7 days of non-stop Eat-Pray-Love in Macau/Hong Kong - Day 02

We began our day as early as 8:00am as we only allocated 1.5 days for Macau. Our first pit stop for today is none other than the famous St Paul's Ruins. As the so-called-3-star-hotel (Ole London Hotel) we stayed in sits in a 10-minute-walk radius from Macau city (very strategic location actually), we decided to walk to St Paul's Ruins (well, actually we walked toward the mainroad and towards the bus stop but we, being map dummies, couldn't figure out which bus will take us there, so we seeked help from a local there and was told it was easier to walk than to take a bus, he pointed us the direction to water fountain and advised us to get directions when we reach the fountain).

True enough, it was as easy as he told us, we reached Senado Square in only 10 minutes. We then went round and round in Senado Square as everything look just the same to us. En-route to St. Paul's Ruins we saw St Dominic Church, quickly we took some photos there and moved on to our search for St. Paul's Ruins. After a few wrong turns we finally found St. Paul's Ruins (by following every direction post we saw in every cross road, be sure not to miss anyone of them! we lost ourselves just because we oversight one!). I was in awe when I saw the grey-color-building, I must say the sight of St. Paul's Ruin was really stunning!

After the St. Paul's Ruins, we were craving for food as we started our walk this very morning with empty stomach. So we returned to the fountain and spotted the famous Wong Chi Kei. I learned that this shop is known for it's wonton noodles from some blog sites and that it is a must-try for anyone travelling to Macau. No doubt about it as we saw people hovering around this shop, waiting to get in and it was only 10:00am, can you believe it? We queued for 5 to 10 minutes before there had a table for us. Wrong, we did not have one table to ourselves, we had to share it as there were only 2 of us and there were just too many people outside waiting. Shortly after we sat down, the waiter ushered a retired japanese couple to our table. We studied the menu and quickly put in our order (1 wonton noodles, 1 congee, 1 iced honey lemon, 1 xxx drink-can't recall what drink my friend ordered but it was not good, and of course 2 pork chop bun please!). We then initiated a conversation with the japanese man (a head full of white hair, with a pair of glasses and a camera in his hand) while his wife excused herself to the loo. We told them we were from Malaysia (we were so proud of our nationality, don't know why..and we took this conversation to promoting our country, hard-selling our country to the max).

Ling & I : We are from Malaysia. How about you?

Jap man : Japan.

I : Tokyo?

Jap man : No, xxxx (can't recall the name of his town.. too long)

I : How far is that to Tokyo?

Jap man : xxxx (can't recall his answer :P)

Ling : Have you been to Malaysia?

Jap man : Singapore, by pass Malaysia.

I : By bus?

Ling : No la he said by pass...

I : ...........(-_-")

***Drink is served and followed by pork chop bun***

We gobbled down our pork chop bun like hungry ghost, totally forgot about our appearance. The japanese man stared at my friend long enough to make me put my pork chop bun aside to ask him why.

I : Yes? (with my eyes widen)

Jap man : Aren't you all muslims?

Ling & I : NO! NO! NO! (we exclaimed and Ling almost choked)... we are chinese malaysians, non-muslim, we can take pork.

Funny huh...he thought every malaysian is a muslim because we are islamic country, luckily we corrected him.

The food was yummy-licious, every single bite of the pork chop bun was heaven! The wonton noodles was good, so as the congee but the best was my iced honey lemon, it was cooling and soothing and not too sweet. I like!

After the satisfying breakfast, we made our way back to St. Dominic Church and stopped by Bossini and each of us bought a T-shirt there. We then hopped on a bus, cluelessly, not knowing where the bus were heading, I was thinking that we just go to where the bus can take us to, surely it goes to one of the many tourist attractions I marked down. NO.. it didn't work that way, when I asked the bus driver, he sounded very annoyed by the many silly questions I posted to him. He told me that I got on to a wrong bus as it was going the opposite direction and asked us to get down and grab the bus from across the road which will take me to where I want to go. So we got down and hopped in another bus as per his advice. This time, we got better luck as the bus driver was much friendly than the earlier one. Knowing that we are tourists, he not only told us the must-see tourist sites, he also told us what bus no. will take us there so that we don't ride on the wrong bus again. We bid goodbye to the helpful bus driver as we see A-Ma temple.

A short 30 minutes was all we took to cover every corner and hole of the temple (it was a small temple, nothing big). In the speed of light, we found ourselves a cooling place - a store behind the temple - and there we bought 2 bottles of mineral water to rehydrate our body as the swealtering heat was killing us. There we spoke to the shop owner to get direction to the Mandarin House and Pehna Church. We didn't make it to Pehna Church, however we found these on our way to Mandarin House:

We drenched our shirts with sweat after all the walking under the skin-burning sun. It was so bad that I can smell my sweat...so we took a cab back to our hotel, shower and change into a clean shirt. After we freshen up ourselves, it was 3:00pm-ish and hunger called us to look for food.. We saw a few ang mo (white men) turned into a small alley around our hotel, not knowing where is the closest place we can find food, we decided to tailgate them as they seemed to know where they were going HAHAHA. After walking through some quiet backstreet, we began to hear some noise, noise of people talking and within seconds we saw people, many many people gathered around these shops, there were sourvenir shops and mini eateries. We just walked into one, looked around to see what other tables were having and ordered ourselves what every table were having which was the fried fish balls (HKD30), the dried noodles (HKD20) and.......the fish skin (HKD14 even though both of us don't fancy fish skin at all, but every other table had that so we gave a shot at it! And it was chewy!)

After the filling lunchie, we took a cab to Macau Tower (it cost us about HKD 23). There we strolled around. As the sky turned cloudy, we stood there for a while to enjoy the warm breeze and allowed the wind to run through our hair before some daring woman scream her lung out as she bungy-jump down from skyhigh Macau Tower.

From Macau Tower, we took a cab Ponte 16 to pay a visit to Micheal Jackson. No, not his tomb stone! It's his gallery, yes, there's a MJ gallery there and it's FREE! It has his signature bling bling glove, his hat, the wolf mask etc. Not only that, for MJ fans out there, you can also purchase all his albums there, MJ coffee mug, MJ umbrella, MJ T-shirt, MJ on, basically, anything you can think of. We spend a good one hour there I think, fooling around and snapping silly photos :P I think it's worth going and i would recommend that to anyone who is visiting Macau!

As we still have some time before hunger calls again, we decided go back to Venetian Resort in Taipa island as we only took pictures from the outside last night. Also because we found out from someone we spoke to (can't recall if that was the helpful bus driver or the cab driver) that Venetian provide free shuttle bus from Macau city to Taipa. We saw one Venetian shuttle bus by passed us as we stepped out off Ponte 16 and tried to ran after it but later realised there were many of them coming from behind (-_-")

We wondered around Venetian Resort until 7:00pm-ish...

And at about 8:00pm-ish (if memories serve me right), we were back at Senado Square looking for some sourvenirs shop and of course......FOOD. As we were sooo hungry, we were too lazy to look and settled our dinner at Wong Chi Kei. After our dinner which was about 9:00pm-ish, very close to 10:00pm, but the night was still young for us :) We returned to the spectacular St Paul's Ruins to catch the greyish building with lights on just before we call it a night. During the day you see the greyish St Paul's Ruins with colorful plants carpeting the sloppy cobblestone road next to the steps to the greyish building. As the dark set in, the colorful plants disappeared while St Paul's Ruins stood up in yellow lights, offering visitor a whole different feel... (personally, i think it was romantic :D).