed my backpacks leaving outside only my casual clothes for the following day trip. Then, it was time to go to sleep.
Good night Hong Kong, I’m not sure that you like my staying here.
I went down the square, now almost empty, I went on a side of it, and I entered an electronic shop. I wanted to see the prices. There were computers as well as mobile phones and other electronic devices. I wished to check for the price of Tablet computers, and I discovered that in spite Asia is known as a country where to save a lot of cash for electronic junk, in the end I’d save only a little money. So, I decided to not buy that sort of stuff there and keep my money for the trip. I still remembered when in Kuala Lumpur I refused to buy some lenses for my camera, where I’d save something like just 50 Euro, and I needed that money just few days later in Hong Kong. By good luck I didn’t buy them.
I decided to go back to the Ruínas de São Paulo. It looked like that my spell “See you again” worked properly. Along the way, I bought another Asian beverage. It was “Bamboo Water”. I took it as I thought it might be a lightly bamboo tasting mineral water, or maybe some sort of tea. It was nothing of them both. It was wood tasting mineral water. It was unbelievable. It felt like eating a wood pulp broth. I’m always open to try new foods, but this wasn’t actually my cup of tea, literally. So, I threw it in the garbage without finishing it, and I stuck at my warm water bottle.
I made all the way back to the Ruins, and when I reached there, the place was much less empty. I sat on a small wall and stared at the façade. The sun was starting to go down, and the façade was already beginning to turn its colors into more orange shades of its original ones. Every moment the place was beginning to be more quiet and all of a sudden, I sensed a thing that I missed before. The birds. All around there were many birds, and they were flying and tweeting. I missed them in the morning chaos of that place. I took my backpack off, I placed it on the wall and I laid on the same low wall using the backpack as a cushion. I looked at the façade and in short I briefly fell asleep at the sound of the birds and with the air was less hot than earlier.
I woke up that the façade was almost all covered in shadow. The sun was already going down fast. I checked my wristwatch to see what time it was.
Damn, I was going to be late.
I can’t believe that I’ve always to be late. Even in Macau. I wore my backpack again, I said one more time “See you again” to the Ruínas de São Paulo, and I went away. I went all the way back to Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro, along many other tourists carrying their yellow and brown bags from the Koi Kei shops. When I seen them, I thought “I’ve my Koi Kei bag in my backpack”. The pride of a shoppingholic.
I reached Avenue Almeida de Ribeiro and I waited for my bus. It wasn’t coming. I kept on waiting, keeping watch at my wristwatch. The time was ticking and I had to be soon at the Terminal Maritimo de Macau.
Then, slowly, like a slow motion appearance within the traffic, appeared my bus. I hopped in, and it left the centre. All the traffic around the city was jammed. The bus was running few meters and then it stopped, then again few meters and it stopped again, and like this over and over.
After such a long waiting for such a short way, the Terminal Maritimo appeared, but we weren’t there yet. The traffic in front of the Terminal Maritimo is arranged in a clockwise flow, in a way that, just outside the Terminal gates, the busses and taxis are ready to leave for the centre. It was again all stuck. The Terminal Maritimo de Macau was a mirage beyond the stained windows of the bus.
The bus arrived and I jumped outside. I started to run to the gates, I went speeding through the entrance room and dodging the tourist heading to the check-ins. I arrived, I checked-in, my backpack was X-Ray scanned and I was free to enter. As soon as I entered the waiting room, a sailor called for attention and said that they were boarding. I had just been in time. One minute later and I'd be stopped before the gates.
I entered the red, super fashionable, speed boat. The air was chilly and the inside were very clean. A sailor shown me the way to my seat, it was in the upper deck, still in the central row, in the back seats. Back seats, like in that song by Scissor Sisters “Lovers in the Backseats”, but I was there with old Chinese guys and not a lover. That's dismal.
She's quiet when she’s down
Strangers from other towns
Nowhere to be found
On this side of the scene
Would you like a cigarette,
Or my hand upon your shoulder?
