Recap - Sep 18, 2012

After spending two days in Macau, I think I have no interest in visiting again.

From the beginning it wasn't so pleasant.  I was quite annoyed on the boat/ferry ride.  The person sitting behind me was dozing off, but was playing her music out of her cell phone.  Regardless of the type of music, that's annoying as hell.  This is public space.  You have no right to blast your music and force everyone else to listen to it.  Yes, this might just be a one-off thing, but coincidentally, the same thing happened the last time I went to Macau two years ago.

After arriving at the Macau ferry terminal, I proceeded to the washroom.  As expected, there was a long line up.  This was not the issue.  The Cantonese cleaning lady was very politely using her poor Mandarin skills to address the people waiting in line.  What was she saying?  She was telling people to line up, flush and to not go on the ground. =_=  Two minutes later, she walks out of the washroom.  What happens?  The people behind me rush ahead and cut the line.

Later in the day, we got on a bus to get to our next location.  A man got on the bus and started chatting with the bus driver.  From their conversation, I take it that the man was also a bus driver.  They chatted the whole time, very loudly, and it was extremely annoying.  Then, at one stop, a man (evidently a tourist) got off through the back doors.  However, within seconds, he hopped back onto the bus.  The bus driver (literally) yelled at him to get off and go through the front doors.  The tourist went to the front and explained that he made a mistake and this wasn't the stop he wanted to get off at.  The driver very rudely yelled at him, saying he can get on, but he would have to pay again.  The tourist did as he was told but started arguing with the driver.  The driver, again, very rudely yelled at him to get off the bus, and then threatened to beat him up.  After the tourist got off and the bus drove off, the two drivers at the front laughed and joked about the situation.  WTF is this?

I don't mean to be racist, but the reality is that all the above incidents had one thing in common: Mainlanders. The women blasting her music, the people cutting the line and the threatening bus driver were all Mainlanders.  What more need I say?

It seems Macau is very different from what it was two years ago.  It's crowded everywhere you go because of the vast amounts of Mainland tourists.  It's almost like visiting China.  If I need to deal with or see situations like these again, then I know I don't want to go back.

All the bad things aside, there were some highlights......

It was kinda cool to visit the places where my parents and grandparents used to go.  From the street where they lived, to the schools, to the church, to the markets.  Although they're all different now, it's still nice to know.

For lunch one day, we went to a Portuguese restaurant.  That restaurant has been around since my parents' childhood.  It's nothing fancy, but still a popular and well-known restaurant.  The chicken and ribs weren't all that great, but the grilled sardines and fried bacalhau balls were really good!