A Day Out in Macau

Tuesday was a wonderful day. Yining and I started the day out with early morning panels. We actually decided to go to the same panels for the 9:00 session and found ourselves in an early morning discussion on food in Asia. It was very interesting. The first paper was about the changes in temple food in southern India in terms of modern adaptations. For example the use of plastic take-out containers for blessed dishes instead of the traditional banana leaves. It was one of the more interesting presentations I’ve heard so far at the panel due to the fact it didn’t take itself so seriously. There were light hearted moments and I greatly appreciated them. The next presentation was about Taiwanese food culture. We did not stay for the last presentations because while we wanted to hear more about food in Asia (who wouldn’t?) we also wanted to hear our new friend, Harlan, talk. He was discussing a Taiwanese author named Li Ang. This author is a bit of a trouble maker and seems like an incredibly interesting read. Her book The Butcher’s Wife is available on Amazon and it may be one of my next for fun reads (Thanks Kristen and Brett for the Amazon gift card! It shall be put to good use).The book Harlan was actually discussing, Mi Yuan, is not yet on Amazon so I will have to wait to read it and discover if his feminist take on the novel is spot on or not. However, from what I’ve gathered about Mr. Harlan I trust he is correct. I also have learned about some interesting Indian novels that also have interesting feminist readings that I will have to check out: The Red Box, Anita and Me, The Namesake, and Brick Lane. You know… after I read the 100 books for my comprehensive exams.

Macau

The real fun of the day came at 13:00. We went on an excursion! The conference had set up free daily excursions to Old Town Macau and we signed up for it. It was a bit of a pain: started 20 minutes late, people were selfish and decided to sign up for the excursion even though they knew they had to be back early to catch the ferry and expected the excursion to end early for everyone because of it (rude!), and people kept interrupting the tour guide. However, the majority of the excursion was free time and Yining and I made the most of it.
We started the tour by getting off the bus near the old Portuguese fortress and walking down cobblestone streets filled with souvenir shops. The guide, Vincent, informed us the cobblestone had been brought all the way from Portugal. Which, to me, seems excessive but hey it was lovely. We made our way up to the Fortress and were give 15 minutes of free time to walk around. Cut a bit short by the fact we started late and we still had “more iconic” landmarks to see.

A canon overlooking Macau and across the river mainland China

After the fortress it was a very short walk to the ruins of St. Paul’s and Senado Square. They are very beautiful. The ruins of St. Paul’s  is Macau’s main landmark and has been standing as the facade of the church for nearly 400 years. The front of this church was made of stone but the rest was constructed out of wood. During a particularly strong typhoon season a candle was blown off the alter and burned down the back section of the church. The front, stone section was left as is ever since.

The Ruins of St. Paul’s

Cantonese Opera Advertisement

While at St. Paul’s Yining and I heard a wonderful thing. Gongs. Not just any gongs, the gongs of Chinese Opera. Oh yes. The temple next to St. Paul’s was hosting a performance of Cantonese Opera. Which was, as it usually is, stunningly beautiful. I love Chinese opera. Give me a good yueju or jingju or any kind of ju and I am a happy, happy girl. I am not sure on the particular story that was being performed since my knowledge of the Cantonese Opera canon is non-existant and I could not read the Cantonese. However, I did not need to know exactly what was going on to enjoy it. I just enjoyed it. Here are some more photos. Hooray for a photo heavy post. There are just so many beautiful ones. Thank you again to Laura for donating her old camera to me. I have obviously been using it on this trip. Love my little sister.

My favorite picture of the trip so far. Also I want this whole outfit. Headress to shoes.

More Cantonese Opera

Next we, sadly, left the performance because the group was moving on down the road to Senado Square. We actually missed the group moving on and were left behind with the Russian family I had met early. I scared the crap out of their son/grandson by asking him in Russian what game he was playing on his phone. The look on his face was PRICELESS. He was so confused that someone was speaking Russian to him in China. Made my day. I then introduced myself to his mom and grandma in Russian. We I guess missed the group leaving St. Paul’s by a minute or two. Damn beautiful Cantonese Opera. So I discussed a bit in Russian a bit in English with the Russians and in English with Yining and we made our way down the road because luckily Yining and I listen and knew Senado Square was next on the list. We did luckily find a couple Yining knew from an earlier panel discussion and they informed us we had till 4:30 for free time in the square. This is a beautiful Portuguese style square with colorful buildings, a bright yellow church, lots of shop, and beautiful cobblestone from Portugal. We walked up and down the square and then back to the bright yellow church at the end of the square. St. Dominic’s is beautiful and they have a, bless them, air conditioned museum of Portuguese and Chinese antiquities.

Senado Square

St. Dominic’s Church

Our little rain haven

After the church we walked around a bit more taking in the beautiful architecture, people watching, looking in cute shops and expensive shops we couldn’t purchase anything in even if we combined our money, and becoming increasingly warm and covered in what I like to call the lovely humidity blanket of sweat. After walking around for a bit we decided to stop in a small cafe for a drink. It had been a while since we had anything to drink at all. So we stopped in an adorable cafe with pictures of Audrey Hepburn on the walls. We had milk tea, which I love, and they even gave us free water with lemon AND free refills of water. Which is just unheard of here and amazing. As we sat down, continuing our good weather luck on this trip, it started to pour. When we were done with our milk tea it had all stopped. Loving our weather timing this trip. It was then time to head back to meet the group and walk back to our bus.
Next on the agenda was the ICAS 8 Book Prize announcement where they give out prizes for top-notch publications and dissertations as well as the keynote address. Both were interesting but the real treat was the gala dinner following the keynote address. There was just tons of food. It was also a nice time to pick a random table and meet new and interesting people while everyone stuffs themselves till it is hard to get up and walk back to your hotel room. They had: sashimi, mushroom soup, lamb, prawns prepared two different ways, beef in a Chinese style, fried rice, baked cod, steamed and baked vegatables, cheesecakes, creme brule, chocolate cake, sweet dumplings, tapioca, mango pudding… just so many wonderful things. I had three helpings of meats and veggies, a bowl of mushroom soup, and a helping of sashimi. As well as two plates full of  desserts. Followed by a cup of coffee and a cup of tea. I was quite full by the end of the night. It was a good choice to go on our excursion that day because we built up an appetite so we could fill ourselves to the brim with gorgeous food.
We were then too full to really do anything after than and went back to our hotel. Back in the room I took a lovely bath in the huge soaker tub which was just amazing and then we chilled for a while because we were beat and full. It was really nice. We haven’t really stopped moving since Thursday so the time to just relax and watch strange TV shows we had no idea existed (ie: Suburgatory) was so nice.