I think we might have met
Would you like me to come over?
The speed boat started in perfect time. The engines thundered and the boat leaned forward. I sat comfortably and soon, as the boat was speeding off the harbor, I fell off to sleep. A dream, a song, a chilly tropical breeze. No, that was simply the air conditioning.
The boat arrived in Hong Kong in perfect time. We were disembarked and I had to undergo, one more time, the immigration procedures. The Chinese officer looked at my passport picture, then he looked at the less-shaven more-sweat version of the picture that he had before him. He glanced one more time at the picture with some doubt. For a second I thought that he took me for some sort of criminal, maybe a criminal that wandered around the world mistreating Old Chinese Men. But then, he stomped my passport and I was free to enter Hong Kong again.
The city was already under the coat of the night. Lights and neons were flashing everywhere, and the smell of food was starting to appear in the air of the night. My friend, the smell of fried rice, came to welcome me in Hong Kong.
I went through the underground city of the Central Hong Kong Station, which was lit with cold neon white lights. Lots of people were going in every direction, human shapes were appearing for a split second before melting again in this multidimensional cold chaos. The beehive, where bees fly in every direction, symbol of a natural innate organization was at the antipodes. This was a confusion witnessed only by the neon and the closing shops on the sides of the hallways. Everybody looked like commended by his or hers personal queen bee, perhaps, thanks also to the free Wifi connection. My smartphone looked happy to connect freely to my mail and so easily. My social network was starting to take over me too. After a second of weakness I turned the smartphone off, and I was again free.
I took the Tsuen Wan Line, the red line, until the Jordan station, where I went off. I came back to the surface and soon I arrived into my hotel and my wonderful room. It was time to relax a bit and to plan my next move.
First thing first, the shower. It felt wonderful. Then I hung my soaked in sweat clothes and I got fancily dressed again. My plan was to go first to a restaurant that was suggested in my guide book and then to go to dance some Latin Music in a club called “Salsa Passion @ Dancin' Jupiter” as “Dancin' Jupiter” should be the real name of the club.
I went again out in the Hong Kong night, I went down the street and soon I was again in Nathan Road. I went northward and very soon I arrived at the “Fung Shing Restaurant”. I entered it and I was welcomed by a middle aged lady at a front desk. She asked me if I wanted to go to the restaurant. I guessed that, probably, in the same entrance there were also the entrances for other places. Still the building reminded me of the “National Court”, but this entrance was really clean and people were dressed quite classy. A Chinese Classy style. A Chinese imitation of a Western Classy style.
The Classy Lady asked me how many we were.
“Two, me and my imaginary friend, three if you also count my smartphone”, that's what I wanted to answer. But I said “One”.
She looked with an half smile and replied “You're alone?”.
“No, we're two, but my imaginary friend is late as he's killing the Old Chinese Man”. I didn't say this, but I turned on myself like if I were looking if there was somebody behind of me, and I watched her again “Yes Miss, I'm still one”.
She said something in Chinese to a broad smiling boy dressed in a fake copy of a carnival fancy dress of a chef, and he welcomed me to enter.
The restaurant reminded quite much the one where I've eaten the day before near the Wong Tai Sing Temple. It was quite clean, bright, very noisy and damn cold. It looked like it had one thousand air-conditioning nozzles all pointing to my table.
I sat down at a table that could host at least four people all around and a lot of dishes in the middle. All the tables around me were occupied by large groups of noisy Chinese people, some were looking like people off from work, while others were looking like families. Then, among them, there was a Chinese couple, sitting next to a wall, they already had many dishes on the table, when arrived two new saucers with over two huge lobsters. The man looked like was enjoying the lobster, while the lady didn’t look very happy of that food. Soon later came to sit, at the table next to mine, a Western guy. More than a tourist, he looked like an expat and looked like he knew the waiters quite well as he was joking both in English and Chinese with them.
