Tres arrived on Thursday but I had to leave her alone for the whole day as that's the day of the event... the gala dinner only ends at 10pm and by the time I joined her at the Ramada Kowloon was already midnight. I was rather shocked by the space in Ramada Kowloon. Guess it was the luxury of staying at 5-star Conrad HK... erhmmm ... the spacious room, the nice fluffy quilt and roomy super super single bed. Well I expected the difference and didnt really matter as we spent very little time in that small room.
Day 1 - Macau and Mong Kok
We started the day at about 9 plus with breakfast at one of the cafe or 'Chai Cang Tang' in cantonese. I had wanton noodles and Tres had egg tart and pineapple topped bun (polou bao). Both of us had the 'Yuan Yeung' - their version of tea and coffee mixed together. Breakfast was not too bad...
price... about HKD 50 plus for both of us. (think so... I dont think was that an expensive breakfast!!)
After breakfast, we made our way by foot to the China Ferry Terminal to take the Fast Ferry to Macau. We took the 11.30am ferry and arrived at 12.30pm... didnt realise that it was an hour journey. Well, after breakfast and still recovering from post event exhaustion, I took every opportunity to nap....hahhhah... probably took a 10 - 15 min nap.
Ticket price:From Kowloon To Macau - HKD 137
From Macau to Kowloon - HKD 140
Total cost - HKD 277 per person.
Like all tourist destinations, the minute we exited the immigration, we were approached by taxi drivers offering us transportation at special price. Thankfully Tres and I prefer to find our ways around. We flashed out our maps and the book from Michelle, identifying the destination that we want to go and the various bus numbers that will bring us there. We didn't have much problems with the bus ride... we arrived at the famous Macau landmark...
Ruins of St. Paul's and the Museum. We also took a walk to the fortress nearby the Ruins. Was a bit of climbing of stairs in a hot day.
Ruins of St. Paul's
All that remains of the greatest of Macau's churches is its magnificent stone facade and grand staircase. The church was built in 1602 adjoining the Jesuit College of St. Paul's, the first Western college in the Far East where missionaries such as Matteo Ricci and Adam Schall studied Chinese before serving at the Ming Court in Beijing as astronomers and mathematicians. The church, made of taipa and wood, was brilliantly decorated and furnished, according to early travelers.
The ruins are regarded as the symbol of Macau and now offer visitors a new site where they can view the remains of the former Church of the Mother of God, visit a Crypt where the relics of the Martyrs of Japan and Vietnam rest, and a museum of Sacred Art where there are exhibits of paintings, sculptures and liturgical objects from churches and monasteries in the City.
Mount Fortress
Mount Fortress, built in 1617-26, occupies a hilltop to
the east of the ruins of St. Paul′ s. It was constructed
by the Jesuits as part of a complex which also included
the college and church of St. Paul′ s. The canons were
used only once, when the Dutch invaded Macau in 1622. This was also the first residence of the governors of Macau. Over the following decades trees grew from the platform of the fort, which was transformed into a public park where residents and visitors came to enjoy the views.
We walked through the Senado Square Area for food.... Senado Square is the main bustling area in central downtown on the northern side of Av. Almeida Ribeiro (New Road) where a great number of shops and food stalls line the street.
Food... that's our favourite agenda. As we walked along the streets, we tasted the Almond cookies. There were few shops selling all the famous almond cookies.. well I'm not a big fan of such traditional cookies and of course not knowing which is the famous brand there.
We decided on a Chinese restaurant for our tea cum lunch at 3 plus. What did we have??? Let me recall...ha ... we had liver and slice fish porridge, vegetables and fried noodles. The food was ok.. can't say it's fantastic. Total cost? less than 200HKD definitely.
Nexyt agenda after lunch was to rush to the Sandz Casino... but the bus that we took will not bring us directly to Sandz. We only had about an hour to make our way to Sandz and make our way back to Harbour to catch our ferry back to Kowloon at 5.30pm. So we decided not go rush and made our way to the harbour.
Well the reason for coming back to Kowloon early was because we wanted to have our seafood dinner in Sai Kung. The sad thing was giving up the idea of not going to Sandz, we didnt manage to find our way to Sai Kung. I had instructions from my local friend to take the mini bus from bus stop in front of Golden ERA Plaza at Mong Kok but no one seem to know where Golden ERA Plaza is... so we gave up after an hour of searching of that bus stop. In the end we went to Temple St. for dinner. But before we reached Temple St. we found our most important shop along Nathan Road. Well, how can I retun to Singapore without Hang Heung 'Lo Po Beng' aka old wives biscuit?? We didnt buy most of the items yet but at least we know the location so that we can quickly come to the shop on Sunday before we fly off... buy the fresh biscuilts home.
Hmmm... talk about dinner at Temple St. My sister Joanna told me that along Temple St there is a very yummy claypot or in Hong Kong they call mini-pot rice. We found the stall without any problem... it's a cramp place and small tables by the roadside. We shared the small table with a local couple who constantly looked at Tres and myself. We had salted fish with chicken cubes claypot rice, prawns and clams. The name of these prawns... in literal translation as prawns that cant control their bladder??? hahha I know Tres gave a better name but I cant remember... I just wondered why these prawns are called " Lai Lew Ha" in cantonese.
These prawns wont easy to peel... very thankful to Tres who peeled all the 8 - 10 prawns.
In the midst of our dinner, we experienced a sudden light rain. Luckily its not the Singapore way of downpour. Few large drops came down and we just continued with our food. We panic for a while but the shop didnt look like they are able to move us into shelter. So we figured we should just quickly eat and leave...hahahh who knows by leaving in a hurry we could forget to pay. Oh...no we didnt do that of course!!!!
Total price - approximately HKD90.
End of Day 1... we ended the evening with yummy dinner... hmmm very contented and we took a very long walk back to hotel and did some shopping at the same time cos it's walking along the entire stretch of Nathan Road. Think we burned off quite a bit of calories.