More on interesting panels, hot pot buffets, and egg tarts later. For now here are some more photos.

Working her sleeves – More Cantonese Opera

A little moment at the Macau Fortress

Inside St. Dominic’s Church

Close up of St. Paul’s

A bell in St. Dominic’s

The Sheraton from The Venetian at night

Marvelous Macau

Macau from the Fortress

Macau is quite lovely. Hot and tremendously humid but lovely. It is like Vegas x 10. Ok, actually x 6. Really. They surpassed Vegas x 6 in the amount of money they make in the casinos. They spent something like 2. 1 billion Hong Kong Dollars to build The Venetian Hotel and they earned it back in NINE MONTHS. NINE! Crazy. So how did we get to this lovely place? I’m glad you asked.

On the Turbojet to Macau

We took the ferry. The ferry was interesting. It cost about $20 US to take the one hour trip from Hong Kong to Macau which involves going through customs on the Hong Kong side and the Macau side. So it takes quite a bit more than an hour to really get from A to B but I digress. So you purchase your ticket for the next ferry at the station, wait in some lines, and then hop in the “line” to get on the boat. I say “line” because it was more like an angry cluster of people trying to fight their way onto a boat that had assigned seats. It was a bit strange the urgency felt by everyone to get on this boat. Although the urgency to get off was much higher. About 40 minutes into the trip the seas were rough. They were rough to start because of the rain but they were very rough at this point. Yining was luckily asleep, because that woman can sleep anywhere, but I heard about five people vomit multiple times into the handy vomit bags. Fun. Thank goodness for my preventative anti-nausea medicine. That could have been me. It was not me though. Yining and I made it, vomit free, to Macau Ferry Terminal at about 3pm. We then proceeded to wait for what seemed like forever in another customs line. I dislike customs lines. Then walked over to the free Sheraton shuttle. Bless free shuttles. All the hotels here have them because all the hotels here have casinos and they want you here. They want you in their casinos. They will take you to and from for free because they know you will lose all your monies.

Our room at the largest Sheraton in the world.

So we arrived at the Sheraton and checked into our room. We are in the new Sky Tower which is amazing. This whole hotel is amazing. It is the biggest Sheraton in the entire world. It really is enormous. There is a mall, two casinos, many restaurants plus a food court, multiple fountains, kiosks, tons of people, and a large bridge to another giant hotel. Luckily that giant hotel connected to ours is The Venetian where the ICAS is being held. Makes for quick and dry travel to and from our hotel room. We took the elevator up to our floor and found our fantastic room. It is beautiful and huge. Bless you Booking.com for the superb deal on this hotel. Not only is it amazingly convenient but damn comfortable. I’m sitting in the room as I type in a terry cloth robe after taking a bath in a giant soaker tub. Insert contented sigh here. We didn’t spend much time in the room, just enough to unpack, and then we were off on another adventure!

A Lorcha restaurant

This time it was a food adventure, the best kind if you ask me. We decided to take a taxi over to the other island because we did not want to deal with the bus, a transfer, and another bus in the dark. Where were we going you ask? To a little bit of heaven. We were going to A Lorcha. An amazing Portuguese restaurant. It is quite wonderful. It is a small place, nicely decorated in the Portuguese colonial style, polite staff, quick food delivery, and it contains some of the most amazing food. Yining and I started with a half jug of sangria that was delightful. We then had an appetizer of clams in oil, garlic, and cilantio which I probably ate too fast but I could not get enough of them. Then we each got our entrees. Yining had the tenderloin with garlic and chips (fries) and I had the African chicken. Each were beyond amazing. I had read about the African chicken on many websites that recommended A Lorcha and they were all correct. It was spectacular. However, we couldn’t finish out meals because they did give us a lot of food. So we got take away and saved it for a later night. A quick taxi ride and we were back at the Sheraton ready for bed and the first day of the conference on Monday.

African Chicken. Yum.

Monday was nice. We woke up early and walked over the bridge to The Venetian. We found our way through the maze of a hotel to the ICAS registration and got ourselves all signed in and signed up for the excursion around Macau on Tuesday afternoon. My first panel of the day was on the post-conflict/post-tsunami Aceh region of Indonesia. I think it went really well. It was very informative and the roundtable portion of the talk was lively. I think I may have not been clear on a point and sounded a bit rude… I hope that it not the case. The next two panels were ok. Just ok though. The best part of the day was the welcome reception where Yining and I got 1.) free drinks and 2.) to mingle and meet new people and fellow scholars. We did end up meeting some wonderful people and exhanging information and cards. All in all a good day.
Now it is late and I am very tired from walking all around a super humid Macau all day so it is time to hit the hay. I will write up more about Old Town Macau and beautiful Portuguese architecture tomorrow. For now I will say goodnight.