After a long layover in Bangkok, we flew through about 20,000 feet of clouds to arrive in Macau. The flight was bumpy, although considering the amount of cloud cover, not too bad. As you fly into Macau, you can see straight into the clear water surrounding the coast- we were able to see a pod of dolphins or school of incredibly large fish jumping in the water as we came in (we were still too high for me to get a good grasp on what exactly they were).

After breezing through Macau’s immigration, we came straight to our hotel, which is located off of a nice square towards the old, Portuguese part of Macau City (driving through the new side of Macau S.A.R. is a little bit like driving through Las Vegas!). Fortunately, our hotel is right near a great seafood restaurant which serves both Macau style and mainland Chinese style food, which was a treat for us.

We shared a starter of what we think was pig’s ear and mushrooms in a thick, salty broth, then a shrimp and meat dumpling, sautéed kaylan, a half portion of honey and spice coated fried chicken (we noted that you could actually taste all the flavors of the chicken, unlike in the US where our GMO chickens kind of just absorb everything), and a seafood hot pot, which was delicious seafood, bok choy, Napa cabbage, and broccolini in a garlic and ginger sauce (I wanted to try the geoduck and other long clams I saw on display, as well as the 15 kg crab, but sadly they were out of our price range by a considerable amount).

Then, we wandered through the winding streets for a while, looking at the mixed Portuguese and Chinese character signs, and observing the little street life present on a rainy night in the back streets of Macau.

Tomorrow we are hoping to be able to see some of the famous Portuguese sights before we catch a ferry to Hong Kong, where we are spending the night. These next couple days are really our “catch up” and slow going days, which I’m looking forward to embracing before heading to Japan, which I think will be much like Korea in terms of things we want to see and time spent out each day.