Macau & Hong Kong Day 1 – Through the Harbours

I’m tired. Reached home at about 2am after getting stuck in the airport in Macau for way too long, and then after settled down etc I only slept at nearly 3. I had thoughts of waking up at 6am to make it in time for my 8am Macroeconomics 2 lecture, but.. fuck it. I thought it out logically – that between spending an entire full day (8am to 9pm) feeling lethargic and lack concentration the whole time versus skipping the morning class and be somewhat alert for subsequent classes from afternoon onwards.. I chose the latter.

In case you were wondering how on earth then would I be able to produce an entry of my first day filled with pictures, well, I actually managed to blog on my laptop in Hong Kong and edited some pics there as well (on separate days), so I merely make the necessary edits (resizing, watermarking) to my photos and post them here.

---

Day 1 – Friday, 16th January 2009

The plane to Macau was strangely not vacant – it wasn’t entirely deserted, but there were enough seats that were empty that allowed at least 3 or 4 people to sleep across the three seats of a row. I thought it was a little crass when I saw an old man did it, but as the stewardesses didn’t reprimand him for it (one of them did interject “Excuse me sir!” when he got up to move to a row of empty seats to sleep when the seat belt lights were on -___-), then it had to be okay.. especially when there were other people who did the same thing. I can only imagine this wouldn’t go down too well with other airlines though.

Obligatory pic inside the airplane wtf.

Halfway through we were given these little immigration cards where we had to fill in some particulars and pass to the immigration officers upon landing (god that’s long enough to describe, I can’t remember the exact term at the moment), and I was surprised to see a balding man who stood next to me and stared at what I was doing – filling in the aforementioned cards – quite openly. I turned to look at him, smiled, then resumed what I was doing wtf.

View from the window of the airplane.

Later on the man came over to me with the card and his passport and asked in Mandarin – in that sing-song mainland China accent – if I could help fill it for him. I obliged, began filling it for him – learned that he lived in Fujian based on his passport – and when I reached the part where we had to fill in our house address, I asked him for it in Mandarin.. not before I had to ask my dad what the Chinese word was for “address” wtf.

He began muttering something about his identity card and produced it to me, and so unused was I at seeing a full Chinese address – completely in Chinese characters might I add – that I had to ask him if that was really his address lol. So I began scribbling the Chinese characters in quite an atrocious writing. Oh and his signature was a scrawled Chinese character of his name, that’s what I’m guessing.

I figured he should be illiterate if he couldn’t understand what the card said despite it having Chinese words on it, and to top it off, me, who has only about 2 years worth of Chinese knowledge, had to write his address entirely in Chinese for him lol.

It’s a great feeling to be able to help a fellow human.

Much against my will, I finally ordered for an Asian Fried Rice with Satay from AirAsia for RM9.. I initially didn’t want to as it was expensive, but heck, a man cannot go hungry. The dish came out in a shocking small plate, but it was quite delicious and smelt pretty fragrant, although it was too spicy for me and I began to sweat.

My Asian Fried Rice.

I couldn’t decide which pics I liked better (if you disregard the ugly droplets or whatever they are at the top half of the pics), so I’m posting them both:

When we finally landed – a journey from LCCT to Macau International Airport that takes approximately 3 hours and 45 minutes – we could see that Macau was sheathed in a fog, a blanket of cold air prolly, with the evening sun in the horizon bathing the Las Vegas of the East in its golden rays. Macau looked dastardly cold, metallic – and it instinctively reminded me of a modern civilisation in which its people were preparing a gradual exodus.

As we got off the plane, we were instantly greeted by a wave of cold air of about 15 degrees Celcius. It was certainly cold by my standards – remember that I’ve been staying in a tropical climate for nearly my entire life – but we had our windbreakers already worn and ready.

There was an air of unfriendliness clinging to the city despite its relatively peaceful demeanour, the vanguard of immigration officers – one of the first few locals that we meet – were relatively sour-faced and somewhat unsmiling. But I probably wouldn’t be able to convey anything about Macau with any accuracy as we skipped from the airport straight to the harbour (we had our passport stamped with the entry and exit stamps for Macau lol, and we barely even stayed any longer than about an hour there), ferried by one of the travel agents (we engaged a travel agency back in Subang as my parents preferred to have transportation and accommodation settled by a third party). In fact, when we went outside the airport earlier, the aforementioned travel agent was already there holding a placard of my dad’s and my name.

In the van en route from Macau International Airport to the harbour.

A look of the quiet roads.

Setting sun.

I suppose the only interesting thing about the Macau harbour was that it offered free WiFi.

Outside the harbour.

