back to the fatherland

back in the day when my father's family was fleeing china, they set up camp in macau. having not been to macau since i was a toddler, friend and i took the hour or so ferry ride out to o-moon to see my dad's old stomping grounds. We jumped out of the bus after a twenty minute ride and came to this plaza to walk up to the famous St Paul's ruins:

It is decorated for the next day's celebration of the Chinese National Day. It looks more exciting than what is shown in this itty bitty picture; there were lots of inflated fruits and vegetables and lights. I bet it looks real cool at night.

If I were a better tourist, I would have a nice picture of this:

but I'm not, so unforch, all I have are pictures of snacks that we ate. But FYI, there are neat steps to go up on the backside of this structure. A guard saw me heading up the stairs with a water bottle in my hand and motioned for me to put the bottle in my purse. I think he was afraid I would drop the bottle on someone's head, litter, or wet the ruins. At any rate, they are neat ruins. My dad grew up a few blocks away from here.

To the right of the ruins is some sort of fortress that is kinda neat to climb up. Also along the way are some funny modern day exercise contraptions that I couldn't resist trying out. They had a cool elliptical like machine, and a fun swing thing. As usual, it is hot and sticky in Macau. So we walked to the top, admired the view, saw a lot of casinos in the landscape, happily discovered a museum inside the fortress that had !!!AIR CONDITIONING!!! and we happily glided down inside on their escalator back to the level from which we started our hike.

famous pork chop sandwich. we bought it at this stand where a korean drama had once been filmed, "boys over flowers?" or something like that. they were very proud of that cameo. they looped that 20 second clip over and over behind the cashier.

...and that's pretty much all i have from macau. We walked for about half an hour to some memorial garden, foolishly choosing to walk on a main street where we inhaled great amounts of car exhaust and bus fumes all the way there. I think my life is at least 10 minutes shorter as a result of all that inhalation.

we got to the garden, which was really nothing to write home about, and we took home really neat souvenirs of bug bites from all the mosquitoes hangin' round the park's many spots of stagnant water. and that's when we decided to leave o-moon.

we hopped on a bus to take us back to the pier, first stopping at the wynn hotel to check it out. we took in their free show where the zodiac ceiling opens up and a giant golden tree emerges from the center ground. it was definitely produced with an asian person in mind.

we took the complimentary wynn shuttle back to the ferry where we waited for forty five minutes at the dock and played with the ipod, rejoicing that we had finally found free wi-fi.

and then we went back to TST, where night had by then fallen and rain was forcefully coming down. we scurried into a shopping mall and there sought refuge. then we went back to our hotel where it was nice and there were complimentary slippers.

xo,

Allison