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Weekend in Macau

Author: Isah V. Red
Column: Life & Entertainment

Macau is not a favorite destination of many Filipinos who fly out of the country regularly on weekends.

The more favored cities remain to be Hong Kong and Bangkok. Moving up on the list is Shanghai.

Perhaps, it is so because Macau doesn't offer much shopping possibilities for Filipinos with a fixation for shopping or bargain hunting.

During a weekend trip to the 23.5-square kilometer Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China recently through the courtesy of HBO+Asia/noticias/" title="HBO Asia">HBO Asia who flew us and booked us at Wynn for the premiere of Entourage, we discovered that the city has only one shopping mall, the New Yaohan Department Store on Avenida de Amizade.

Almost on the verge of desperation for nothing to use our Patacas (the currency used by the residents in the city), we were told that there are other places where visitors can buy souvenirs. And so we went to Loja de Escovas, a tiny shop on Rua dos Mercados that sells a selection of bric-a-brac, hoping we could discover an antique treasure that we might be able to handcarry on our flight back home.

Our shopping spree was watered down by language barrier. Nearly all shopkeepers can't understand English. Some of them can speak Portuguese, the colonial language, but generally they only speak Cantonese, the Chinese dialect spoken as well in neigHBOring Hong Kong.

And so we ended up just being tourists, enjoying the sights the city offered to first-time visitors like us.

World heritage

Macau, we discovered, is one for culture vultures. The place is teeming with historical sites. Since our trip wasn't really a tour, we didn't have all the time to look around. In between screenings of episodes of Entourage, we went to the more iconic places that are easily associated with Macau.

We finally laid our eyes on the Ruins of St. Paul, that façade of a church that we have long associated with Macau since the time immemorial. The Saturday afternoon we were there, the piazza leading to the façade was teeming with visitors, mostly from Hong Kong and nearby cities in mainland China. Built in 1850 the Church of St. Paul was destroyed twice before it's final destruction in 1835. It had never been re-built.

Considering the size of Macau, it has a number of well-preserved Catholic churches, foremost of which is The Cathedral on Cathedral Square.

We went to hear Sunday mass in the church that is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and built in 1622. That Sunday afternoon, the church was standing room only, with mostly Filipinos (working in the city, particularly in the hotels and casinos that have sprouted on the island immediately after the Portuguese handed Macau over to the government of China) and visitors.

We promised ourselves to see the other churches in the islands when we have the chance to be in Macau, specifically the neo-classical St. Lawrence's Church on Rua de São Lourenço.

Vegas in Asia

Slowly eclipsing the historical and cultural attractions of Macau are the new buildings that have been rising on the peninsula. Still, the most popular among the visitors is Hotel Lisboa on Avenida Lisboa. When we were there it was undergoing some face lifting in anticipation of newer hotels and casinos that will open before the end of the year, like the MGM Grand Macau (opening this month), a 28-story, 600-room casino resort.

Our group was booked at Wynn Macau, a five-star resort inspired by Wynn Las Vegas owned by Steve Wynn.

The opulent lobby with its red chandelier is an attraction by itself. Its restaurants are world-class, specifically Wing Lei, its Cantonese fine-dining restaurant adjacent to the casino.

Café Esplanade is the hotel's casual dining outlet, just across the Louis Vuitton shop, one of the designer labels that has found a home in the hotel-casino-resort for the high rollers. The other brands with their own shops include Bulgari, Giorgio Armani, Diro, Fendi, Piaget, Prada, Rolex, and Tiffany & Co. among others.

Of course, the prices are not for the fainthearted, unless you're credit card is platinum or black, you might as well hold your horses.

The rooms we were booked in for our two-night stay were comfortable and luxuriously appointed. The beds were perfectly cushioned with matching feather-soft pillows and nearly smooth-as-silk cases and bed sheets. The television was a huge 32-inch LCD screen, and it has a bedside I-Pod dock if you brought an I-Pod and want to listen to your own playlist.

Again, we didn't have much time to explore the amenities offered to guests by the hotel. Although, what we read in the brochure, it has a spa that offers relaxing massage. The decision to indulge depended on how much the hotel charged the guest. And to our realization, it was too much, we could do without it.

Macau cuisine

Apart from Wynn's Wei Ling and Café Esplanade, we also had the chance to sample the international buffet at Hotel Lisboa's Noite e Dia coffee shop, which to my surprise attracted a lot of visitors, the restaurant has to have three batches, the first one being at 5:30 p.m. Being on a diet, had me cringing in envy at everyone else who took everything they wanted and put them on their plates.

Macau cuisine is like a fusion of Cantonese and Portuguese idioms, with the former as dominant flavor.

But we savored real Macanese cuisine at a small restaurant in Macau's old commercial district. The restaurant is called Fernando's and it served authentic Macanese cuisine, which means Portuguese style cooking.

More than casinos

While our notion of Macau still revolves in gambling and casinos, the short visit to the city had definitely changed our impressions. Having been under the Portuguese for centuries, we are able to relate to the Macanese culture as having been shaped by their colonizers from the West. While the predominant culture is still Cantonese, the Portuguese legacy is still very much apparent in many aspects of the Macanese life. The names of the streets and buildings are still in Portuguese. The currency has not been changed to Yuan.

Hanging on to the things of the past can give Macau its character, as it struggles to be in step with its neigHBOring Hong Kong in real estate, infrastructure and other modern amenities.

The development in Macau is definitely faster than we all can imagine. It already has an international airport. We no longer have to fly to Hong Kong and take the ferry to be in Macau. In the next couple of years, much will be changed in the landscape in the city dominated by the 338-meter high Macau Tower Convention and Entertainment Center, the 10th tallest structure in the world, and eighth in Asia. There is a revolving restaurant atop the tower where you can see all of Macau while enjoying the buffet and a Filipino singing group serenades you with Tagalog ditties (upon request, of course).

Source: Manila Standard Today