macau, part 1

macau doesn’t get enough credit. it’s listed as a day-trip from hong kong or a sidenote on a gambler’s itinerary, instead of as the culturally rich and entertaining island that it is. we boarded the morning ferry bound for the small plot of land located 35 miles west of hong kong.

as a former portuguese colony, the architecture, language, cuisine and way of life is a mediterranean-oriental blend that’s rare in the far east.

check out the mixed usage of portuguese and chinese.

we disembarked on the corner of the island that is home to the casinos. more on that later… we set off on foot to explore and quickly found ourselves in a nearly inescapable maze of fencing and barriers erected around the main vein of road that we were following into the city center. turns out we’d arrived one day after the macau grand prix had ended and the city was still showing signs of its transformation into a huge racecourse with grandstands.

no one appeared to find this chunk of car on the sidewalk strange…

we wandered past the posh hotels…

past the enormous housing blocks…

into the commercial heart of this special administrative region [SAR] of china.

the area was littered with jewelry shops, money changers, electronics stores [all obviously targeting the high rollers who have just taken stanley ho, macau’s real estate tycoon, and his casinos to the bank], and lots of stands selling this fabulous pork and beef jerky.


all the shops wanted to shear us off a corner to sample**some tasty business**but this place was exceptionally friendly.

couldn’t tell if they were really goodwill ambassadors or just money hungry…either way…they showed us how to make the omnipresent almond cookies that are an iconic macau souvenir. first you spatula the almond, flour, sugar [i’m guessing here; they didn’t speak any english so we couldn’t really ask. details do fill out a story nicely though…] mix into the wooden mold.

then you slam it down in a basket karate-chop style, hard enough to dislodge the dry but tasty treats.

we didn’t however sample this snack which is undoubtedly a real pleaser. healthy too!

as we criss-crossed the area, one thing after another kept catching our eye. as we’d head over to explore, something else would look interesting and before we knew it, we’d been lured out of the city center into the real heart of macau, where people were actually living, socializing, existing.

many of the thoroughfares were nothing more than narrow alleys that meandered in no particular pattern.

we stopped at this stand in front of a tiny eatery to sample what a bunch of people obviously thought was tasty cause they were lining up for it.

we pointed at some of the foods threaded on sticks, miscommunicated a bit, ended up with mushrooms and two kinds of dumplings. they were boiled in the steaming vats while we waited, then scissored into cups with ladles full of sauces. we chose a curry and something they described as ‘sp-eye-shee’, the asian equivalent of spicy, which was all slopped together.

it was saucy and delish, except for those few strange parts of pork [?] i came across in a dumplin’.

saw a chinese medicine shop [check us out in the mirror]…

from there we noticed this palm reader…

we leisurely made our way through the streets…

past this housing block…

we wandered through a grocery store for what seemed like hours. around the corner was this bustling commerce area…

with some independent service providers set up in the side alleys…

we rummaged through an old junk/antique store that housed countless statues of mao zedong, tons of propaganda posters, relics from wars and red army memorabilia, historical items, like authentic tiny shoes that had been used to bind women’s feet resting next to deteriorating photographs depicting the practice. we were followed around in there like secret foot soldiers for bush’s current democratic manifest destiny who might torch the whole collection of communist keepsakes at any second.
then we stumbled upon this temple…

it was a little junky on the inside. brooms and sticks leaning in the corners…cleaning products and broken flower pots occupying rickety shelves… towels drying on makeshift hangers… the thirty-something female caretaker sat uninterested in the corner incessantly clipping her fingernails. aside from all that, the smoke from the numerous coils of over-sized incense gave the place a mystical feel.

it did house some really interesting statues…