I relaxed a bit while texting home with my phone, then arrived the waiter that took me the Menu. The menu itself was extensive. I couldn’t believe that they could do all those things. I browsed it and I chose a large variety of Dim Sums. I decided to have a Dim Sum based dinner. So, I placed my order and while waiting, I checked at the other foods available in the shop. Unbelievably, they had also Bird Nest Soup and Shark Fin Soup, both with scary prices.
My food arrived and I started to pick my Dim Sums and eating them. They were all so much delicious that it’d be hard to write a chart of the best. Perhaps, the best one, for me, would be the Char Siu Baau, the roast pork Dim Sum.
The Char Siu Baau, is amazing. It's made with bread dough filled with minced grilled pork. Then, it can be steamed or stoven. I had the steamed ones. They come to you in a bamboo steaming box. They are white like snow, soft like clouds and mildly sweet. Biting this soft dumplings is like caressing your own lips with powdered sugar covered cotton. It's a feather caress to the lips. The mind can run wild with such sensorial experiences.
Dim Sum
Dim sum restaurants have a wide variety of dishes, usually several dozen. Among the standard fare of dim sum are the following:
Main
1. Gao, or Dumpling (Chinese: 餃; 餃子; Cantonese Yale: gaau; gaau ji): Jiao zi is a standard in most teahouses. They are made of ingredients wrapped in a translucent rice flour or wheat starch skin, and are different from jiaozi found in other parts of China. Though common, steamed rice-flour skins are quite difficult to make. Thus, it is a good demonstration of the chef's artistry to make these translucent dumplings. There are also dumplings with vegetarian ingredients, such as tofu and pickled cabbage.
Shrimp Dumpling (蝦餃 ha gaau): A delicate steamed dumpling with whole or chopped-up shrimp filling and thin wheat starch skin.
2. Chiu-chao style dumplings (潮州粉果 chiu-chau fan guo): A dumpling said to have originated from the Chaozhou prefecture of eastern Guangdong province, it contains peanuts, garlic, chives, pork, dried shrimp, Chinese mushrooms in a thick dumpling wrapper made from glutinous rice flour or Tang flour. It is usually served with a small dish of chili oil.
3. Potsticker (鍋貼, gwoh tip / guo tie): Northern Chinese style of dumpling (steamed and then pan-fried jiaozi), usually with meat and cabbage filling. Note that although potstickers are sometimes served in dim sum restaurants, they are not considered traditional Cantonese dim sum.
4. Shaomai (燒賣 siu maai): Small steamed dumplings with either pork, prawns or both inside a thin wheat flour wrapper. Usually topped off with crab roe and mushroom.
5. Haam Sui Gaau (鹹水餃, salt-water (i.e. savoury) stuffed-dumpling, alternatively 鹹水角 (haam sui gok): deep fried oval-shaped dumpling made with rice-flour and filled with pork and chopped vegetables. The rice-flour surrounding is sweet and sticky, while the inside is slightly salty.
6. Bau (包 baau or 包子 baau ji): Baked or steamed, these fluffy buns made from wheat flour are filled with food items ranging from meat to vegetables to sweet bean pastes.
7. Char siu baau (叉燒包, cha siu baau): the most popular bun with a Cantonese barbecued pork filling. It can be either steamed to be fluffy and white or baked with a light sugar glaze to produce a smooth golden-brown crust.
8. Shanghai steamed buns (上海小籠包 seong hoi siu lung baau): These dumplings are filled with meat or seafood and are famous for their flavor and rich broth inside. These dumplings are originally Shanghainese so they are not considered traditional Cantonese dim sum. They are typically sold with pork as a filling.
9. Rice noodle rolls or cheung fan (腸粉 cheung4 fan2): These are wide rice noodles that are steamed and then rolled. They are often filled with different types of meats or vegetables inside but can be served without any filling. Rice noodle rolls are fried after they are steamed and then sprinkled with sesame seeds. Popular fillings include beef, dough fritter, shrimp, and barbecued pork. Often topped with a sweetened soy sauce.
