No Longer Macao Trip Part 4

Ok this is the last post of my Macao trip, which takes forever to publish!

Say hi to Hong Kong!! 

We spent a good two days roaming around Kowloon and Chin Tsa Chui area in Hong Kong, travelling back and forth by ferry from Macau (takes around 45 minutes per trip). 

The Victoria Harbour was very beautiful. We have a good walk at Avenue of Stars along the pier, where you can find all the famous celebrity hand prints and statues, like the late Bruce Lee. His statue were 2.5m high and made of copper! The Avenue of Stars was modelled on Hollywood Walk of Fame, which honours the celebrities of Hong Kong Film industry. Well, Hong Kong is THE place where the globalization of Chinese entertainment industry started, especially the Cantonese kungfu movies. The actors and actress definitely deserve all the credit. 

Oh, we saw the famous Hong Kong's United Buddy Bears at the pier too! 

Meet Loah, Peter's gaming buddy. He is super nice and super friendly. Funny thing was he just came back from Australia after studies, so he is pretty much foreign to Hong Kong's tourist sites, and we end up  exploring the tourist spots together. He brought us to Mongkok where all the tourist shopping streets located, and the streets are EXTREMELY busy and packed.

They were alot of street food, but we didn't try much as we were saving our stomach for the dim sum. 

Here comes our LONG AWAITED HONG KONG DIM SUM BUFFET at xiao fei yang. I have totally forgotten how much per person cost, basically its made per order but you can order as much as you can eat! The taste of the dim sum is slightly different than the Malaysian's version. We always have varieties of pork or prawn filling in Malaysian's version of dim sum, hence it tasted pretty much the same after a few plates. However the original ones in Hong Kong comes in so much of varieties, they have dim sum with fillings such as vege and nuts only, beef intestines, and even "yao zha guai" wrapped in the dim sum skin.  

YUM YUM!

According to Loah, dim sum is usually for older generation, whereby they have all the time in world to just relax and eat. Whilst for youngsters and walking class, usually they will just go into a Chinese restaurant, da bao something like sandwich, then start to eat while walking off. That's sort of confirm our perception towards the Hongkies whereby the working class literally have no life. ;(

 

During our second trip to Hong Kong, we have tried the local Cha Chaan Teng (morning tea restaurant) named Australian Dairy Co.. I'm really not sure what does Australian has to do with the restaurant cuz its very Chinese to me. It was an eye opener experience because the restaurant was super hectic and busy. The crowds were crazy but the food was super good. People were basically lining up beside your table waiting for you to go off, and I keep seeing people stand up from their seat and another came sit down, or came in and out of the restaurant. We ordered the usual set of the breakfast which includes fresh/ cold milk, macaroni with ham, toast bread with sunny side up or scramble egg. And gosh the scramble egg was SUPER good. I have never known in my whole life that scramble egg can taste like that. 

Most of the places sell the Kowloon Dairy's cold pasteurised milk in glass bottles, and it was very refreshing. I have tried the chocolate version and it was equally good. 

We have also tried the local "Kim Gary" or "Causeway Bay" type of Cha Chaan Teng which looks a bit more high class. We tried their famous crispy bun served with sweet condensed milk (don't know why its called nai you "ZHU" in Chinese, it has nothing to do with pig!), polo bun and their Portuguese pork curry. It was pretty satisfying as well.

Well, that sums up our 4 days Macao (extended to Hong Kong) Trip, overall it was good but seriously, no countries can beat Taiwan k, which remained to be our favourite country to travel to. We have yet to have the chance to explore Hong Kong to the fullest, but I have to say that shopping wise, they have the best to offer. I hope H&M will open up in Malaysia real soon. 

Till then, ciao.

Macau Trip Part 3

Food galore!

If you like dairy product, one of the not-to-be-missed Macau delicacies is milk pudding or steamed milk or in commonly known in chinese, 炖奶 'dan nai'. The famous delicacy can be found in small establishment along the famous shopping streets in Macau, as well as in some of the modest local cafe (茶餐廳). The milk pudding was steamed not just one layer, but double layer, and also come in different varieties such as milk pudding with egg yolk, ginger milk pudding, soy beam milk pudding, milk pudding with red bean paste etc. The texture was smooth and creamy, whereby the jelly tofu like structure just slipped down your throat in seconds. We also tried the Coconut Milk with Tapioca (西米露), which came in big metal cup and was equally tasty. The meal wouldn't be complete without the famous pork chop bun. yum yum...

