Our Hong Kong trip finished with a quick trip to Macau. The arrival port was close to the fisherman’s wharf area of the city, which is no longer anything to do with fishing but has a few casinos, one looking like the Roman forum and Colosseum, and a fun walkway which was setting up for some kind of festival. After wandering through here we caught a bus to our hotel to drop bags before heading straight back out as we only had 24 hours here and wanted to make the most of it. We headed straight to a restaurant Creed had found, and discovered the local dishes here were better than anything we’d had in Hong Kong, and we were completely stuffed for the first time on the trip. The restaurant was close to the fort, so it made sense to head further up the hill to visit this after eating, and our way down the hill afterwards took us past the Ruins of St Paul. But we were short on time so instead of sticking around the old section we took a bus all the way south to a free zoo where we saw giant pandas and not much else because all the other animal exhibits were closed.

Then we walked the strip of the largest Macao casinos: Studio City, the Parisian which has a much bigger Eiffel Tower than the one in Vegas, the Venetian which looks very similar to the one in Vegas, and the Londoner which looks like Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Having just spent 36 hours in Las Vegas it was very interesting to compare. The outsides of the casinos were much more elaborate in Macao, with more space between them, but the insides of the casinos were surprisingly small and unthemed. The Venetian still had a Grand Canal running through the mall, with Gondola rides and a ceiling painted to look like the sky. This Venetian is the second largest casino in the world, and we ended up walking a lot more of it than intended because we struggled to find an exit from the shopping area.

Our next stop was Taipa, where we had a quick stop at some old Portuguese style houses and a wetland with a view of the casinos behind it. The central area here was a very lively street of food vendors mostly selling beef offal, which we passed on, but unfortunately the food shops we had particularly wanted to visit were closed for the day by this time. So we got back on a bus and headed back towards the old town to visit some more casinos. The Wynn has a very cool spectacle every half hour where a large globe on the ground and an astrology chart on the ceiling open up to show some video effects, and then a chandelier comes down from the ceiling and then a huge gold tree comes up from out of the ground. Hard to describe, but quite impressive! They also have a fountain show here, which is smaller than the one at the Bellagio in Vegas but has a much cooler backdrop. Our final stop on this very full day was the Lisboa casino, possibly the most famous building in Macao. We were too tired to go inside by this point, but marvelled at the outside for a while and then headed home.

The next morning we were out again early, and wandering more of the old town that we’d skipped yesterday. We visited a few temples, a large house that was built by a famous Chinese writer, and a chapel on a hill that offered the best views of the Macao skyline, including the Lisboa casino and Macao tower. We didn’t feel the need to visit the tower, having got a good view of it, so from here we headed back up towards St Paul to see more of the ruins that we’d rushed by yesterday, and visit the crypt. Since we were back in the area, we decided to go back to the restaurant from lunch the day before. After this we headed to Santo Domingo, the largest church in the centre, and discovered it was the end of a private event, and was then going to be closed for cleaning, so we sadly weren’t able to go inside. We had no time to wait around for it to reopen, so headed straight back to the hotel to pick up our bags. But we weren’t done yet! 

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We took a bus to the waterfront and wandered along from the cool looking science museum building to the small round chapel with a large statue on top sitting on the water. We walked back through the Wynn, this time seeing its large jellyfish tank behind the hotel check in desk, and back to the Lisboa where we did finally make it inside. For the first time I got IDed trying to enter the casino, and once inside we discovered that yet again the theme and extravagant decoration was mostly external, and the inside was not particularly unique and incredibly busy. So, at last, we were ready to get back on a bus to Hong Kong airport.

This bus (or more accurately series of buses) took us across the longest sea bridge in the world. At the other end we had to check in to Hong Kong, even though we were then connecting to the airport to check out of Hong Kong. Immigration leaving Hong Kong to get to Macao, entering and exiting Macao had all been very quick and painless. This time was not. There were enormous queues and not nearly enough staff, and the e-gates were only available to people from certain countries who had signed up to the Hong Kong e-gate system, ie not us. We had to wait in line for nearly an hour, and were getting increasingly worried about making it to the airport. Finally we were through, and we’d just missed an airport bus but there was another in 15 minutes. Many other buses that Google said we could take didn’t specifically state the airport on their list of stops, and we didn’t want to risk it. We made it to airport and immediately saw all the other buses we could have taken, and rolled our eyes at Hong Kong’s unhelpful public transport signage, but it no longer mattered. There was again a very long queue to check in, but fortunately there was a much shorter line for boarding pass pick up if you’d checked in online, which we had. TSA ended up being very fast, so in the end we arrived with 30 minutes before boarding began, and the only thing that we lost out on was time in one of the fanciest airport lounges we’ve been to in a while. 

Thanks for following along on my crazy adventures!

 Ros ♥

If you’re interested in how I got here, or where I went next, check out the rest of the story!