10. Phoenix claws (鳳爪 fung zao): These are chicken feet, deep fried, boiled, marinated in a black bean sauce and then steamed. This results in a texture that is light and fluffy (due to the frying), while moist and tender. Fung zau are typically dark red in color. One may also sometimes find plain steamed chicken feet served with a vinegar dipping sauce. This version is known as "White Cloud Phoenix Claws" (白雲鳳爪, baak wan fung jaau).
11. Steamed meatball (牛肉球 ngau juk kau): Finely-ground beef is shaped into balls and then steamed with preserved orange peel and served on top of a thin bean-curd skin.
12. Spare ribs: In the west, it is mostly known as spare ribs collectively. In the east, it is Char siu when roasted red, or (排骨 paai gwat, páigǔ) when roasted black. It is typically steamed with douchi or fermented black beans and sometimes sliced chilli.
13. Lotus leaf rice (糯米雞 lo mai gai): Glutinous rice is wrapped in a lotus leaf into a triangular or rectangular shape. It contains egg yolk, dried scallop, mushroom, water chestnut and meat (usually pork and chicken). These ingredients are steamed with the rice and although the leaf is not eaten, its flavour is infused during the steaming. Lo mai gai is a kind of rice dumpling. A similar but lighter variant is known as "Pearl Chicken" (珍珠雞 jan jyu gai).
14. Congee (粥 juk): Thick, sticky rice porridge served with different savory items. The porridge one will see most often is "Duck Egg and Pork Porridge" (皮蛋瘦肉粥 "pei daan sau juk zuk")
15. Sou (酥 sou): A type of flaky pastry. Char siu is one of the most common ingredient used in dim sum style sou. Another common pastry seen in restaurants are called "Salty Pastry" (鹹水角 "haam sui gok") which is made with flour and seasoned pork.
16. Taro dumpling (芋角 wu gok): This is made with mashed taro, stuffed with diced shiitake mushrooms, shrimp and pork, deep-fried in crispy batter.
17. Crispy fried squid (魷魚鬚 yau yu sou): Similar to fried calamari, the battered squid is deep-fried. A variation of this dish may be prepared with a salt and pepper mix. In some dim sum restaurants, octopus is used instead of squid.
· Rolls (捲)
1. Spring roll (春捲 cheun gyun): a roll consisting of various types of vegetables — such as sliced carrot, cabbage, mushroom and wood ear fungus — and sometimes meat are rolled inside a thin flour skin and deep fried.
2. Tofu skin roll (腐皮捲 fu pei guen): a roll made of Tofu skin
· Cakes (糕)
1. Turnip cake (蘿蔔糕 lo baak gou): cakes are made from mashed daikon radish mixed with bits of dried shrimp and pork sausage that are steamed and then cut into slices and pan-fried.
2. Taro cake (芋頭糕 wu tao gou): cakes made of taro.
3. Water chestnut cake (馬蹄糕 ma tai gou): cakes made of water chestnut. It is mostly see-through and clear. Some restaurants also serve a variation of water chestnut cake made with bamboo juice.
4. Chien chang go (千層糕 cin cang gou): "Thousand-layer cake", a dim sum dessert made up of many layers of sweet egg dough.
5. zh:灌湯餃(kwun tong gau or goon tong gau): soup with pork, shrimp and dumpling.
· Sweets
1. Egg tart (蛋撻 daan taat): composed of a base made from either a flaky puff pastry type dough or a type of non-flaky cookie dough with an egg custard filling, which is then baked. Some high class restaurants put bird's nest on top of the custard. In other places egg tarts can be made of a crust and a filling of egg whites and some where it is a crust with egg yolks. Some egg tarts now have flavors such as taro, coffee, and other flavors. There are also different kinds of crust. There is also a flaky crisp outer crust with layers and layers of crunchy crumbs.
2. Jin deui or Matuan (煎堆 or 麻糰): Especially popular at Chinese New Year, a chewy dough filled with red bean paste, rolled in sesame seeds, and deep fried.
