Today is our last day of vacation before we head back to Singapore tomorrow. We had the breakfast buffet this morning at our hotel before taking the hotel shuttle bus to the Macau Jockey Club. From there we could walk to different sites.

We visited the Four Faces Buddha, Macau Stadium, Tin Hua & Pak Tai Temples, and Rua de Cunha. The temples had very these very interesting incense hanging from the ceiling.

We ended up at the Taipa Houses Museum which showcases a Macanese House, a House of the Islands, a House of the Portuguese Regions, and an Exhibition Gallery.

We had lunch at a restaurant called Pana. We had mussels, Portuguese chicken, and seafood fried rice.

The funny (but maybe gross) thing was that Ron found a baby crab inside one of his mussels. I guess the mussel was having a meal when it was caught.

After lunch we got totally lost again. We really couldn’t figure out the bus system. We were trying to go to the Go Karting place but ended up on the wrong island. So we ended up just visiting the casinos. We visited Hotel Lisboa, Wynn, and MGM.

MGM just opened but only one of its towers. They were passing out free juices of calimansi and orange plus water. And you know where there are Chinese people and free stuff, there’s a swarm. It was hard to get our hands on these but it was worth it because they were quite refreshing after breathing all the smoke in the casinos.

Afterwards we headed to the Ferry Terminal again to take the free shuttle to the Venetian. We were in search of a good casino buffet but none of the other hotels have one, we hoped that Venetian wouldn’t let us down.

A view of our hotel (Grand Waldo) from the Venetian, very very bright!

We went shopping for a bit at the Venetian Canal Shoppes and it’s huge! Much bigger than Las Vegas. It was a good way to kill some time before we had our dinner and I also got to shop at a great Hello Kitty store called Ki La Ra.

We were happy though to find a buffet at Bambu Asian Feast. They had prime rib, fresh seafood, and mostly Asian food but the desserts were my favorite. Ron only shared the 1st plate with me, the other 2 plates I ate myself… 😛

After a satisfying meal, we headed back to our hotel by taxi and played video games until 11pm. Ron is out gambling a bit and I’m going to sleep. We leave in the morning for Singapore.

Our flight was delayed to Macau so didn’t arrive until after lunchtime. Although the flight was short, they served us breakfast/brunch which was a bit weird as it was a mix of Chinese and Western food.

When we finally arrived in Macau. We caught a cab to our hotel, The Grand Waldo Hotel & Casino. We stayed in a bit to figure out what to do in the afternoon. Luckily our hotel offered free shuttle service to the Ferry Terminal where there are buses to the sights of Macau.

The first place we went was to the area near the Ruins of St. Paul but our first stops included snacks. I love Portuguese egg tarts and even though I wasn’t supposed to take a picture, I did.

Doesn’t it make your mouth water? The crust is very flaky and yummy and the custard is very egg-y and just the right amount of sweetness. As we continued on our way to the Ruins of St. Paul, we also stopped by Pasterlaria Koi Kei Macau which sells lots of snacks like peanut candy, pineapple cake, cookies, and pork/beef/chicken barbeque meat. All so good.

We finally made it to the Ruins:

The sun was going down so we decided to quickly see Mt Fortress and its canons. We stayed there while the sun set and Ron took this photo:

We stopped by Sedano Square, St. Domnic’s Church, the Cathedral, and Holy Mercy commemorative statue.

We decided to have dinner at Fat Siu Lau, the oldest restaurant in Mcacu opened in 1903. It’s supposed to be Portuguese cuisine.

We had for appetizer, French style baked escargot (Caracois A Francesa):

Main courses of Spicy African Chicken (Galinha Africana) and Minute Steak (Bife “Amalo”):

We got quite lost on the way back to our hotel as we were on Macau island and our hotel was on Taipa island. The bus we took didn’t take us where we wanted to go but we finally did make it to the Ferry Terminal to catch our free hotel shuttle back to the hotel.

Today’s bus ride was over 2 hours but we finally arrive around 9:30am. We visit the West Lake area and the Su Causeway.

There were tons of other tourists like us as well, they came toward us like a swarm.

There were peacocks just randomly grazing and sitting around:

We took a little tour on the lake.

They next took us to a green tea museum and grower. They offered us some of their mid-grade tea where you can eat the leaves and gave us some information about tea (which I unfortunately could not understand much).

We stopped by the Lingyin Temple (Flying Peak) and took this interesting picture:

Does it look like the Chinese word for “heart”? Our heads are supposed to be the 2 dots on top.

The famous laughing Buddha:

We then stopped by another silk factory, this one was The Center for Hangzhou Silk Showing & Shopping. We learned here that the double pupas are used for the inside of blankets because the threads are intertwined and can’t be unraveled. The single pupas are used to make the thread because it can be unraveled by machine.

The left are “double” and the right are “single”.

The place also did a fashion show for the customers to see their clothes. It was rather corny but they do make nice things.

We headed back to Shanghai and Ron and I had a craving for hot pot. We found ths place called “789”. Each person has their own pot with their own soup and you order shared additives. The best thing about this place was the choice of sauces that you make yourself… it was a bit overwhelming and we had a hard time choosing.

The only shady thing about this restaurant was that we tried to use a credit card to pay and they told us it was rejected so we ended up paying cash instead. When we got back to the apartment, we called our credit card company to find out what was wrong and they said there wasn’t anyhthing wrong because the restaurant requested authorization three times and received authorization each time but the restaurant chose not to actually post the charges! Sounded very shady to me… they probably just wanted the cash instead so they could likely not report it… the food was pretty good and filling but I don’t know if I’d recommend the place if they have business practices like that.

For more photos on the silk factory and on the dishes we had for hot pot, check out the slideshow!

Tomorrow we leave for Macau!