I: Day Trip to Macau

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 17:10:28 -0700

We have been in Macau some 20 years ago, and this time we decided to take a Macau day-tour excursion from Splendid Tours and Travels for HK 1,000 (about US$135). This included hotel pickup, high-speed jetfoil ferry Hong Kong-Macau vv, bus, lunch, and guide in Macau.

It was 8:00 a.m. pickup at hotel to ferry terminal; going through Hong Kong immigration and out to the ferries to take the 9:00 hydrofoil. About 70 minutes later we arrived at the Macau Casino ferry terminal, and there was a long waiting line in a long open-air roofed walkway to go through Macau immigration. First tip for the trip. Get close to the ferry exit so, as the ferry gates are opened, you will be one of the first of the hundreds of passengers in the ferry sprinting down the corridor to stand in line. Even then you may still have to wait a long time before entering the immigration hall. For us that was about an hour before we even entered the building and could see the line of immigration booths further down the hall. At that time we noticed that there was hardly anybody before one of these booths, while there were long lines before all the other booths for “visitors”.

This counter was for disabled people, families with children, and for seniors over 65, and the signs on the board was in violet. Most of the travelers in China are the new wealthy young; there were not too many older people like us. So that counter is where we ambled to and we were helped almost immediately. By the way; in the long outside corridor there is also a small path on the right side for Macau residents only. There is no wait there, and if you are a Macau resident, you can sniff at the bedraggled masses on the left having to wait patiently in the heat inching slowly forward, while you can walk unimpeded through.

If you are a member of the three special categories mentioned earlier, you could try using this path and then switching to the special counter in the immigration hall. But in our case we still had to wait another 1 1/2 hour outside the immigration building because we were part of a tour and we had to wait until the last member of the group showed up. It was noon before our tour bus started her engine to move.

Our guide, Cisco, was an experienced no-nonsense guide and kept things moving to allow us to see the most in our allotted time on the island. He did not want to lose time going to lunch now, because we would be fighting hundreds of other tourists from other tour buses. So it was good we had some food with us, because lunch wasn’t until 2:30 p.m.

a: Statue of Kwan Yin.

In the southern part of the city is the Outer Harbor, with a newly developed area reclaimed from the sea. This is of course the typical harbor skyline of a modern, rich, city.

left: The waterfront in the Outer Harbor. The new high-rises attest to the strong economy is the last decade. The big building in the middle with the huge brownish block on top is the MGM. If you look closely, you can see the MGM name.

To the bottom left on the picture above is a bridge leading out to the water. This bridge leads to an island some 50 feet further away in the water. And connected to this bridge to the waterfront is an artificial island, on which there is a 60 feet high statue of Kwan Yin. She is standing on a lotus seat, which is also a two-story cultural exhibition hall.

right: The 60-feet tall statue of Kwan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, on a lotus seat.

This is supposedly the world’s largest Kwan Yin statue standing on a lotus shell. Kwan Yin, the goddess of Mercy, is also often spelled as Guan Yin. Surely there are larger statues of Kwan Yin, you would demur. Yes, but this one is standing on a lotus seat.

So, by putting enough qualifications in your description, you can call almost everything the largest, the smallest, the funniest, or the most idiotic sculpture in the world. And then you
organize tours and charge people to see this high-acclaimed phenomenon so you can rest easy the rest of your life.

b: Macau Tower

left: The Macau Tower, 1,109 ft (370 m) in height from ground level to the highest point. These towers always have a long stick poking up into the heavens above to increase their nominal height for bragging purposes. Barely visible is a jumper halfway between top and bottom on the left of the tower.

The tour covered the Macau Tower, where you can jump from the 233 m high platform, touted as the highest commercial bungee jumping platform in the world. This is at the level of the largest circumference of the tower building in the sky. It is actually the second highest commercial skyjump in the world, after the Stratosphere skyjump in Las Vegas at 260 meters. But this jump is still high enough and it will cost you around US$100, depending on what kind of jump you choose.

But don’t worry if something goes seriously wrong. There is an “ironclad guarantee” that you will get your money back if you are killed in this endeavor. Well, that is certainly most sympathetic and kind of the operators. So far, nobody has yet claimed this privilege, so we really don’t know what “ironclad” means.

All kinds of people have jumped here, including a middle-aged lady in a wheelchair. The jump seems to be quite an attraction, with about 1-2 jumps per hour. We watched the action from aside a lake, where the bus could park. Yes, people do jump, even though some may take a lot of time to gather enough courage to make the leap. You can jump bungee style head down, which is the standard option. You can also jump in a contraption, where the acceleration is controlled and you can stay upright. These are for sissies.

right: Across the lake is the old city hall on the left and one of Stanley Ho’s mansions more to the right on the top of the hill.

Stanley Ho, also nicknamed “The King of Gambling” was born in 1921, has 4 wives, the youngest 38 years his junior. He still managed to sire a daughter from her when he was 78 years old. When asked whether a DNA test had been taken of the little tyke, the tour guide rolled his eyes and said: “Nobody would dare to touch the 4th wife of Stanley Ho”. To the right on a hill is the catholic cathedral, which is reportedly only open one day a year; on May 13th, the day of our Lady of Fatima.

c: The A-Ma Temple

left: Entrance to the A-Ma Temple, the oldest temple in Macau.

A-Ma Temple is the oldest temple in Macau, built around 1488 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and important to the history of Macau. It is dedicated to Matsu, goddess of seafarers and fishermen. The standard story the tourist gets to hear is that when the first Portuguese sailors landed there and visited the temple, they asked for the name of the place. The locals, not being conversant with Portuguese, replied something like “Ma Gok,” which is, I presume, the name of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated. This didn’t deter the sailors from calling the place Macao from what they heard.

right: A model of a boat in the temple, dedicated to the welfare of fishermen and seafarers.