3. Dou fu fa (豆腐花): A dessert consisting of silky tofu served with a sweet ginger or jasmine flavored syrup.
4. Mango pudding (芒果布甸 mong guo bou din): A sweet, rich mango-flavoured pudding usually with large chunks of fresh mango; often served with a topping of evaporated milk.
5. Sweet cream buns (奶皇包 naai wong baau): Steamed buns with milk custard filling.
6. Malay Steamed Sponge Cake (馬拉糕 ma laai gou): A very soft steamed sponge cake flavoured with molasses.
7. Longan Tofu: almond-flavoured tofu served with longans, usually cold.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dim_sum#Dishes
The food was amazing and in the end, when I left the place, I paid a ridicule low price. That was so good too.
I went out of the restaurant and I headed to the Jordan metro station. Here I took the Tsuen Wan Line, the red line, and I went again to Hong Kong Island. This time I got off the metro at Admiralty station, and I took a train of the Island Line, the Blue Line, until the “Fortress Hill” station.
Once in Fortress Hill, I went out of the station. Before leaving for my trip I drew a small map of the area in order to find the “Dancin' Jupiter”. I found easily the street, that is Jupiter Street and also the building, but it was all dark. So, I entered the building and I went to some guardians. I asked them for an information, and one of them, which spoke a very good English, told me that the club was close. I asked if he changed the night as, before leaving for the trip, it was advertised on internet as working. He answered “forever”. That means, that the club wouldn’t open anymore. It had been a waste of time.
I made my way back to the “Fortress Hill” station, and while going in that direction, in the almost deserted streets I considered that it was the second time that in Asia I looked for a Latin Dancing Club, which was advertised as working, and I found it closed. Actually, when I searched the dancing club in Thailand, I discovered that in the meantime it turned to be a GoGo Bar, a bar where customers can take home the waiters and dancers.
Seeing that the club was closed and it was still early, I decided to go for the “Plan B”, that means to go to D'Aguilar Street, not very far, which is known as the core of the young tourists nightlife.
I took again the “Island Line”, the Blue Line, and I went out at the Hong Kong Central station. Just nearby, some blocks uphill, there is the D'Aguilar Street.
The place that people call D'Aguilar Street, is just an area, with 3-4 small streets crossing each other, which are packed with clubs, bars and pubs. The crowd is impressive, the music is high everywhere and it looks just like an huge party in the streets.
I wandered a bit around and then I stuck at a club where I had first a “Sex on the beach” and then a Martini based drink. It was time to plan what to do the next day. That night would be my last night at the Hotel as there wouldn’t be more vacant rooms for the following night. The next day would be my last one in Hong Kong too. I sorted the options and I ideally wrote the plan of the next day.
I considered that the first day in Hong Kong I’ve had such an hard time to find free rooms, and moreover, if I found a Hotel, I’d have to make the check-in in the afternoon and not in the morning. This would mean, wasting another day. No, I was starting to get very irritated with Hong Kong. So, I decided that, the next morning I’d wake up early, I’d go to the Airport and see if the Hotel Association would help me to find a place somewhere in spite strolling again through all Hong Kong, but this time with both backpacks. If I’d find an Hotel, I’d come back in town, otherwise, I still had two options. The fist, to leave my luggage at a luggage depot, maybe to have a stroll on Lantau Island, where is also the airport, and visit the Buddhist Temple, then I could spend the night at the Airport. The other option would be to find a way to come back to Thailand earlier, and there I’d be easy for me to find a cheap accommodation.
I finished my drink and I went back the way to Central. Unluckily, I wasted my time and it was too late for the metro, so I had to take a taxi to come back. The driver was absolutely nuts. He was driving like a crazy down the dark streets at night. I guess that he wanted to make it fast in order to come back to D'Aguilar Street to make some more cash.
When I arrived at my hotel and I went up to my room. First thing I packed my backpacks leaving outside only my casual clothes for the following day trip. Then, it was time to go to sleep.
Good night Hong Kong, I’m not sure that you like my staying here.