My Journey to Macau, the original Gateway to the East (part 3)

This is my final post about my trip to Macau. I ended my previous post with my visit to the Taipa Houses Museum, where I got a first-hand encounter with the unique lifestyles of the Macanese people. In this post, I will be covering steps #16 through #23 of my itinerary:

16. Eat some street food at Taipa

17. Take bus to the Macau Cathedral
18. Attend English Mass at the Macau Cathedral
19. Take bus to Coloane
20. Miss my stop and disembark at Hac Sa Wan
21. Eat dinner at Hac Sa Wan
22. Take taxi back to Macau Ferry Terminal
23. Take ferry, MTR, and mini-bus back to HKUST

After I left the Taipa Houses Museum and bought another bottle of water (I think I drank almost 2 litres that day!), I headed towards the historic centre of Taipa Village (not the modern high-rises I saw to its north). I still had some time before the 6:00pm English Mass started at the Macau Cathedral, so I decided to try some of the renowned Taipa street food.

 

Looking north towards historic Taipa village

 In the distance, the giant hotels and casinos that are the mainstays of Macau's economy can be seen. As I mentioned before, Taipa and Coloane used to be islands, but when the channel between was filled-in for mass development of hotels and casinos, they became joined together.

 My first street snack that I chose to try was ... the famous Portuguese egg tart!

 The version that I tried from Kafelaku Coffee was not too expensive - I think it was around 30-40 MOP. I felt like it could have been crispier and warmer but I really enjoyed how they placed some walnuts and other ingredients inside the tart (I wasn't expecting that).

 

Afterwards, I decided to get a little adventurous and try the Durian Ice Cream (榴槤雪糕), which is renowned for its distinctively pungent and stinky taste. Across the public square, I could already detect and identify the smell of durian. As I walked closer, I overheard some other tourists mentioning that Taipa was famous for its durian ice cream.

The Wikipedia article for Durian has some highly interesting and colourful descriptions on the taste of durian. The politer descriptions include:

• "completely rotten, mushy onions" by Chef Andrew Zimmern

• "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory" by Chef Anthony Burgess

Even more fascinating is the fact that scientists still have not discovered the chemical compound that is responsible for durian's distinctive odour and that different durian species have different odours. Here is Wikipedia's account of the phenomenon:

Durians from different species or clones can have significantly different aromas; for example, red durian (D. dulcis) has a deep caramel flavour with a turpentine odour while red-fleshed durian (D. graveolens) emits a fragrance of roasted almonds.

Given the interesting commentary on durians, I decided to give it a try - it was only about 40-50 MOP anyways.

 

Once I tasted it, I decided that durian (or at least the ice cream) was not nearly as bad as it was made out to be. The odd thing though, was that the ice cream seemed to have no taste at all. While I was eating the ice cream, I only got the sensation of a cold, wet substance in my mouth and a VERY pungent durian smell. It did not taste sweet, sour, or salty. In hindsight, I wouldn't say I enjoyed it but it didn't taste bad either.

Afterwards, I took the bus back north to Macau Peninsular...

I got lost for a short while, but then I walked back to Senado Square where I remembered a tourist bus map was placed. Sure enough, I found it there and then found the way to Macau Cathedral just a short walk away.

Strangely enough, there weren't any tourist signs pointing to Macau Cathedral from the big streets - only a sign for public toilets! It was a good thing I decided to check out the small alleyway anyways - it turns out the alley was the Rua da Sé - Cathedral Road.

Eventually, I made it into the Largo da Sé (Cathedral Square) and the Cathedral itself.

On the facade of the cathedral, you can see posters commemorating the recent canonizations of two former popes - Popes John XXIII and John Paul I.

Comparatively speaking, I found both the interior and the exterior of the Cathedral to be rather plain and lacking in artistic detail for a Macau church.

 However, it was wonderful to attend a Mass in Macau. Instead of the parishioners bringing their Missals, the Cathedral distributed their own Missal pamphlets with the Order of the Mass and the Mass Readings on them.

After Mass, I quickly made it to the bus stop, where I hoped to catch a bus to Coloane Village for some more touring and for dinner.

Here is Senado Square at sunset:

At night-time, the area around Senado Square seems very atypically European!

 While taking the bus to Coloane Village, I overheard a group of Chinese men talking in a language that was neither Cantonese, Mandarin, English, nor Portuguese. My curiosity was piqued, so I listened more closely. After a minute or so, I was able to identify the language as Taishanese (台山話) - the Cantonese dialect of my ancestral village. I'd studied a bit of Taishanese (Taicheng variant) on my own by using some online resources but this was probably the first time I'd ever heard it spoken in real life. Sometimes, when the men talked I would discover discrepancies between the variant I had learned and what their variant. Most notably, the Taishanese men would pronounce 台山話 as "toi-saan-waa" (and with tones rather similar to the Cantonese pronunciation) instead of the "hoi-saan-waa" that I learned. This made me realize that their Taishanese variant was actually closer to Standard Cantonese (as spoken in Guangzhou and Hong Kong) than most Taishanese variants.

Unfortunately, I missed my bus stop to Coloane Village and ended up in Hac Sa Beach (黑沙灣) instead. I also did not take into account how long it took to wait for the bus to arrive at the bus stop and how long it took to actually arrive at the destination. So, already late into the night, I decided to make Hac Sa Beach my last destination in Macau and eat dinner there. Apparently, Hac Sa Beach is renowned for its beautiful sandy beach (hence the name, which literally means Black-Sand-Bay) but unfortunately it was already far too dark for me to even see the beach. There were a bunch of snack stalls near the beach but I was looking for some more substantial portions. I decided to try the nearest restaurant - Hac Sa Beach Restaurant.
  I took this picture from the inside-out of the restaurant's patio. The patio looked quite run-down and sketchy.

But when I entered the restaurant itself, the building was actually well-kept and clean. They even had some table-cloths and Macanese/Portuguese food!

 I decided to order some Portuguese-style Chicken and Rice (葡國雞飯), the stereotypical Macau food. I found the chicken to be soft but a bit on the dry side. However, the Portuguese sauce (not too sure what that's made of) was of a thinner consistency than I was used to but was clearly made with the tomatoes and olives in the sauce itself. The potatoes were completely cooked but (intentionally) just enough to not be uncooked. If it was intentional, it must be similar to the culinary term I heard of for cooking pasta just enough to be cooked - al dente. In this way, the potatoes were neither crunchy nor crumbly but rather crispy to the bite.

 By the time I finished eating, it was already very late, so I decided not to wait for the bus and take the taxi back to the ferry terminal.

Here are some blurry shots I took of the casinos on the way back to the ferry:

When I got to the ferry terminal, I discovered that the economy fare for the ferry would only get me on a ferry in around an hour and a half. I didn't want to arrive back in Hong Kong that late, since the MTR might have already run its final trains by that time. So, I decided to pay almost double the economy fare for the Super Class, which was more frequent in departures. By paying extra, I would arrive back in Hong Kong about an hour earlier.

But apart from the more frequent scheduled trips, I didn't find anything especially super about the ship or the service... strange.

I got back to Hong Kong really late, so I had to take a slightly different mini-bus route. Instead of the regular 11M with HKUST as its terminus, I took the 11 bus with HKUST as an intermediate stop.

Adeus, Macau!