As can be expected, it was full of visitors, But it really looked like many of the Chinese temples we had seen.

d: Custard Egg Tarts.

The more attractive venue was a shop close by selling Macau’s specialty; hot, crunchy custard egg tarts made with lots of butter. They are really good, especially fresh from the oven. So we enjoyed the tarts and didn’t really see much of the temple.

left: The delicious Macau specialty; the Portuguese Egg Tart.

From there we went to a 4-star establishment for a 50 minute buffet lunch. Yes, we had a tour guide with excellent time management skills.

e: St. Paul’s Ruins

The remaining façade of the 17th century St. Paul’s church is now the signature picture of the city; the cathedral itself was destroyed by fire during a typhoon in 1835. It is of course the place where everybody goes to show that they have been to Macau. No wonder there are always a lot of people there.

right: The facade of the St. Paul’s cathedral; signature picture of Macau. Had to wait a long time until there were not that many people in the picture.

Except that when we were there the last time, there were not that many tourists around. But the lighting was good and with a bit of jostling you can make a picture with less than a hundred visitors in your viewfinder.

left: It is not busy going up the stairs of the church facade; it is also busy going down the stairs into the Ladies’ market.

From there we walked through the Ladies’ Market, where the guide made sure we understood that there were lots of pickpockets around.

One eye on the guide, one eye on the traffic, one hand on your wallet, and one hand on your camera. The Ladies’ Market was designed for ladies. There were lots of stores carrying clothing, a temple dedicated to women wanting children, etc.

f: Casino

The walk went through town, until we arrived at a row of casinos. We entered the casino of Charlie Chan, the kung fu master of many martial films for a place to pee. As you can well imagine, Charlie Chan is a big name in China. The entrance to the casino was guarded by two British grenadiers in full uniform, specially chosen, I presume, for being able to withstand the heat and humidity in full uniform and beaver hats.

left: An otherwise friendly-looking Grenadier guard guarding the casino entrance. In the back you can see the 1 million HK$ feng shui mirror.

From there we drove to the central ferry terminal to catch the 5:30 p.m. ferry to go back to Hong Kong. It was close to 8:30 p.m. before we got to our room in the Sheraton. That was an interesting but tiring day. And we had probably just seen a very small fraction of the town.

** picture by Brenden Brain

II: Feng Hsui

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 15:02:56 -0700

Feng Hsui is an ancient Chinese philosophical mantra for obtaining harmony of your existence with the surrounding nature. This is usually manifested in the positioning of buildings and furniture in the house to have the invisible forces in the universe work together to your benefit, welcoming good Chi, or energy, and keeping evil forces at bay. The practice of Feng Shui was suppressed during the Chinese cultural revolution, but since then it has come back to life.

So, in a city where gambling is a way of life, it is important that you keep evil spirits at bay, less they interfere with your good fortune and your chances of winning the lottery. One very effective way is to position feng hsui mirrors on strategic places around your home and office. An evil spirit, wishing to enter your abode with evil intentions in his black heart, will see his or her own evil visage in the mirror and shrink away. But you can’t just place any mirror here. They have to be certified by an established wizard. The one from Oz would not have qualified.

This reminds me of a story Nelson Leo once told me. Nelson is a very good friend of my father, and he has lived a good portion of his life in Hong Kong, where he owned a business supplying replacement airplane parts to various airlines. There were two competing banks on Hong Kong island, located close to each other. One of the banks decided to remodel and hired I.M. Pei, the world-renowned architect to design a modern glass and steel building.

left: Skyscrapers in Hong Kong at night. On the left is the triangular building of the story.

The skyscraper he designed was unusual, because the top portion of the building is triangular in shape instead of the standard square or rectangle. You can still easily find this skyscraper in Hong Kong’s skyline.

Now this triangular shape is suggestive of a sword and the cutting edge was in the direction of the competing bank. And the Feng Hsui of this placement meant that the sword would “cut” and destroy the competing bank. I wouldn’t put it beyond human duplicity that this story was concocted and widely circulated by the owners of the new bank. But everybody in Hong Kong heard of this.

And just as predicted by the Feng Hsui, the other bank soon failed. Why?

Well, if you are a customer or depositor in that other bank and you heard that story, you may or may not believe it. But some customers of that bank decided to play it safe and stopped doing business with this “doomed” bank. And maybe some of your customers don’t want to do business with you going through this bank either. And once you hear that depositors are withdrawing their money from this bank, you do not need to believe in Feng Hsui, but it would still make good business sense to dash to the bank and withdraw all your money as soon as possible. So soon there was a run for the money of the bank, and of course the bank ran into trouble.

Well, we were discussing Feng Hsui mirrors earlier. As you can see in the picture at the top, these are usually small round mirrors mounted on an octagonal (pat kwa) background, which in itself also has benevolent properties. They obviously come in many sizes and many “strengths”, depending on its source. Certainly the most expensive Feng Shui mirror in Macau has been installed in the casino of Charlie Chan, the kung fu master in many films of yesteryear.

right: The one million HK$ Feng Shui mirror in the entrance hallway of the casino of Charlie Chan.

As you enter the building, you see installed a 10” large Feng Shui mirror to ward off evil spirits from entering the casino. It had been installed by a real-life, high-ranking wizard from Thailand, in an elaborate ceremony costing HK$1 million.

Yes, in the Far East these genuine high-class Feng Shui mirrors are essential if you want your enterprise to succeed. I would have installed a mirror from Wal-Mart, and that is probably the reason I don’t own a casino in Macau; nor even one in Las Vegas for that matter.