Macau, a place of juxtapositions

Over the weekend, I took a day trip to Macau with friends. I explored most of the island and some of the casinos and what an experience!


When I first arrived on the island, I was bombarded by signs and ladies with uniforms advertising for their casinos. All of a sudden, I heard the little chime for text messages on my cell phone and voila! I got about 5 text messages advertising the various casinos in Macau. Once you got out the Macau ferry docks, it was clear that you were somewhere bizarre... like Vegas.





All of the casinos have free shuttle buses that bring you to another casino or to the ferry docks. It was absolutely insane. The strangest thing though? Despite all the casinos, many of the non-gambling related tourist attractions at Macau were... churches? Since Macau was once a Portuguese colony even before it became a colony, many Christian clergymen - such as Matteo Ricci - came to Macau to start their missions in China, hence all the churches.


(This picture of Matteo Ricci's statue in Macau isn't mine, it came from this site.)

There are also some Buddhist monuments there but somehow, my friends and I missed all of them. Strange. I'll just have to go again, I guess. That's perhaps the second strange juxtaposition in Macau: you'll have all of these European-looking buildings in an avenue but then all the signs are in Chinese and then you'll come across a section that looks very much like Hong Kong. Here's sort of an example:

Low European-style buildings:


Hong Kong-esque mix of apartment buildings:


The first church we came across was St. Dominic's church, a UNESCO world heritage site. It's in the square where there are a lot of tourists, so it's often very busy around the church.


The ruins of St. Paul's church was something that I've always wanted to see since my friend gave me a postcard with a photo of it at night. The church was made of wood, except for the facade and when it burned down in 1835, only the facade was left. It's quite a magnificent monument and it's another one of Macau's UNESCO world heritage sites.


After visiting St. Paul's, I got some postcards for my friends and I noticed that we didn't see the the Chapel of Our Lady Penha, which was one of the pictures on the postcard. A friend of mine said, "You can't buy it unless you see it," but I bought it anyways and we set off to find it.

At first, we ended up at St. Lawrence's church, not what we were looking for but a church nonetheless.


We looked at the map and trudged on. My friend led us up a hill in scorching 40 degree (celsius) weather. It was torturous and I nearly died on the way up (the climb is really tough, so be careful if you have any heart conditions or asthma) but it was totally worth it. When we got to the church, we were greeted by the sight of a priest (or some type of clergyman). It was strangely idyllic when you think of the fact that this church overlooks a whole bunch of casinos.


The view at the top of the hill was unsurpassed... (The crazy gold thing is the Lisboa casino, probably the most ostentatious casino in Macau.)


The church itself was also gorgeous!



There's also a little garden with this shrine to Mary and if you sit and face her, it feels as if you're in a quiet little corner in the forest. Quite a feat for a place like Macau. I don't consider myself as belonging to a religion therefore, I'm not religious at all but that silent moment by the shrine felt like a prayer in itself.


Finally it was time to go and my friends wanted to "win their fortunes" at a casino. When gambling, I think there's the adage that says, "Go big or go home." And go big we did. We took a bus to the Venetian Macao aka the biggest casino in the WORLD.



None of my friends won their fortunes but we did find humour in the fact that people actually rode these gondolas that traveled the artificial canals IN the casino. It was pretty ridiculous. And tacky.


All in all, Macau was fun but when they say that you only need a day to go through the entire island, they weren't kidding. So if you're visiting Macau, wake up early to catch the boat, gamble and explore and you can return to your house (rather than stay at an expensive hotel) late at night.

Sketchy Asian malls galore!

So far on my blog, I've only really shown pictures of fancypants malls with expensive shops and brand names like Hermes, Gucci, Louis Vuitton... you get the point. However, Hong Kong is full of sketchy little Asian malls selling cheap stuff. I'll let the pictures do the talking here.

Sketchy Asian malls may not have high end brand names but their selling point comes from their blatant disregard for the adage, "Less is more."


Sometimes, the stores have very interesting names...


Sketchy Asian malls are also huge proponents of the piecemeal/super layered outfit. I don't quite get the layered thing seeing that Hong Kong is too bloody hot for layers of any sort... clothing-wise at least.


A room full of gashopon (shown below) and claw games are always in these malls. I dunno why.


That's it for now! See you next time!

