Lisa says the night before, "bring your passport just in case." I forget.
We wake up at a reasonable time. There is talk of spending the entire day and night, running around gambling and drinking and dressing cute.
I am exhausted. I barely slept the night before, and I'm not sure I'm up for debauchery.
We go to leave, and mishap #3 at the hostel occurs... The computerized lock won't lock on the door. Back to the other building, I get the girl who works there. She's new, and doesn't know why this is happening. She comes back about 20 minutes later, and not only does she not know what the problem is, she can't find the locks for the lockers inside the room. Cause she's new.
Every time something goes wrong at this place, they say that someone is "new."
Timeka starts in, telling them calmly and firmly that we're disappointed, and that we deserve compensation. The poor girl looks scared to death. Timeka is still barking up the wrong tree. I know that this is all typical in hostels, and probably in regular hotels outside of europe and america, but I promise timeka we are going to Yelp this shit.
We bring all our money and valuables, including passports, with us so as not to leave them in an insecure room, and we leave. We get to the ferry, and sure as shit, Radar Lisa is right again... We totally need our passports. And I wouldn't have brought mine if it weren't for the lock incident. Everything happens for a reason, it seems.
Getting to Macao is a little more confusing than it should be. There are a number of different ticket hawkers right next to the official sales desk, but they sell for a slightly lower price and it's totally fine to purchase from them. We buy our tickets and chat up the tourism office ladies and saunter over to the dock.
It never occurs to us that we have to go through immigration and passport control just like we're going to any foreign country by airplane. It takes some time and is mildly annoying, We get on a hydrofoil that takes us to Macao quickly and easily. I get excited to try to speak some Portuguese again (as I can only seem to manage to do that if I'm actually in a Portuguese -speaking country.). We're excited to eat some Portuguese or Macanese (Portuguese/Chinese hybrid cuisine) food, as all of us are already very tired of Chinese food.
And that's when things started to get weird.
We're really hungry, so we take a taxi from the ferry landing, I say to the guy, "English or Portuguese?" He grunts. Neither is acceptable to him. Ok. I say the name of the street WHICH IS IN PORTUGUESE and he doesn't understand me. Ok. We show him not one, but 2 maps. He waves us off, looking really annoyed. He says "no." We think he just wants us to put the map away. Nope. He pops open the door for us to get the hell out. Even trying to take a cab from one cab in Brooklyn to another cab in Brooklyn isn't that bad.
Take 2. Another cabbie. Another map. Another no. No Portuguese, no English. We say "center." He takes us to the center of town. He looks pissed as fuck.
We're really hungry. Lisa and I start waking away from the center, figuring that the cheaper and less touristy food is away from the center. All we see is more Chinese food anyway. My stomach is eating its lining. We are all getting the kind of lightheaded and cranky that you get when you've gone too long without eating, and the heat and humidity is not helping.
We pass a little Filipino joint (which excites the hell out of me) and down the block is a little Portuguese cafe. SCORE, but there's no where to sit and they have a good, but vey limited menu. Lisa and I are super excited to eat bolinhos de bacalhao (cod croquettes) as a snack to tide us over until we find a sit down lunch joint, but poor Timeka has obviously gotten to the point where nothing, especially something unfamiliar looks palatable.
The whole Menu is portuguese food, written in portuguese, no translation. The girl behind the counter and the two patrons are so sweet and patient, translating the whole lunch special menu from Chinese to English.
None of these women spoke any Portuguese whatsoever. In fact, despite the fact that Portuguese was the official language of the country for eons, every street name is in Portuguese, and every new poster, sign, and event is also written in Portuguese, NO ONE IN MACAO speaks Portuguese. Ok, this is an exaggeration. According to the guide book, less than 2% of Macao speaks Portuguese.
Perhaps this is part of the reason that aside from those ladies at the bakery, everyone in Macao looked Absolutely Fucking Miserable.
We wander a bit too long. Timeka is really fading. Out of the corner of my eye, down a side street, there's a dirty but packed café called Victoria cafe. We look at the menu. IT'S MACANESE!!! GAME ON!!
We are the only non-asians in the place. They don't look happy about our arrival. We sit down and a cold-faced woman gives us 2 menus. We ask for a third. She says NO and walks away.
Macao, the land of no.
Macao, the Portuguese colony of no Portuguese.
Macao, the land where 2/3 of every person is entitled to a menu.
The one man in the joint who speaks any English comes to help us. Lisa gets fried rice with bacalhao (she doesn't eat red meat or pork), Timeka the stewed chicken in coconut sauce, and I get the fish with rice.
They seems to be serving everyone before us. Timeka looks like she is going to kill someone. They finally serve is. Pork in the bacalao fried rice. We forget that often, people consider pork or chicken as a seasoning, and can be included in a vegetarian dish. Timeka's chicken is mushy but the sauce is good. My fish is good. It's a make it work moment and we make sure everyone has eaten something palatable. I had already scarfed a Portuguese egg tart on the way, in addition to my fish balls, so my situation wasn't as dire.
It's hot as HELL. We get some Haagen Dazs, a relatively delist full experience. There's a sign that says HKD:MOP = 1:1 meaning that the Hong Kong Dollar and the Macanese Dollar are worth the same. We get that MOP was the Macanese dollar, but what was the "OP" of "MOP?" Lisa asks the girl at the register.
In labored English, she says "it's the Macanese dollar." Lisa says "oh, I know, but what is the OP," pointing to the sign, the girl looks confused. She repeats, "it's the Macanese dollar." She does not look pleased.
I think it was the heat and the food coma, but we found that really funny.
Lisa also figures out quickly that they are giving change in Macanese dollars rather than Hong Kong dollars, which sucks because Although HKD can be used on either island, MOP, whatever that stands for, can only be used in Macao. Were they trying to screw us? I don't know. All I know is Lisa is a travel prodigy. She figures everything out first.
The center of town is really pretty and looks pretty similar to Portugal and the sidewalk has the same black and white tiling pattern as in Rio de Janeiro. There's a lot of shopping. Timeka perks up when we find that the Hush Puppies store has adorable multicolored and nicely made sandals, even if that happiness was stolen away upon realizing that even American stores around these parts don't carry shoes for American sized feet. It was really hard to find even a size 9, and they're medium to narrow.
We begin to enjoy ourselves. There's a pretty old mansion that blends European and Asia architecture rather beautifully. There are some ruins at the top of a hill of beautifully sculptured lawn.
The answer, by the way, is MacaO Pataca. It says Pataca on all of the coins.
We're tired. We walk to the casino section of town. We go to Casino Lisboa, one of the old ones. It was serious and creepy and no one looked like they were having a good time. Like one of those old, old, Vegas casinos where all of the regulars go because they're addicts, it as weird, and creepy, and uncomfortable, and we were the only non-Asians,which normally feels fantastic but in Macao, felt weird and intrusive.
Macao was just fucking weird. It's one of those places where so mich wealth gets poured into the country but the people see none of it. That drives up the cost of living, and the locals are the ones who suffer. The second thing the only nice person we encountered There was "are you finding macao expensive? It's very expensive for us.". There's a lot of places in the world where this happens: Cuba, brazil, even Vegas has this problem. Add the fact that the country doesn't even recognize that the locals don't speak the language that everything's written in?? Seriously, everyone looked so damned miserable. An overall interesting and positive experience (for me and Lisa; jury's still out on Timeka) but I couldn't recommend that to anyone.
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