Besides the countless casinos and hotels, Macau has got lotsa churches and temples too. And what strikes me is that all the churches are painted in striking colors of bright green or yellow, no matter how old they are! Just like this St. Dominic's Church in the middle of a shopping district...
Ironically, with the vast number of old churches in Macau, the most famous one is the one with just one wall left standing. The Ruins of St. Paul's. This is where you find all the tourists, if they're not in shops or casinos that is.
And of all places, someone has to piss me off at this sacred place, and of all nationality, it has to be another Singaporean!
When I was leaning at the side of the steps waiting for my friend, a group of people suddenly appeared and squeezed behind my back. Just when I was turning back to find out what was happening, one aunty asked "Cuse me, can you move aside or not?".
WTH! Aunty, I was there first lor! But what to do? One shalt not argue with an aunty, or in this case, a group of aunties and uncles. So I left quietly but angrily.
Notice the "East meets West" stone lions at the edges.
And the scary skeleton too!
One of the must-eat in Macau is the Portuguese egg tart. But while you can find it everywhere, not all Portuguese egg tarts are created equal. We were there for the real thing, and so we took a MOP90(SGD15) cab ride all the way to
Lord Stow's Bakery. The Portuguese egg tarts are really worth the ride! The skin is crispy and layered, the custard eggy but not too thick, and the caramelised top skin is fragrant yet not too sweet. And since we paid for the cab to take us all the way there, we bought 6 egg tarts for 2 of us. Of course we couldn't finish them all! But even on the next day, the left overs were still good!
After eating the Portuguese egg tarts, we took a stroll along the sea side.
Spotted another bright yellow church!
After we had digested much of our Portuguese egg tarts, we took another cab and headed for the famous pork chop sandwich at
Cafe Tai Lei! This place sells pork chop sandwich on baguette, butter bun and sandwich bread. The baguette pork chop sandwich appears to be the best one which is only sold at 3pm daily with limited quantity. By the time we reached the cafe, it was already four plus so the baguette sandwich was already sold out.
But still, it's the same pork chop right? So we ordered the butter bun version. But boy were we disappointed. The pork chop was cold, and so it was hard. The butter bun was... well, just butter bun. They're also famous for their curry fish ball and so we ordered one as well but was disappointed as well. The curry is kinda too diluted for our liking, and the fish balls... you can get the same from Old Chang Kee and cheaper.
And then we had another slow stroll to digest the pork chop bun and curry fish balls...
One of the oldest temple in Macau, the A-Ma temple is dedicated to the seafarers' goddess dates from the early 16th century. According to legend, A-Ma was a poor girl on a fishing boat on the way to Canton when a storm blew up and wrecked all the ships nearby except the fishing boat carrying the girl. She then stepped onto Macau and vanished, only to reappear as a goddess, on the spot where the fishermen built this temple.
The A-Ma temple is not very big, but there are gods and goddesses in the temple and all over the little hill behind it. My mom's wise words said that whenever one pass by a temple, one must go in and pray. But while youngsters like us obediently paid for the MOP20(SGD3.30) bunch of joss-sticks and went urn to urn to pray to each and every god and goddess, we overheard some China Chinese tourists refusing to pay for the joss-sticks... what the...
