So, as promised, I will begin with the Guia hill monkey video from yesterday.
So funny and bizarre. I'm sure we watched him do this at least 20 times.
I also forgot to include this photo from Guia Hill. This colorful exercise equipment is located all over Macau in parks and other public places for people to work out on. Becky was very taken with them and is going to try to get them installed in Minneapolis. Here she is - workin' the hips.
After Guia Hill (or maybe the next day, I can't remember the timeline exactly) we paid a visit to Tap Seac Square. It is very near my apartment, and we went to see the Lunar New Year arts and crafts booths, as well as a dance performance. We didn't buy anything from the vendors, but I really wanted this awesome paper dragon. (FYI, Lunar New Year is the same as Chinese New Year, they just don't call it that for obvious reasons.)
They had people dressed up as all the zodiac creatures, so Becky posed with hers, even though she doesn't think it's very impressive. I tried to convince her to change her mind with this old cartoon from my childhood.
Ah, Sesame Street, how I love thee. Becky was amused but I don't think she was convinced.
They have these big light-up displays in all the squares for every holiday. They're often strange and lame, but the dragon and lions on this one are actually pretty cool.
What we really wanted to see was the dragon and lion dancing, and they didn't disappoint. The little 2-person yellow guys are the lions and the big green one is the dragon.
Becky got a great video of them in action. See how at one point they are jumping over it? Waaaaaaa!
As with many other aspects of Chinese culture, there are a number of superstitions one must participate in during LNY to have a prosperous rest of the year. Since this is my year, I figured I better play it safe. The first is acquiring and displaying an orange tree. Instead of buying one, I just bought some oranges and put them on our all-occasion tree, along with these red packets Becky received for completing a survey. Looks pretty good, huh? Beth contributed the dragon for the top.
Next, buy and eat these weird glutinous rice cakes. (That's a date on top.) I was told you can eat these fresh and gooey, or freeze them and then cut them up and fry them in egg. (I'm assuming they mean like French toast.) Because we ran out of propane on the first day of LNY and no one was open to provide us with more, we went for the fresh option. Not bad, but nothing special.
I also had to purchase and burn some incense. This was no problem because I love incense. It took me a while to find a cool burner, and this one wasn't actually supposed to be for sale, but I got it anyway. Carol thinks it's supposed to be for spitting in. Nice.
Having fulfilled my LNY requirements I began to look forward to my lucky dragon year ahead.
It was quite cold and damp on the morning of the LNY parade, but we set out and got a decent spot to watch from in front of St. Paul's Ruins. It was fantastic!
Becky and I waiting impatiently for the show to begin.
Part of the reason it took so long is that they had to get all these VIPs up in place behind the lion dancers and in front of the people dressed up as the zodiac animals, Good Fortune, Prosperity, and Longevity (the three funny men) for a photo shoot.
Finally it was time and the dragon started moving!
Becky got another awesome video of the action. You can hear the firecrackers at the beginning and see that the dragon is chasing a ball on a stick. My personal theory is that it's a cheeseball.
After departing from St. Paul's Ruins, the dragon took off for another part of town. We followed it a little way, but we were too slow. We decided to go find a place to warm up and lose money.
Government employees in Macau are only allowed to gamble on the first three days of LNY. I'm not a big gambler, but I thought it would at least be fun to try it. So, in honor of my grandparents, I saved the money they gave me for my birthday and Christmas just for the occasion. $50 = 400 MOP. We went to the Grand Lisboa - the biggest and gaudiest casino in Macau. Just look at the ridiculous excess. I lost it all, and it didn't take me that long. Actually I think it took longer to figure out how the games worked. I played slots for a while and had a hard time with all the buttons and combos, then switched to Sic Bo.
Sic Bo is a Chinese game where you roll three dice and bet on the outcome. I played a computerized version where the dice are popped for you in a bubble, kind of like Trouble. Becky did most of the work in figuring out the rules - she only lost half of what she brought in. I lost every pataca. I'd really wanted to try bacarrat, but between the complex rules and me not knowing Cantonese I figured I'd just embarrass myself. (I mean more than usual.) We had fun, but Beth noticed how everyone else looked either bored or depressed. Welcome to the world of casinos.
