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.