Wednesday, 13 June 2018

I have been dreading today for more than a week.  We’re leaving Hong Kong and taking a boat over to Macau.  I am terrified of vomiting and boats trigger my anxiety attacks because of the high likelihood of people getting sea sick. I’ve been on boat journeys before where many of the passengers got sick and it’s horrifying.  Even if my party takes dramamine, I can’t force everyone else on the boat to take it.  It’s the stuff of my nightmares.

There are two options for getting to Macau: the ferry (US$20 per person): or a helicopter (US$550 per person).  So, the ferry it is.

Here we are, in our assigned seats.

Later:  The ferry was horrible.  Other passengers started loudly ralphing less than 10 minutes into the 1:15 trip.  I put on noise-cancelling headphones and turned up the sound on a movie as loud as I could stand it, but I could still hear people.  Gah!  I am going to have a hard time not letting the spectre of the return trip ruin my three days in Macau. (For any of you who suffer from panic attacks, you know how hard it is to force yourself to do something that you know in advance will trigger one.  They are awful and leave a residue of exhaustion and depression that can last for hours long after the initial attack is over.)  It more or less ruined my whole day.

Adam:  Macau is a Special Autonomous Region of China – but you can yet consider it a separate country. It’s only 11.8 square miles in size – and ranks as the most densely populated region in the world.

Macau is much older than Hong Kong – it was founded as a trading port by the Portuguese Empire in the 1550s (recall they were most powerful European empire at that time, only to be exceeded by Spanish Empire about 50 years later) and was only turned over to China in 1999 – the last remaining European colony in Asia.

The primary language is Cantonese, but Portuguese is still spoken in some areas – and I’m hoping that my rough Portuguese will get us around.

Macau is best known as THE resort city in Southern China; known for its casinos and luxury hotels. It is known as the pre-eminent gambling capital of the world, dwarfing other gambling centers- in fact, as measured in gambling dollars, it is now 7 times larger than Las Vegas.

According to The World Factbook, Macau has the fourth highest life expectancy in the world.  Moreover, it has a very high Human Development Index, ranking 17th in the world as of 2016.  Macau is among the world’s richest regions and its GDP per capita by purchasing power parity was higher than that of any country in the world, according to the World Bank.

Once we landed at the Macau ferry terminal, we grabbed our bags, hit the ATM for the local Macanese Pataca (currency) and took two separate taxis to our hotel. We’re staying at the Grand Lapa Hotel – on the 17th floor in a 2 1/2 room suite. There is a separate bed for everyone and three bathrooms! After a week in HK, this place is roomy.
After an early lunch, we headed out to get our bearings.

View (below) from our hotel window.  It’s raining and foggy today.

The rain stopped enough for us to walk to Od Town, Macau’s historic district.  It’s a UNESCO Heritage Site as of 2005.

There is very little English here.  We haven’t had too much trouble communicating in Hong Kong, but Macau is a different story.  Their secondary language (after Cantonese) is officially Portuguese, but very few people speak that, either.  Adam tried using Portuguese (which he learned for doing business in Brazil) but nobody understood him.  We still find a few people who speak a tiny bit of English, mostly related to numbers and prices. We’re getting by with a lot of pantomime and pointing at things.

Checking out some jade jewelry.  I’d love to buy a jade piece but I’m put off by the prices.  The nice ones are not cheap.

The Grand Lisboa Casino (below).

Senado Square – named after the Leal Senado, a meeting place for the Chinese and Portuguese in the 16th to 18th centuries

The Grand Lisboa looks weird and out of place looming over the historic buildings and cobblestone streets.

Lots of people out and about.  In the background is the facade of the Church of St. Paul. (More on that later.)

What is left of The Church of St. Paul. (It was never designated a cathedral but is often mistakenly referred to as one.) Jesuits originally built the church between 1602 to 1640. It was one of the largest Catholic churches in Asia at the time. It was destroyed by a fire during a typhoon on 26 January 1835.  This facade is all that’s left.

The carvings include Jesuit images with Oriental themes, such as The Blessed Virgin Mary stepping on a seven-headed hydra, described in Chinese characters as ‘Holy Mother tramples the heads of the dragon’. (Panel on the left in the photo.)

The dragon is really fat and looks kind of like a chicken.  The Holy Mother isn’t trampling so much as she’s floating above it’s head.  She reminds me of a refrigerator magnet, just sort of stuck on.

From this website (BTW, fantastic read for anyone interested in a comprehensive history of the Ruins of St. Paul):  On the east side, the Chinese characters are 念死者无为罪. Beside the characters, you can see a skeleton lying on a sickle and with an arrow stabbing into the body. This is to remind people that death can happen to us at any time, so we must constantly stay away from sin.

On the west side of the Holy Mother, the Chinese characters are 鬼是诱人为恶meaning “ghosts lure people to do evil things.” There is a fierce-looking demon with a tail and wings on its back carved besides the characters. It has a female body with prominent breasts and it has been shot with an arrow. Along with the accompanying characters, it illustrates that the devil, which represents all kinds of temptations, induces people to commit crimes but was eventually defeated.