Aren't these peacock statues incredible? The Lisboa has all kinds of insanely elaborate art - paid for in part by gamblers like me.
In the evening we went over to Taipa because our coworker Chris had invited us for dinner. (Actually, I kind of invited us over because he has such a great view of the fireworks and I thought it would be fun, and he was gracious enough to go along with it.) He made lasagna and homemade bread, which were delicious. I brought the wine I'd won at the Christmas party - that was good too.
During the course of our dinner conversation I learned that I had one superstition left to follow if I wanted to have a lucky year. A huge one. As it turns out, having it be your year is not lucky at all. The evil spirits/bad fortune are actually more of a threat during your year and so you must protect yourself by wearing red - all year long. As many of you know, I love red and so this seemed like kind of a fun challenge, but a lot of my best red stuff is in CA. Apparently many of the Chinese manage this by stocking up on red undergarments, which I confirmed when I tried to buy same and there were none left. I finally did manage to find some in HK and so far I've made it happen every day. Only 11 months to go. :)
For dessert I made bananas flambé. Any excuse to light things on fire is a good excuse. :)
Finally it was time for the show. We were wondering, after the amazing fireworks we've seen already this year, how are they going to top it for LNY? By having two sets that mirrored each other, of course. Ridiculous, but great.
Ok, only one more post to go and then we're finished...
Yikes! I better work a little harder on this or I won't finish before my parents come! (Which might be ok in theory, since you'll be seeing many of the same sights with them, but I gotta do justice to Becky's trip first.)
So after our adventures on Lamma, we spent the weekend relaxing in Macau.
On Saturday, we ate dim sum with Carol and Karen...
wandered around the Kun Iam Temple...
had the famous fish and chips at the Old Taipa Tavern...
and went to laugh at the ridiculousness of the Venetian.
(This is a casino/hotel like the one in Vegas, complete with faux canals and gondoliers.
If you've never been, this is indoors and is in the shopping mall area.)
Then finally it was time for us to see The House of Dancing Water. It's kind of a Cirque du Soleil type show, but the theme is all about water. (Probably like O.) It's getting rave reviews here so I'd been wanting to check it out. It's being performed in the City of Dreams Hotel, which you can see behind Becky.
Here's a trailer for it - can't begin to describe it but it should give you some idea...
It took us a while to wind our way through the hotel shops to find the performance venue. We got to stop and check out this awesome dragon on the ceiling.
And Becky was pleased to see her favorite masked man on display in this t-shirt shop.
We enjoyed some Godiva chocolates we'd gotten earlier while we waited for the doors to open. They're dragon chocolates, naturally.
Showtime! Our seats were right up front in the "splash zone". It was awesome - especially when these dudes weren't taping everything on their phones. :) This is how it looked before the show began. That blue stuff? You guessed it - slowly churning water. They had a really cool effect going and kept projecting images of swimming fish over the surface.
The show was incredible. Not much of a plot, but I've come to expect that with modern dance. The effects were amazing and the dancers/acrobats did things we couldn't believe! This whole ship rose out of the pool and they were jumping off of it and doing tricks. Unreal! It was excellent - anyone who still has the chance to see it definitely should.
Sunday we wandered around Guia Hill, which is a nice park near my place. It has a lot of beautiful gardens and even a few animals. Becky has a really great video of the monkeys that I wanted to include, but I can't download it from her Picasa site. When I get it from her, I'll share it.
These cheesy topiaries always make me laugh.
From the top of the hill we had a nice view of the city. Hard to miss the Grand Lisboa and you can see Macau Tower in the background.
I love this big anchor. Not sure why it's up there.