One of the nights, we had our dinner at Wong Chi Kei restaurant 黃枝記粥麵 which located at Senado Square, across McDonald’s. We had char xiu rice, xhar xiu noodles, pork chop rice and curry pork rice. Their noodles are very springy, love the clear taste of the soup, but the curry was nothing to shout about. In general the curry cuisine in Macau are very mild, and the chilli oil are not spicy at all. I think Malaysian are pretty much used to fiery sambal (shrimp chilli) paste, which is not so common in China / Hong Kong. However the chilli oil reminds me of my days in UK, whereby the only spicy ingredients we can find in the entire Liverpool (in fact China town) is Lao Gan Ma Chilli Oil.

We used to eat all sort of food (rice, noodles etc.) with Lao Gan Ma Chilli Oil just to quench our thirst for spicy food. Am sure this will bring back some memories to my fellow friends who used to stay in UK as well. ;)

Another noodle shop which we had visited was Loja Sopa Da Fita Cheong Kei. Again, its a very modest establishment, small and cramp, but their famous noodle Har Zi Lo Meen 蝦籽撈麵 was very refreshing. Its a simple noodle dish whereby the springy noodle is tossed with prawn roe dust in kon lou (dry) style. We had also tried the unique deep fried Mace Balls, which basically fish paste coated with rice crackers deep fried until golden. Its very bouncy, you can taste the fish taste in every bite and the oil which was strapped in the balls was literally exploded in your mouth. 

Thats all for Macau food, next is our trip to Hong Kong and the dim sum galore!

Macau trip Part2

Before I start with the Macau Trip, just wanted to share a comic strip from www.akiraceo.com with Peter. Yesterday night he came back very early from yum char session (which is absolutely rare), with the look of utter defeated on his face. 

Checkout the full post click here. I think many had felt the same since the Diablo III craze virus went epidemic. 

Anyway, come back to Macau trip. Other than the St Paul ruin, we have visited many other tourist spots.

Macao Fisherman Wharf. The night scene was extremely beautiful, you can basically see the entire Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge run across the ocean from one side to the opposite. The serene view and the relaxing ambience reminds me alot of Penang. However, Taiwan Fisherman Wharf is 10X better.

There are many 'interesting' architecture and buildings located at Macau Fisherman Wharf. Aqua Romanis, a Roman-themed shopping centre (Good spot for slow walk and camwhoring); Roman Amphitheatre, an outdoor Colosseum equipped with 2,000 seats, designed for concerts and other performances; funny looking Vulcania, a 40m tall replica volcano which house some rollercoaster rides; and Aladdin's Fort, a middle-eastern fort which is home to some funfair rides.

This Venetian Macau at Taipa, one of the biggest and most famous casino. Am not repeating what I've written about Casino in my previous post. Basically its all the same except Venetian has this shopping street with fake sky (see upper right picture) inside the building itself. Well, probably you would have notice by now that Macau is full of funny looking counterfeit ancient Roman/ Egypt Empire architectures and buildings. They are interesting to see but I ain't gonna come back for second time. 

A non casino tourist site which worthy to be mentioned is the Macau light house. Its supposed to be local hiking/ jogging site, and there is a church and light house on top of the hill. You can get the 360 view of the Macau city from the top which makes it the perfect place to shoot wedding photos.

Well, lets talk about the interesting part, food at Macau!

















This is our first meal at Macau. which is quite a let down, it was a China-cuisine restaurant which serve very Chinese Zha jiang mian (noodle with mince meat in soy sauce) and chinese dumpling. each cost around 40 Hong Kong Dollar. Not recommended at all.

