Macau Trip

Left: Our Tiger Airways flight
Right: Main Hall of Venetian, downstairs is the gaming area

We went to Macau two Sundays ago for a 3N stay at the Venetian resort http://www.venetianmacao.com/. We nearly had to reschedule the trip. It was only the day when i was to make the e-booking from Tiger Airways that i realised my p/p had expired. Fortunately, the ICA was very quick in their processing and I was able to collect it w/i 3 days of submission, and that included a weekend. Well done, the HOME team, err... ICA to be precise :)

Left: Festiva Food Court

Right: in the toilet of our room

OK, about the trip. If you follow my postings regularly, you may have noticed that we went to Macau on late 2006 and we were back in less than 2 yrs! Why? Dun ask me, ask the missus... she likes to jalan there, very relaxing, good chinese food. True enuf, we ate plenty of good food, went around with no real objectives in mind, and be awed by the amazing Venice styled facades in the resort. Basically, Venetian is a very huge hotel (we stayed at the 23rd storey, there are 40 levels in all), with the first level being the gaming area, i.e. casinos, the third level shopping and F&B outlets. There was even a mini golfing area on the roof of the arcades. The only drawbacks were that the shops were mainly selling branded stuff and the location was a bit of way. However, in years to come, the Cotai Strip would be buzzling with tens of resorts - Sheratons, Four Seasons, Shangri-la, Hyatt, etc ... of course all would be well equipped with gaming venues.

Left : Cunha Street, Taipa

Right : One of Taipa Museums

So we did on our four days there? I would sum up in this posting and not in 4 separate ones, cos there are not much things to write.

Day 1: arrived at noon, took the complementary shuttle to Venetian. Had lunch at Food Court and checked-in. I took a quick walk to the Taipa village, which was rather disappointing. It was much smaller than what i had thought, esp the Cunha Street, which was the famed food street. Dinner was at the Lei Garden (yes, you have them here in Chijmes as well) which food was really delicious. We finished the day but just walking around the arcade, which BTW had a special name - "Streetmosphere". We got some nice peanut candies (my favourites) from 咀香园 http://www.choi-heong-yuen.com/ and freshly baked 老婆餅 from 奇華 http://www.kee-wah.com.hk/ My parents tried their luck at the jackpot machines late night but no luck for them. I had better luck on the following day though :)

Left: Olympic Torch arrived on 3 May (we missed by three days)

Right: Gondola rower who gladly posed for a pic

Day 2: we took a cab to Largo do Senado at San-Ma-Lou, and the first stop we went was actually Watson's! (as if we have none here...) Missus missed the cuttlefish tidbits and chewing gums and stocked a lot there. I was surprised to see that they actually sold wine there! Later we slowly took the stroll to the ruins of St Paul's but we din go all the way up since we had already done it and took pics there. But we walked down (it was a slope) with our hands full of more almond cookies and peanut candies - this time round from 鉅記 http://www.koikei.com/ Lunch was at 黃枝記粥麵 which served very good rice and noodles dishes... of course there was the pork chop bun (must try at Macau). We later took a bus to the jetty where we caught the free shuttle back to the resort. You would be amazed by the sight of seeing so many coaches offered by different hotels, ferrying people from the jetty to their hotels .... aammh casinos. This gaming business really brought in a hell lot of monies and created so much jobs. No wonder our goverment wanted to have two IRs in this small island of ours.

Left: rather expensive for an okay dinner at Old Neptune Restaurant

Right: and this is the restaurant

Oh yes, i was mentioning of our experience at the casinos. Missus and myself tried our luck each with HKD20 (roughly SGD4) on the jackpot machines. She broke even and decided not to venture, while i enjoyed a net gain of HKD60... BTW it was nothing to be proud of because when you took the voucher to collect the winnings (yes, no more ancient machines where coins drop from the machines when you strike!), you would feel so embarassing to present it to the cashier cos the other gamblers' winnings would dwarf the small victory of yours!

Through this short venture, i could really feel the compelling urge to keep on trying and insert in another 20 bucks to the machine and carry on playinig. You really need a lot of discipline to tell yourself that enuf is enuf. Well, i hope all other Singaporeans would feel this way when the IRs finally arrive.

Well, only managed to write of 2 days. to continue on another day....