23 Nov 2005
I was awakened by the piercing sound of the phone ringing at seven. I picked up and mumbled a sleepy “hello” and was answered by a series of dialogue in different languages, to only realise it was our morning call! We quickly freshened ourselves and got ready for breakfast. There was a wide spread of food! Salads, German sausages, baked beans, scrambled eggs, dim sum, noodles, porridge, buns, cereal and fruit platter! We helped ourselves to the food and our stomachs were filled to the brim! One of my friends sighted a familiar face amongst the crowd, local famed Wendy Jacobs whom we could not recall her name at the point in time. We also met Beatrice Chia in the hotel lift but unfortunately the lift was fully loaded by the time she came in.
Off we go for a city tour! Our tour guide, Marian took us to the Penha Hill. We could see the Macau tower in the distant. Towards the peak, there were old men sitting around a table selling a spread of what looked like antiques. There oversees the ocean and reclaimed land below. The coastal lines are very clear cut and the whole land looks like a replica instead of the real thing! The friendship bridge linking the various islands could also be seen from the top. The lecturers gathered us for a group photo and we posed for more group photos outside the church but the sunlight was blinding and our eyes could barely open. We entered the Penha church and there was a really unique confession box. As we moved to the other side, we could see an overview of the squatter houses swarming below.
Later on, we went on to A-ma Temple and we were told of the story of the temple and how the name of Macau came about. Marian explained: In the past, marriages were match-made and there was this girl who was going to marry the man she was match-made to. On her way to the groom’s place on a sedan, she wanted to escape from the marriage and she ran off to seek a boatman’s help to get her away. However, they met with a storm and the boat was overturned. The girl helped to rescue the people from the boat and later disappeared. The people last witnessed her disappearing in a beam of white light and there after built a temple in her name. We were brought into the temple. There were so many engraved stones. Marian explained to us about the temple dogs and some other interesting ideas. They let off firecracker to bless us good luck. Marian brought us into a souvenir shop to buy some of the local goodies. There were egg tarts and plenty of almond cookies! We all bought many boxes of the cookies! There were those with egg yolks, with almond bits, and seaweed phoenix rolls!
On our journey to the next stop, we stopped over somewhere – shallow waters with seagulls. We were told that opposite the sea is China. That was the nearest I got to China. There were these red triangular temple-like structures opposite these white-wavy design roof structures and we were told the reds were the China and the whites were representative of Macau. And that is the border between the two places!
We went to Kwan Yim Statue and were told to only walk from the left to right for good luck. The tour guide said the statue resembled Mary from far and the Goddess of Mercy when near. We took photographs near a bench where the design of number “8” is inscribed on the floor.
We went to Lion King Restaurant for lunch – Portuguese cuisine, as we were told. The restaurant was fully packed with Caucasian tourists as well. There was only one uni-sex toilet on the two floors of the restaurant. We ordered red wine! We had two pieces of crisp fillets with salad, some rice with baked chicken and serradura as dessert. The food was not all that impressive after all… the service too. We have requested for plain water several times and nobody there seems to remember!
We visited Sands casino. The exterior of the building was in gleaming gold colour. There was a security check at the entrance to the casino. We were told to bring our passport along to show that we were above eighteen of age, but well, they didn’t really check us. We visited the washroom in the casino and it was clean, just like the typical one in the shopping mall back at Singapore. There were jackpot machines and just as we entered, a man struck the jack pot. Man, wasn’t he lucky or we have brought him the luck! Next, we were brought around to the gambling tables where people were gambling cards and so on. It was not as chaotic as I thought a casino would be. In fact, at the gambling table, there was barely any conversation. As explained by the tour guide, this is because the people are wary of what they say would bring bad luck to others. Sadly, we couldn’t buy some gambling tokens from the casino as souvenir! There is a man stationed at every table to keep a watch on the game. Well, the only thing I could not stand was the smoke. We were explained how some of the games are played. We could see most of the patrons there are Chinese and barely any Caucasian faces.
