Macau: Two Sides of the Former Portuguese Enclave

Many people at the Ruins of St Paul's in Macau

On Sunday morning I made a trip to Macau to visit relatives. I bought ferry tickets the day before to ensure I could get on the high-speed ferries. 

Tickets on the weekend are HK$190 each, and for first class it's HK$329 each; ages ago the return ticket would be worth more, but now they are the same price. Perhaps it's because there are now two high-speed ferry companies, and there are other ways to get to and from Macau, like the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge.

African chicken with pickles and potato wedges

It was a beautiful clear and cool day when I went, but very windy, which resulted in a slightly bumpy one-hour ride. The water kept splashing on the windows as if the ferry was going through a car wash or a rainstorm for the whole trip.

We made it safe and sound to the other side and unloaded off onto the Macau Taipa Ferry Terminal, a massive building that has a low capacity; which means passengers have to walk a long way to get to immigration and then out.

My relatives picked me up and we went upstairs to get to the Macau Light Rapid Transit, which is relatively new and few people ride it. It's a pleasant way to get around even though the speed may seem slow. It has convenient stops near all the major hotels, though not many people know about this public transit line or find it a hassle to get to the platform. 

At the end of the line -- right across from Hengqin in Zhuhai -- we got off and wandered a bit, passing by the Tin Hau temple before getting to Restaurante Litoral, a Portuguese dining establishment which has a Bib Gourmand from the Michelin guide.

Freshly made almond cookies with mandarin peel

We tucked into a big meal of bacalhau, or salted cod cakes, African chicken topped with a sauce that includes shredded coconut and caramelised onions that are browned under a broiler, stir-fried mixed vegetables, and a plate of grilled short ribs. 

Then we attempted to walk off the calories we had just consumed by walking around. We went to a side street to find a shop that sells handmade almond cookies, featuring ground almonds that are pressed into molds and baked.

My relatives were surprised to find the shop had a very short line -- typically the queue goes down the street. We didn't have to wait too long to get into the tiny shop and buy four boxes of these almond cookies that cost HK$85 each! That's because they are handmade, and not churned out by machines. You can even see men in an open-air shop making them with old equipment, the cookies left to cool on round bamboo trays.

As we walked down streets mostly catering to locals, my relatives were also concerned to see a lot of shop fronts that were closed, the shutters down. Either it was because it was a Sunday, or the business had shuttered. My relatives said if a business was not related to tourism, it would be very challenging for it to keep going.

Streets packed with visitors

This contrasted to when we got closer to the Ruins of St Paul's, where there swarms of tourists -- both mainland and Taiwanese. The streets leading up to remnants of the facade of a 17th century church are filled with shops selling all kinds of snacks, like the aforementioned almond cookies that are mass produced, beef and pork jerky, Portuguese egg tarts, egg rolls, and wife cakes. 

There were so many people at the Ruins of St Paul's that we quickly took a picture at the bottom of the stairs and then left via another street.

Macau is anxiously tracking the number of visitors to the city: in January there were over 3.64 million visitors, the vast majority were same-day tourists at 2.15 million, and only 1.49 million staying overnight. 

While the total number of tourists has gone up 27.4 percent year-on-year, most visitors only stay for the day. Those from the mainland can very easily cross the border into Zhuhai to stay the night where it is cheaper before re-entering Macau if they wanted to visit again.

This is a very similar situation in Hong Kong, where hotel rates are also expensive and again quite easy to go back to the mainland to Shenzhen to stay for the night, though most visitors are from Shenzhen and Guangzhou. It's a tough dilemma to solve, particularly for hotels eager to have more people staying in their rooms.

The Grand Lisboa in the distance

We managed to catch a cab along a small street and my relatives suggested I get to the ferry terminal and then they could continue on in the same taxi to get home. They said because cabs were so hard to come by that they didn't want to risk not being able to get another one if they got out and saw me off at the ferry terminal.