MACAU

Today, we spent the morning and afternoon wandering around the winding streets of Macau, taking in the interesting mix of Portuguese and Chinese architecture. We went to the the historic center of Macau, where we headed to the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the old fortress in Macau. First stop was Largo de Senaldo, followed by a walk by Saint Dominic’s Cathedral and another Cathedral whose name I don’t remember. It really does somewhat feel as though you are walking through Spain (or what I assume Portugal must look like), just transported to a chaotic Chinese city.

Then, we sampled the “jerky” we keep seeing everywhere from the supposed #1 jerky store in Macau. It was good, a little sweet, but interesting and unexpectedly yummy nonetheless. Of course, there were other street vendors, but we didn’t want to risk it with the food.

After that, we finally made it to the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was beautiful, if slightly smaller than expected. Then, we walked by a really interesting old temple, which served as the center point between 3 different trade routes in historic Macau, and now serves as a temple and reminder of the area’s history.

We took a long walk home, looking for lunch places on the way.

To satisfy Perry’s desire to try authentic Chinese food, we headed to a small shop near our hotel filled with locals. We ordered two different soups: I had the Fire Dragon Supreme, which I figured would probably be spicy, but actually which was rather mild. It did include delicious seafood though, with littleneck and razor clams, calamari, shrimp, and mussels in it. Perry got the beef soup, which had a flavorful broth and had barbecued beef ribs on top. We were both very satisfied with our meal, especially in terms of how much we received for our money.

Then, we headed for the ferry terminal and were in Hong Kong a little bit later. Hong Kong is really nice; it has a lot of features that London has, like the highway being raised above the main street level, and the double decker buses. Our hotel is an interesting mix of modern and perhaps ‘groovy’ in terms of the decor and lighting. So far, we’re stayed in the hotel, and I did laundry. Watching the reddish black (mostly black) water go down the sink after washing the pair of pants I wore the whole time we were in Cambodia was a nice way to say goodbye to southeast Asia.

HONG KONG

In Hong Kong, we found a great Mom and Pop noodle shop for dinner; we had another great noodle soup experience. I got the special spicy sauce noodles, which were actually spicy for once! The soup itself was great; Perry had the same soup base, but with marinated beef rib instead of the special spicy meat (we couldn’t quite figure out what it was).

After dinner, we decided to walk to the promenade area, passing through an interesting shopping center which included a mall shaped exactly like a cruise ship, which was curious.

The promenade itself was beautiful, with a great view of the skyline of Hong Kong across the harbor.

Now, time for bed and more exploring tomorrow!