The Guia Hill lighthouse. You can see this baby from all over Macau. That concludes another fun couple of days! Coming up next - Lunar New Year festivities! (Finally)
I should start by explaining that I'd had some trouble trying to reserve our lodgings on Lamma. The place we stayed was recommended by a coworker and she said it was the perfect spot. Unfortunately, they don't have a website and I couldn't find a phone number, just an email address. So I sent an email off into the void asking if they had a room on the night I wanted. Sure enough, Eric wrote back and said that they did and that if I could just put down the deposit we'd be all set. I wrote back and asked for a phone number so I could give them my cc info. Eric responded, saying that they didn't take plastic, but if I could just transfer the money to their bank account they would be happy to reserve a room for me. I was like - huh? How am I supposed to do that when the only information I have for your business is a name and email address? Seriously? So I wrote back and told him I'd be happy to do that but had no idea how and asked if he could provide me with instructions - or a form - or their account number or bank name - anything. He wrote back saying that due to the "unusual circumstances" they would reserve it for me with no money down, and by happy chance a balcony room had opened up and so I could have that one. This sounded both easy and pleasant, but I was a little concerned that we'd arrive tired and hungry after a long day in HK, only to find that we had nothing reserved. So I brought my little email printout just in case, but it wasn't needed. Everything was as promised, I paid in cash and our room was great! I still have no idea how anyone else books these rooms, but I'm very glad it worked out so well for us!
Sorry this is too dark to see. I could see better while I was taping which is why I'm trying to describe things as though you can see them. There were tourists coming in late into the night on the boats every half hour or so. Becky and I watched them while we were having dinner - we went and got Indian food at a nice place on the water. It was tasty but I forgot to take a picture. Then we went back to our room and ate dessert and watched Castle - Nathan Fillion's new tv show. (New, in this case, meaning post-Firefly.) It was decent, but strange to be watching American tv again.
Here's our hotel from the front.
And a video that is properly lit.
I figured I better include this one to be fair since I caught Becky in her glasses on the vid.
Even the graffiti on Lamma is friendly! Such a laid-back place!
We went back to the Indian place for breakfast too, because it had a nice atmosphere and we'd noticed they had an "English-style" breakfast menu, which I never get these days. It was very good - we had eggs, ham, bacon, a grilled tomato, beans, toast, a sausage, and a crepe with fresh strawberries. Yum!!! We saw the tourists flooding in again every half hour while we ate. They'd just walk down the
pier and through the little town - I have no idea where they were
going. We expected at some point in our day we'd see a ton of people
somewhere to account for them all, but we never did. Weird...
I enjoyed watching these little boats crisscrossing back and forth across the harbor all morning.
Finally we got a move on and first stopped at this lovely beach, just off one of the trails.
Such a nice place to take a photo!
As long as you don't look to the right. The downside of Lamma is this huge coal plant. Not exactly what I'd call picturesque. Maybe this is where all the people on the boats went...
Later we found another beach and this one had lovely warm sand. It was 70 degrees when we wandered through, so we stopped and laid out for about 30 minutes. Enough to make this white girl turn pink! :) It felt great.
But finally we drug ourselves away and got back on the trail to the other village/tourist spot on the opposite side of the island.
We came upon this funky organic herb garden on the edge of town. It said no photo taking, so I got this one off the internet. It was totally cute and had a nice place where you could sit outside and have tea. They also had some big fat rabbits running around in a huge pen. I bought some dried lemongrass for making chai when I have Indian leftovers at home. :)
Nice view of the island. Note how high up we are. We had to climb to get there. We did a lot of walking up and down hills during Becky's visit, so I tried to space them out so she wouldn't overexert her knee. (She had ACL surgery last year.) The downside of this area (Macau included) is that all the best views are at the tops of large hills. If you need to work on your thighs, this is the place to visit!
On the other side, coming down to where the fishing village is.
Finally back at sea level and getting our first good look at the village.
Here's a detail so you can see their elaborate rafts. It reminded me of Waterworld.
Some more lovely plant life...
Our reward. The village on the far side was not much to see, but it had some good seafood restaurants. We chose Rainbow, because it was recommended in my book and the menu looked good - plus the waiter out front was by far the most charming. We ordered the two person set and got calamari, fried lobster tails...
and scallops,
and snapper and some other good stuff I can't remember anymore. But we liked it all. Luckily our friend came and took apart this fish for us since it's a little intimidating for us wimpy Westerners. Then, we had to get back on the trail and hoof it back to our hotel to get our bags. We made much better time on the return trip and then in the end had to wait for like 20 minutes at the hotel anyway. We'd left our overnight bags and had a little misunderstanding about when to pick them up. Then we jumped back on the ferry and headed home. Got back to the apartment late, and were tired and sore from our long walk, but felt that sense of contentment that only comes from a good day of adventuring. Yay for Lamma! I'll be back, you expat vacation paradise you!
