Writing this from a plush, white sheeted hotel bed on the Special Autonomous Region of delicious Portuguese food and wine: Macau. After dinner at O Manuel, owned by Manuel, bien sûr, who has been on the island for 60+ years, we head to The Wynn. Manuel wears an I LOVE LEVIS t shirt and slams our food down on the table. Chorizo! Lemon Clams! Baccaláo! When he runs out of food, he closes shop. We see bummed out couples turned away at 8pm.
To me, casinos are boring; I’m only into gambling when I’m winning cash from my friends. And since mostly men gamble, I love taking their money. Casinos are a noisy, smoky, & depressingly different animal. Due to an impending cold and tired, dry eyes filled with Chinese cigarette smoke, I miss the Asian guys with the Eastern European prostitutes hunched over the tables. White guys with Asian girls, take that.
All night, I keep needing to slip into Mandarin. The cab drivers can’t read any Cantonese - they are all freshly imported Mainlanders. The staff at the casino and highest of high rollers were from the Mainland too. Shows how much they are taking over.
The hydrofoil we take to Macau passes a bridge which looks so much like the Brooklyn Bridge, and a tower that looks like The Stratosphere in Vegas. Turns out architecture here is meant to resemble recognizable Western landmarks. The Venetian is identical to the Vegas one. Chinese, putting the c in classy.
Casino Lisboa looms in flashy neon over the old city. It looks like the one in Back to the Future II. After Biff gives the Biff from the future that sports almanac, and he got rich and built a casino. The Casino Lisboa is even more preposterous.
But there is so much to look at that isn’t fugs. Cobblestones look like Corcovado in Brazil. Tiny painted houses are wooden with shutters, and so different than anything Chinese, which is usually gold and red. Our local pals have never been inside the Lau Kou Mansion, which was owned by some Chinese businessman. We guess how many people he screwed over during his rise to the top.
There aren’t any fancy cars like in HK, but tons of mopeds. Next to the cathedral we see a tap dancing Pomeranian riding on one with a high visibility reflector jacket, his leash wrapped around the handlebars (dangerous dog). Evangelical, hate everyone but us rock music blasts next to the Catholic church which is just a façade, the rest was destroyed in a fire. I take a street sample of some red, ground up quince flavored pork that is sold everywhere. Tastes like lockjaw. And why were there so many inflatable pandas, to encourage picture taking?
A Star Ferry ride on the gritty wooden lower level into HK island today took us into Central. The ferries will be replaced soon for sleeker, less rickety ones. We drink our milk tea in a packed canteen for working stiffs next to a woman who took pics of every bite. So OCD, so food blog nerdy. Love it.
Since I’m in a new city, I’m obsessed with what other diners are ordering. Ordering the wrong, unpopular thing would suck. I only have a few days and meals left. Not on my watch.
As we go downstairs to pay the bill I take note: we got the same thing as everyone else. Beef rendang and fish ball soup. Relief.
My favorite English store names so far are:
Chillout Cuisine (restaurant of relaxation that serves chilly foods? Perhaps some pudding, milkshakes or other chilly things)
Baby Face Institute (hair salon. I got my MRS degree from BFI)
Cutie Club (surprisingly not pornography, but a shoe store)
Endless Love (a pet food store with the fattest cat ever painted on the sign)
Hair B.U.T. (but WHAT?)
Fancl (not quite Fancy)
Now I’m going to stretch out on this gigantic hotel bed, and either fall asleep or pretend to be, and not move when Brian comes in.