I was already feeling pretty uncomfortable after sitting the airplane – I have a tendency to feel a tad bit bloated as if there was plenty of air in my body everytime I disembark from an airplane – so after the ferry began its rocking journey, I felt slightly worse than before. Brandon took the entire experience pretty badly, as he already complained of discomfort upon take off of the aircraft, and throughout the journey of the ferry he kept vomiting (into the provided paper bags) – I reckon he was seasick.

The ferry was relatively comfortable and had slightly more ample leg room compared to AirAsia’s Airbus – even our “normal class” seats felt somewhat luxurious.

In the New something ferry (forgot the name).

It was the same in Hong Kong’s harbour, in which we had another travel agent again holding a placard of my dad’s name. Garry the travel agent was quite friendly, and when my mum requested the Cantonese-speaking Hongkee to speak in English for my benefit as well as my brother’s, he accommodated our request – in fact, he was the one who told us earlier that he dealt more with English-speaking Muslim tourists. I couldn’t help but be amused when he spoke English – if you’ve heard in TVB dramas the weird intonation the Hongkees make when injecting certain English words into their Cantonese conversation (example phrase: “kui zhan hai hou special ah”), said weird intonation dominated the entire breadth and length of the English words that he speak lol.

At least our Malaysian English doesn’t sound particularly odd…

Hong Kong harbour where our ferry was docked.

We had to go through a similar immigration process like at the airport too.

After passing through the immigration.

Garry explaining stuffs in the van.

Collective vehicle lights.

Our hotel at Yau Ma Tei wasn’t that far away from the harbour, so we were shown to our Dorsett Seaview hotel, checked in, then later walked out for about only one minute before we reached a street filled with food stalls in the night market at Temple Street – aka 男人街.

I wasn’t particularly impressed by the incredibly hectic lifestyle that the locals was leading – everyone was walking very quickly as if all of them were rushing for something equally important, definitely not my kinda place. I don’t know whether it’s because Cantonese sounded naturally rude or what, but I found that the locals could be quite blunt to the extent that they seemed rude.

At 男人街 (Canto: lam yan kai) aka Men’s Street (proper name is Temple Street) where mostly men’s things are sold in this night market, although a wide variety of other items on sale can be found.

Mum and Brandon walking past.

There were just too many people at the food stalls at about 9pm for some reason, and there was a food stall/restaurant that had people queueing up all the way outside.. we went to another one, finally found seats, and proceeded to order.

Tons of people eating at about 9pm.

Pic of Brandon.

A seller getting frisked by the policemen.

Aforementioned people queueing for food.

A funny anecdote: I was snapping photos of a stall selling these unique breads with smileys coated in chocolate on it, and I walked around to obtain a proper angle. Whilst I was snapping away, the stall keeper approached me and asked in Canto if I still wanted to take photos (“lei ham mai zoi oi ying xiong?” – or something like that, my Canto isn’t exactly good, and didn’t it sound a little blunt and rude?), and I replied in halting Canto that yeah, I want to snap some, and I asked if it was alright to do so?

Smiling breads/buns wtf.

At said stall.

I thought she was annoyed that I was snapping photos of her food, but it turns out that she purposely walked out from the stall (as opposed to standing behind the stall, manning it) because she didn’t want me to snap her photo – she didn’t have make up on hahahaha! That put a smile on my somewhat tired face, and I continued to snap a few more quick shots before thanking her and moving on. (Unfortunately, I didn’t have a photo of the auntie sans make-up.)

Another look of Temple Street.

My claypot pork chop rice was quite good – Garry had already told us beforehand that Hong Kong is famous for its food and cheap products (he emphasised that they aren’t fake like China, but original). Unlike other claypot rice that I’ve tasted before in Malaysia, the rice wasn’t burnt and sticky all – the rice was surprisingly soft and smooth (figured later that the Hong Kong rice is softer.. or something).

As usual, the servers or si tao pohs kept rushing from one table to another looking entirely busy.

Another restaurant full with people queueing outside.

And another wtf. It’s as if people in HK have to keep queueing up to eat at night.

I went back with my bro first to our room (my family slept in two separate rooms) after we were done with our food to rest – I turned on my laptop to blog for a bit as well as charge it at the same time, showered under the marvelous hot shower (something that I think is incredibly important in cold weathers), continued blogging in Microsoft Word (no, I did not use the WiFi service of the hotel ‘cause it was an obscene RM15/hour wtf) while listening to some songs, and then slept.

Our tiny room that was smaller than the room at First World, Genting, although we did have a bathtub (toilet was bigger than that of First World’s).

Me and bro.