A tropical paradise in a world of skyscrapers

Lamma Island is a small island just off of Hong Kong island. To get there, you just take a ferry from the Central piers and viola! Tropical paradise! Other than the power plant, there aren't very many big buildings and it feels as if you've disappeared off Hong Kong to this quaint little town in the middle of a tropical paradise. I was super super excited when I saw all the fruit on the island...

Papaya!


Bananas!


Longan!


I saw a tree with rotten starfruit beside it as well as a few pomegranate trees.


There was also a lovely beach there. I didn't plan on swimming but I was so occupied with collecting seashells at the edge of the water, I pretty much got drenched. Thank goodness the weather was hot. I got dried off in about 10 minutes.

My friends and I ended up walking the entire island. There was a path you could follow but it went steeply uphill at certain points. All of it was beautiful nonetheless. Here are some of the pictures:







After all that walking, the entire group was ravenous. Luckily, there were tons of restaurants offering seafood feasts. You could also see your dinner before it was cooked!


I also tried mantis prawn for the first time. (Lai new ha.) I was sort of disappointed. The things took too much effort to peel and eat. (These things are also the creepiest looking creatures when they're alive.)


Still, it was a fantastic day at Lamma Island. I'm definitely going back someday! To end, here's a picture of a souvenir island my friend bought on Lamma Island. It has a funny expression on its face.

Transformers in the sky... and stuff

Here's a typical postcard of Hong Kong which shows the skyline at Victoria Harbour. It looks cool as a totality but when you approach each and every one of these buildings individually, you can't help but feel awed by their epicness. I'll leave the pictures to do the talking for this blog post.

The Lippo Building (My mind was blown when I saw this thing, it looks like a transformer!)

The Bank of China building (A story that's floating around is that it's all pointy unlike all the other buildings because the bank wanted to shoot bad feng shui at the British to make them leave.)


The Legislative Council building. (It's a very historical building so it's not a skyscraper like everything else.)


HSBC Headquarters

Here's a link to a full picture of it on wikipedia.

Jardine House


I haven't seen all the cool buildings in Central on Hong Kong Island but stay tuned for more pictures in the future!

In a sea of capitalism...

Hong Kong is undoubtedly a place in which capitalism is thriving as it has done since the founding of the British colony. As I was exploring Hong Kong on Saturday with one of my friends, you couldn't help but notice it everywhere.

Giant shopping malls (some super expensive and fancy ones too!) in which wide scale consumerism takes place are literally everywhere. You don't even need to try and you'll be able to find one. My friend and I stumbled upon many of the malls in this post. And yes, we saw them all during the same day.

Pacific Place Shopping Mall in Central:


Interior decor store at Pacific Place:


ifc building complex (it's a fancypants shopping mall, hotel and possibly other stuff as well):

(Outside - 1 of 2 towers)


(Inside)


(The picture of the necklace above was also taken in the ifc.)

1881 Heritage (this is more like a collection of shops in a historical building aka the former Marine Police Headquarters):


A gallery store near 1881 Heritage.


Closeup of another tusk (can you imagine anyone putting this in their house?):


The crazy capitalism in HK can also be seen in residential areas where old buildings are constantly being replaced with skyscrapers and new building complexes as real estate is some of the most valuable in the world. Here, you can see a variety of housing (which in turn represents the social stratification here): old shanty houses for low-income tenants (see the lower right corner), medium sized apartments for middle-class tenants and high rise buildings which are fancy condos for rich people (aka the buildings that didn't fit into the picture because they were so tall).


Political parties or policies that belong to the left of the political spectrum are sorely lacking in Hong Kong so labour laws and unions are not as powerful as they are in North America. Good for the entrepreneur and strike-haters, bad for the average Joe or Jane who's being paid about $3.50 (USD) or less an hour passing out flyers on street corners in 30+ degrees (Celsius) weather.

Then again, this doesn't mean that the political left doesn't exist in Hong Kong. In fact, right across from Times Square (aka crazy big shopping mall in Causeway Bay) is a Communist cafe/bookstore, featuring Mao Zedong as their logo.


They serve drinks in jars in this cafe. It was kinda cool. You could also purchase these jars (as well as cups with Mao's face on it) for home.


There were also books on the June 4th, 1989 Tiananmen Massacre and Marxist ideology. It seemed very much like an iconoclastic cafe in many ways.


What an interesting place this is... In any case, my adventures from Saturday continues in the next blog post, coming soon to a browser near you!