The second day in Macau: from the sacred to the profane

largo do senado

The next morning I took some time to meander around Largo do Senado, and popped into the pretty but not particularly remarkable baroque 17th century church of St Dominic.

The previous day we had seen a lighthouse from the vatage point of Monte Fort, discovered that it was on the Guia fort and thought it would be interesting to visit it the next day. After our taxi debacle the day before, we decided to take a bus there. Bus stops in Macau have a list of the stops made in both English and Cantonese, so by photographing the Cantonese sign of where we wanted to go we were able to ask the bus driver if we were going to right way. It’s a good thing we did this, as the first bus we tried to get on would’ve taken us in the wrong direction.

Lighthouse and Chapel of Our Lady of Guia, Guia Fort

We rode a very sedate cable car to the top of Guia Fort, and then had a pleasant walk through the park. The park includes a children’s play area with some swings: I couldn’t resist. I love going on swings, it had been absolutely ages since I’d done so, and I spent a very satisfying fifteen minutes seeing how high I could go, possibly much to the amusement of a pair of teenage girls.

I would not have thought that the top of the highest point in the city would’ve been a very sensible place to build an air raid shelter, but there was one there nonetheless, peopled with a selection of shabby and somewhat bilious looking mannequins.

Outside the rather appealing lighthouse and Chapel of our Lady of Guia, was this interesting display of what at first I thought was modern art, but turned out to be an old fashioned way of communicating weather conditions. Each one means a different sort of weather, although I’ve forgotten what exactly they symbolise, and would be hung outside the lighthouse to alert sailors.

weather warning signs, Guia Fort

The Chapel was decorated inside with a series of simple and seemingly completely non religious frescoes, although I suppose the lion in this one could be the symbol of St Mark the Evangelist.

fresco, Chapel of Our Lady of Guia

A short walk from Guia Fort is the charming and labyrinthine Kun Iam Temple. There is more than a hint of Mediterranean Catholic kitschness in the way the shrines are decorated with flower fairy lights, and the statues themselves are fierce looking red faced deities. The doorway lintels are decorated with fascinating and detailed carvings of gods doing their god thing. If you walk through the shrine rooms there is a quiet walled courtyard garden filled with various potted plants, although going back I got a bit lost and accidentally wandered into a private room where a monk was taking a nap!

shrine, Kun Iam Temple

That evening we took advantage of the cool night air coming through a hole in the wall at the end of the corridor our ‘rooms’ were on to sit out by the hole, play cribbage and having a few glasses of vodka. The reason that there was a hole in the wall is that they are currently renovating half of the guesthouse. The reason they are renovating it is because it fell down.

Cribbage is a north Mid-Western card game that A and her parent’s taught me on our trip, which is surprisingly addictive. Although it has probably taken me well over a month to remember most of the rules and even now I forget some of them, especially after a few glasses. The main gist of the game to collect 15s, pairs or more of the same card and runs of consecutive numbers. It’d be a great game to play in schools, as I’ve seen a real improvement in my mental maths skills since I started playing, but it would probably be inappropriate as the children would enjoy it.

After playing for a while we all got an attack of the munchies, so went out to forage. We found a little local restaurant, and using the ever useful skill of pointing at pictures on the wall, conveyed to the waiter that we wanted four plates of spring rolls. They arrived with a fluorescent pink sauce for dipping, which tasted like it might have been a version on sweet and sour. After scoffing them down, we retired, ready for an early start for Hong Kong in the morning.

Chinglish signs

Amusing Chinglish signs have me breaking into what must seem like totally inexplicable fits of giggles in the oddest of places in China. Here are a few of my favourites from my trip.

shop, Yangshuo, China

pharmacy, Macau, China

hound toilet, Macau, China

Ok, so this was in Sabang, the Philippines, so it's not strictly speaking Chinglish, but still worthy of inclusion

The first day in Macau

I have a slight history in China of getting into cabs driven by complete maniacs. It seems that this extends all the way to Macau. Getting from Macau’s the ferry port to our guesthouse, the taxi driver obviously saw an opportunity to milk a foreigner, as he drove us round in circles pretending not to know where our guesthouse was, and then was surprised when we refuse to pay the whole fare.

I was still feeling stressed from that encounter when I went to check us in the Sanva Guesthouse. Even though I could clearly see my reservation written down in their book, it took ten or fifteen minutes of arguing until the owner, who spoke no English at all, agreed to connect the name written in the passport I was showing her with the same name written down in her book.

Then we saw the rooms. We had chosen Sanva mainly on the recommendation of Lonely Planet, which describes it as “the most charismatic lodging in town”. A piece of advice, if LP uses the term “charismatic” about a play to stay, go somewhere else. The ‘rooms’ were in fact cubicles, portioned by thin plywood ‘walls’ that stopped a good few feet shy of the ceiling: meaning that you could hear everything, no matter how intimate, that might be going on in the other ‘rooms’. The couple that owned the place weren’t very friendly either, and there was a bit of a scene when someone took an orange from a bowl in reception, that was apparently part of a shrine. This was an honest mistake: none of us had seen the whole bowl of oranges as religious offering thing before and thought they were for guests.

Our friends, K and W, came from Hong Kong to spend a day in Macau and met us at the guesthouse. They work in the same school as me and A, but had been travelling separately for a couple of weeks, so it was fun to catch up and swap stories. After a well deserved relaxing lunch, we went out to explore Macau. We started with the ruins of the church of St Paul, a seventh century church that, except for the frontage, was razed by fire in 1835. You can climb up to an observation deck behind the windows, and, like others, I threw a coin onto the lintel of the main window and made a wish.

Sunset climbing up Monte Fort

Then we strolled up to Monte Fort, enjoying the views of the sunset on the way. Owing to pollution and tower blocks, we’re rather starved of sunsets in Shijiazhuang, and getting to see them again was one of the highlights of the holiday. After an amble around the fort, we wandered around the many little side streets in the area, mainly trying out different types of beef jerky and biscuits that were on sale. Quite by accident we stumbled across a small shop down an alley selling absolutely delicious spring rolls and other snacks.

A typical Macanese side street

All this meandering gave me ample time to appreciate what makes Macau unique: the quite exceptional blend of East and West. In some places, like at the church ruins, it would be easy to think that you were in southern Europe, yet just a few metres away will be a quintessentially Chinese alley. Perhaps the best example of this was the main square, Largo de Senado, with its typical European architecture and surprisingly funky striped square, which was dominated by very Chinese New Year decorations.

largo do senado

Macau, is of course, known as China’s Las Vegas, so that evening we visited a random casino. First of all though, we celebrated the Year of the Ox by taking a clambering over the decorative Ox they had outside and getting shouted at by a security guard.

I’m not a massive fan of gambling, so I spent 10 Hong Kong dollars (just under one pound) on a slot machine game that I couldn’t understand to be able to say I’ve gambled in a casino in Macau. We all spent the majority of our time there sitting at the bar, making friends with/terrorising the bar staff, throwing large amounts of complimentary peanuts down our neck and watching the hilarious and terrible dancing of three rather unfit and unhealthy looking scantily clad Caucasian girls that was the sum of the casino’s entertainment.

Macanese biscuits. These were a bit too dry for my taste.