Detail of demon.

Monte Forte (also called Fortaleza do Monte.)  Of all the forts in Macau, the Monte Forte is the oldest, lying to the east of the Ruins of St. Paul’s. Built in 1616, it originally belonged to St. Paul’s Church and was used to defend the church from pirates. It later became solely a military fort.

St. Paul’s as seen from the old barracks.

It was really hot and humid.  By the time we reached the top, we were quite wilted.

Back down.

The specialty of Macau seems to be this jerky.  Everything about it looks wrong … it’s square shape, the fact that it’s made of pork, and why oh why is it shiny? Is it covered in slim?  But lots of shops are selling it and all of them are packed with people buying it up in droves.  Maybe we’ll try some before we leave. (Edit from later: We did try a free sample one of the shops was handing out.  It’s not terrible, but not great either.  We didn’t buy any. It tasted kind of like a Slim Jim.)

Thursday, 14 June 2018

Everyone slept well last night.  Holden is in the living room of our hotel suite on a rollaway bed, but he’s thrilled to have his own room during the night and a real bed.  All of last week he was stuck on a couch.  Sometimes being the only boy lands him on the couch, but other times it scores him the best bedroom and more privacy than anyone else in the family gets, so overall he doesn’t complain.  The two girls almost always have to share.

Josie and Isabella.  Note the pillow barrier in the middle.

Adam:  I got up early this morning to prepare for my daily teleconferences. I make calls via SKYPE most every morning.. starting at 4:30 or 5:00am – which is late afternoon San Diego time.  Thankfully, in a casino town, a lot of places are open 24 hours – including a Starbucks that is within walking distance. I headed over there and got my morning coffee – but a grande coffee here costs almost US$4.00!

After the calls, I went to the lobby to ask about breakfast. Because we’re cheapskates, the room we purchased did NOT come with free breakfast buffet. However, I was able to whine a bit and they allowed Brenda and I both to go for about $20 each – and all 3 kids (since Isabella is, ahem, 17) got in for FREE.

The Grand Lapa has a truly fantastic breakfast buffet.  (You can see us in the background … my hat is always a marker. I’m wearing it at breakfast so I don’t have to fix my hair.)

After breakfast we headed down to the hotel pool.

The kids spent the morning swimming while Adam and I read in the lounge chairs.

It has a water slide!

One of the things we want to do in Macau is see a show called The House of Dancing Water.  We were unable to get tickets online because their website was malfunctioning, so we decided to go to the ticket office on the other side of the island, over by the famous Venetian Hotel.  The hotels provide free shuttle buses between them, so we were able to get from our hotel to the Venetian very easily.  That is a fantastic service.

I don’t know why Holden is sleeping; the ride only took about 10 minutes.

Adam:  These two shots (below) are the view across the water to Mainland China (the PRC.) The amount of construction and development always amazes me and it is just continuing unabated. We’ll all report to them in the future.

The Venetian Hotel has a massive shopping complex.  It is the largest hotel in the world and, when it was built, the 2nd largest building in the world. (Several in China have since surpassed it in size.) We spent most of the day wandering around, taking it all in. We did find the The House of Dancing Water ticket office (in another complex across the street) and were able to get tickets for tomorrow evening.  The seats she offered in person were better than the ones available online, so in the end we were glad the website didn’t work correctly.

They even have an indoor canal, complete with gondola rides.  The gondoliers serenade people … this guy was singing O solo mio.

Luxury everywhere you look.

Dim sum restaurant where we had lunch.

The kitchen was visible through a huge window.  Here they are making pork dumplings. We had a fabulous meal.

Giant video game outside the restaurant. It senses your body position/movements and portrays them on two big screens on the wall. You have to pose, wiggle, dance, run & etc.   The goal is to make your body match the shape (on the left side) and on the right, you run through a cityscape, jumping from one building to another collecting coins.

This guy demonstrated how it works.

Our turn!  This was really fun.

I was excited cheering Holden on.

Bella’s turn.

My turn.  It was a lot harder than it looked.  The girls and I were at a disadvantage because we were wearing dresses.  Some of the poses would have required us to show the world our underpants.  Our modesty hindered our performance.

Through the arches you can see the casino floor.  The tables were hopping, even at 1:00 p.m.  This place must be a madhouse in the evening.

McDonald’s, with the golden arches being the only hint at what kind of restaurant this is to anyone who can’t read Cantonese. It didn’t look very McDonaldsy inside.

Different restaurant.  We loved her chef’s hat.

Isabella and I checking out a sale at a huge (like seriously enormous, massive) Victoria’s Secret.  The prices were higher than at home.

People taking pictures of Victoria’s Secret.

Holden not giving a rat’s behind about Victoria’s Secret.  He’s had a lifetime of standing outside stores like that while his sisters shop.

Back on our side of the island, we walked to the Fisherman’s Wharf across the street from our hotel.  It’s styled as fake ancient Roman ruins, with weird modern touches such as this “LOVE” sign …

…. and this flock of giant rubber ducks.

I searched for information on the ducks and discovered that they were most likely replicas of “Rubber Duck” created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman.  “The Rubber Duck Tour (Macau)” occurred in 2016.

