Macau sucks

27.08.2015

Diana's cousin and uncle drove me to the border of Macau on their way to work in the morning. That was awesome because it was so far away. I also needed to buy my ticket home ASAP, so before going to Macau, I went to the nearby train station for my ticket from Guangzhou to Zhengzhou, leaving on Aug. 5.

Some guy from Brockville, of all places, got in line behind me. He was doing his 90-day visa run, so I followed him to the other side. He seemed to know what he was doing. It all seemed so easy, but in reality, it's not. More on that later.

My first stop in Macau was Largo de Segundo, the famous black and white square with colonial Portuguese architecture. From there, I wanted to follow the "Spend a Day in Macau" plan in my Lonely Planet. It turned out to be absolutely the worst idea ever.

My map was only in Portuguese, but everyone there spoke Chinese. It was a disaster. I visited the quality museum and fort at the top of the hill behind the ruins of St. Paul's church. That was where the fun ended. I started to follow the plan but quickly got disoriented and hopelessly lost. None of the streets on my map were labelled and the signs on the streets were seemingly placed at random. Forget asking for directions when no one knows the names of the streets that you want to go to. They also don't know where the random tiny restaurants that the Lonely Planet mentions are.

Eventually, I found my way to A-Ma temple, which is named for Macau, the city's Chinese name is Ao-Men. I wanted to have lunch at Litoral, a restaurant nearby. It was easy to find, but closed for two more hours. So, I headed out to some island "villages", Coloane and Taipa, hoping they would surprise me like the ones in Hong Kong did. Nope. The two Portuguese restaurants were closed on both islands and I was getting frustrated and angry. It was already way past lunch. I just decided the food would taste better the hungrier I was and kept going.

The next stop was supposed to be the Cotai Strip of casinos, but I took one look at it as the bus rolled by and decided it was just another Las Vegas, so I gave it the skip. Everyone was picking their way through acres of construction and piles of dust and debris. Ugh.

I went looking for another restaurant in Taipa "village" from my map, the town looked tiny, but actually it was huge and even the big roads weren't on my map. I felt like crying and finally stopped in a real estate office where a really nice salesman walked me to what looked like used to be the most perfect little European restaurant in the middle of crazy China. It was exactly what I was looking for, but nope, still no lunch.

Lunch had become dinner and so I continued on my plan back to Macau. I figured I'd try to see if there was a spot at Joel Robuchon, the classiest place in town, on the 43rd floor of the Grand Lisboa casino. No, sorry, no room, not even for one person. I was literally prepared to drop $500 at that time, I was really hungry.

I checked out a Chinese restaurant across the street, but decided against it. I was in Macau for Portuguese food wasn't I? Yes, I was, I walked around some more looking for another place that no longer existed. I gave up and went back to Litoral, which had been open again for hours. It was already 8 p.m.

"Something Portuguese please!" I yelled at the waiter, exasperated, and collapsed in my chair. He brought me baked cod, that was too salty and some "green" wine. I was a little disappointed, but maybe that's Portuguese style? I don't know.

After dinner, I tried to get back to Diana's house. It took about two hours just to get back to the border. Then, it was another hour before I actually crossed it because I kept going in the wrong fenced off areas and had to walk around and find the right lines to wait in. I thought I was going to die. Really.

By the time I got back to China, it was too late for a bus, so I took a taxi to Diana's house. She texted me the directions and was there waiting for me without a very sympathetic ear.

"My cousin went and he NEVER travels. He said it was so easy!".... Yeah well, thanks for listening, lady.

Largo de Segundo