Discovering the culture and sites of Macau

Macau: Whenever I visit a place for the first time, my usual practice is to drop by the place via Google Earth so I can have a satellite view of the place or even the hotel where we would be staying and find out approximate distances on the sites that we would be visiting. Macau isn’t really a big city. They’re merely three small islands linked together with a series of beautiful bridges. But to our surprise, Macau had so much to offer for such a small place.

The other surprise we got was that, Macau has a huge Filipino expat population. You see Filipinos everywhere from our front desk office, the tall receptionists in StarWorld Hotel, to cooks, waiters or waitresses in many restaurants. We also met many Filipino tourists in Macau after having seen Walt Disney World in Hong Kong. Perhaps Filipinos are more comfortable in Macau because we have so many similarities in our culture. While Macau was under the Portuguese for 450 years until the turnover in the year 1999, so much of Portuguese culture has remained.

For instance, St. Paul’s Cathedral or its facade is the symbol of Macau, although only the facade of the church that was built in 1602 remains, no tourist visiting Macau can say that he was here until he’s been to this Catholic version of Asia’s “Acropolis”. Perhaps even more important to Filipinos is that, unlike the shopkeepers of Hong Kong who are mostly very rude, Macauans are more polite and easy to talk do especially when you are shopping. There are shops everywhere and it has a better shopping atmosphere than Hong Kong.

No doubt the world financial crisis has also hit Macau just like any international city, but it has one distinct advantage; the City of Zuhai is just across the Pearl River Estuary. When we went to the Ah Ma Temple, the Goddess of Seafarers, the temple was crowded with Chinese tourist from the mainland who offered prayers to the Ah Ma Goddess. Perhaps our 40,000 Pinoy seafarers who stand to lose their jobs because of this crisis ought to line up here.

While the Ah Ma Temple is at the foot of Penha Hill overlooking the City of Zuhai, for Catholics, a short climb up the hill brings you to the church of our Lady of Penha that overlooks downtown Macau with a terrific view of the inner harbor and the Macau-Taipa bridge. To my delight, I learned from the Pinoys I met that our Lady of Penha was the Macau version of our Lady of Peñafrancia, though I need to check this out if this is the right comparison. But whatever it is, Macau is in a way a spiritual place because of its temples and churches. You can say that it is in the forefront on the role of Catholics in evangelizing China.

After our visit to the temples and the chapel in Penha Hill, we drove to Macau Tower, dubbed as the 8th tallest structure in Asia, not only to see the great view of Macau, but also to watch some Extreme Sports. At the top of the tower, they have a Sky Jump, the Sky Walk, a Mast Climb and Bungee Jumping! The Macau Tower has the distinction of bagging the Guinness World Record as “The Highest Commercial Decelerator Descent” in the world. I guess that’s the official term they use for “Bungee” Jumping.

Call it another coincidence that there were three Filipina tourists who had the guts to do the Sky Walk, where you are tethered on a harness so you can walk along the ledge of the Macau Tower. Not to be outdone, our tv cameraman/editor Albert Dajad also asked to do the same and took great video shots of Macau from outside the tower. I wanted to do the Sky Jump, but my wife wouldn’t allow me. If she wasn’t around, I’d probably do it; after all, riding rollercoasters in the US is my idea of having a great time.

Later in the evening, we went to the Macau Waterfront development. This is a tourism development that have been planned and planned in Cebu but somehow it never materialized. But in Macau, this is a reality. They had a replica of the ancient Roman coliseum that doubles as a Roman Amphitheater; they have cafés and restaurants along the waterfront and yes structures in Art Deco just like what you can see in Miami and rows of buildings having a French colonial design very visible in New Orleans. At the end are the Convention and Exhibition Center and the fabulous Rocks Hotel.

We ended having dinner at the Afrikana Restaurant for Churasco cuisine. As of press time, we will be visiting the site of the Macau Grand Prix, one of the oldest racing circuits in Asia that features car and motorcycle racing. Then we’re off to the biggest Casino in the World, the Venetian Casino and Hotel complex complete with Gondola rides.

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