Wikipedia:  Hofman’s sculptures are temporary—even the Rubber Duck, which makes appearances in cities around the world, is created anew locally. He likes this because wealthy private collectors or those who see art solely as an investment are not able to buy his sculptures. In a 2013 interview, he stated “I’m not a big believer in ‘art is forever’. A lot of art is bought by people who have money. But I’m a supporter of public art in public spaces.” He is also strictly against commercialization of his art, and only sells miniature replicas, whose profits go to local nonprofits. In Hong Kong in 2013, it was the Joyful (Mental Health) Foundation; in Pittsburgh in 2014, it was the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

The gold building is Sands Macao.  (Apparently both spellings are OK.  Macau is Portuguese and Macao is English.)

Some repairs being made to the “ancient” ruins.

Friday, 15 June 2018

We started out after breakfast to wander back to the old part of Macau to see some things we didn’t get a chance to look over the day we arrived.

This is a pharmacy – plenty of herbal solutions, but for what ailments?

The fire hydrants remind me of Kenny from South Park.

St. Paul’s Church is still busy, even at this early hour.

Walking up any hills/stairs in this weather is unpleasant.

Bamboo is used everywhere for scaffolding and other structural supports.  Here they are building a new scaffolding.

The material truly is just long sticks of bamboo — no engineered joints or anything.

Behind St. Paul’s is the Na Tcha Temple, constructed in 1888. The Na Tcha Temple was built in homage to the child god of war. It is believed that it was built to put an end to the plague ravaging the region during that time.

The kids taking a break while I read the temple’s history.

Back at the hotel – the maid was busy cleaning our room, so we went down by the pool and read for about an hour. Isabella is making art with her digital drawing pad.

Those red boats are the floating hell trap vomitoriums we have to get back on to return to Hong Kong tomorrow. I hate them so much I don’t even like looking at them from here.

Adam:  We then headed for Taipa village. This was a Portuguese enclave since the mid 1850s but is now known for a wide variety of restaurants. We ate lunch here at a Portuguese restaurant and it was the best meal I’ve had on this trip.

This tiny alley wasn’t neglected by the street lamp people.

By happenstance, we are here during Macau’s annual Lotus Festival. During the week-long event, you can visit any major square, park or sightseeing spot and you will be treated to the sights of thousands of potted lotuses. There are flower-arranging and photography competitions, exhibitions, lotus floral art lectures and demonstrations, guided tours, children’s activities, lantern-making, fan-painting, even face-painting workshops.

(More here🙂  The lotus has been part of Asian culture for millennia. In ancient China, writers lauded the aquatic perennial Nelumbo nucifera as a flower that ‘grows untainted from murky waters.’ Its longevity, ability to return to vigour after hard conditions, and the humble roots of the parent plant that produce bright blooms, are perfectly analogous with Chinese familial values. The lotus happens to be part of the tropical Asian diet as well, and it is wholly edible, from the seeds and rhizomes to the petals and leaves. 

They are stunning.

Through the mist.

This person is even more dedicated to sun protection than I am!  Not a single ray will mar her visage.

After the lotus fields, we raced back indoors to glorious air conditioning.

We had a couple of hours to kill before our 5:00 p.m. show time for The House of Dancing Water.

Below:  The Parisian Hotel/casino/mall

They have so many beautiful dresses here, but the prices are sky high.  We quit going into any of the shops and must be content with widow shopping.

Josie watching an impromptu performance in the mall.

This guy was a talented acrobat.

Some warrior princesses(?) hanging out.

The kids found a free photo booth.  You can take your picture, then give the machine your email and it will send your photo to you.  Clever little data-collecting technique.

Back at the giant wall video game we played with the other day.

The House of Dancing Water theater – seats about 2000 and is circular, built around a large and deep swimming pool. Construction of the theater took 5 years and cost US$250MM. It then took another 2 years to train/practice for the show.  Over 80 gymnasts, circus artists, dancers, divers, actors, and motorcyclists are featured in the show. The performers work alongside 160 production staff, technicians and professional scuba divers from around the world.

Waiting for the show to start.  We got there early.

Those in the first 4 rows are provided towels in case of splashing. The first two rows are provided ponchos, as well — because you will get wet.  We were only one row out of the splash zone.

An enormous sunken ship is resurrected from a watery grave, crawling with the ghosts of deceased pirates.

Leaping off the ship from great heights.  It was a combination aerial/water choreographed dance.

“Swans” dance around fountains.

You can see how the dancers arms become the swan necks, their hands become the faces.

Another spectacular set that rises up from the depths of the pool.

Divers flying through the air.

The show also had strong elements of ballet.  This dance was performed in fountains with rain pouring from the ceiling.

We all agreed – this is easily the best show we’ve ever seen. Think of it as Cirque du Soleil with water. Amazing acrobatics, diving, dancing, swimming, lights and sound.

Last shot of the evening before retiring to our hotel.

Tomorrow morning we take that awful boat rode back to Hong Kong.  We have two days there before we get on a plane for Seoul, South Korea.