This is our breakfast inside Venetian Macau. We have it at Fatburger, a not so common fast food chain (at least in Malaysia), despite the fact that it was advertised that they only use good quality of beef patty, the food itself was nothing to shout about. The funniest thing is there is a Malaysian delight stalls in the food court which sells nasi lemak at whooping $70! Can you believe it?

We also had the famous Lord Stow's Portuguese egg tart. He supposed to be the first person who came up with the famous local delicacies. $8 per piece, expensive but the taste live up to its name! The best we had in Macau.

Then we visited the old Taipa village near to the Venetian Macau, where the real "Nandos" supposed to be (see the red rooster sign in the picture). We have a good cup of local Naicha (milk tea) and a unique egg tart made of coconut milk! And when we are back to Senado Square, we tried another egg tart at local famous  restaurant called Margaret cafe. I know that alot of egg tarts from 3 different shops in a single day, but gosh its addictive!

Stay tuned for more food at Macau in my next post.  

Macau trip part 1

In the past, I have a very bad habit of not finishing my travelling posts series (e.g. Taiwan Trip), I think I will just upload the tons of photos with caption and that's it (yeah, i'm such a lazy bum), its pretty much self-explanatory. Anyway, do stay tuned for my next post for my remaining write up on Taiwan Trip.

Macau trip was supposed to be Peter's gang group trip. I decided to tag along because it sounded fun. And it was INDEED fun, the companionship, the city, the journey, basically the entire package itself. My only complain is that there are TOO many same kind of different casinos! only one bigger than the other- Venetian, Grand Lisboa (Peter called it Grand lesbian) etc. It was an eye opener to see such grand casinos (like 10 times bigger and better than Genting) at first. Seriously, our 6 stars hotel (e.g. palace of golden horses) is not even close to what they have (gigantic fountain, theatre, hot chick dance, world class shopping street and dining etc).  However, the excitement wore off quickly after we visited the second casino. Too much of glittering slot machine, giant crystal chandelier, luxury Roman statues and carpets, loaded China gamblers... It simply numbed your senses and make you crave for the normal tourist sight-seeing instead. 

1st day- reached Macao, checked in to the hotel - Emperor hotel. It was categorized as 3 stars, but gosh its so spacious, and it has a see through bathroom with bath tub, kinky!

Visit to Senado Square, where all the shopping street and delicious local delicacies can be found. 

This is St. Augustine church. The church was originally built by Spanish Augustinian priests but was taken over by the Portuguese after three years. The church is famous for the cross-carrying figure of Jesus Christ at the altar. The church is associated with the colourful story of Maria de Moura who was a known figure in the 1700s. She died in child birth and was buried in the church grounds together with her baby and the severed arm of her husband [souce: Wikipedia]

Next to the famous St Paul ruin, a grand architecture legacy before our eyes. It was greatly preserved and stood majestically although its nothing more than a ruin. St. Paul’s Church was built in 1602 with its fascade being completed by 1627. As history would have it, the church was destroyed because of a fire in 1835. The only part of the church that survived the fire was the fascade which was covered with delicate statues of the Virgin Mary, saints, angels, devils etc. [Souce: Wikipedia]

And yes, they sell bubble tea near to the famous ruins, that was me proudly drinking my bubble tea on my way conquering the ruins 

Peter and his gang climb all the way up to the second floor of the ruin, and I took the chance to snap a photo of them. ;)

 The guys posing with the statues and trees. I wonder what really went through their mind when they did that.  ;)

 Macau Museum, right on top of the hill, splendid!

 Peter trying to launch the canon bomb towards the Grand Lesbian, opps, i mean Lisboa casino.

I must say Macao has a quaint and peculiar side due to its historic values and architecture. The pastel colored wall, the wooden planked windows with bright colors, old cathedrals and even the cobbled roads and the small alleys emits certain ancient/ historical aura which makes you just want to sigh in awe. It reminded me the value of history, how the rich colonisation, the diverse culture, the religion had impacted the
life of the people of Macao. HOWEVER, if you throw in the fake grandeur of the casinos and oddly shape hotel (i.e. Grand Lisboa) into the same city, it just distorts the entire experience. Casino and historic buildings simply doesn't jive together.

Anyway, more on Macau and Hong Kong visit in my next post!