Woo hoo ! We did not get off the bed until 8.30am !
So today’s plan is go Macau, have noodles at a shop near the Guan Yin statue, go over to Zhuhai for shopping, MUST return to Macau by 3pm to have ‘chu pa bao’. Visit Fisherman’s Wharf , Sands and Wynn. Return to Hong Kong, continued to shop at Tsim Sha Tsui.
Sounds good, achievable…. Great ! We left the hotel at 9.15am and head to Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon, Ocean Centre (beside Royal Pacific Hotel) to take the ferry to Macau. There are ferries every 30 minutes and to our surprise, all ferries are booked and the earliest next available is at 11.15am. ecause of New Year’s holiday approaching, the ferry company actually increased the schedule to every 15minutes one ferry. So, we had no choice but had to give the noodle shop at Macau a miss and had our breakfast at a local ‘yum cha’ restaurant. Since we still have time to spare, we did shopping lor. Alvin was happy there are sales for winter clothing even though it’s the beginning of winter season in Hong Kong. He was delighted when he managed to get a good quality winter jacket at a sale price of HK$ 169 (aprrox. S$33.80). As we are going to Macau, we paid and left the jacket with the shop, promised to return later in the evening to collect it.
Macau
The ferry journey to Macau was longer then expected, 1 hour 15mins. What was frustrating is the immigrant officer at the queue was at in took SOoooooooooo LONG to clear each traveller. I was extremely annoyed when people on the other queues were moving and ours is not. By the time we cleared the custom at Macau, it was 1.10pm. We took a cab and headed straight to the border of Macau and Zhuhai.
AI YO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The queue there was incredibly long…….lucky this time, the Macau custom cleared faster than the one at the ferry terminal, possible because of the mass of people here. In fact, the border crossing between Macau and Zhuhai was so much shorter than we go JB. It was less than 5 minutes walk after your cross Macau custom and moved on to Zhuhai custom. The queue was equally long but fortunately they had lanes for Hong Kong citizens, lanes for China and Taiwan citizens, lane for foreigners. Though it’s long, but the clearance was fast but we still wait for about 15 minutes. Finally we are in Zhu hai ……
Actually, there is ferry from Hong Kong Tsim Sha Tsui Ocean Centre to Zhuhai. We could have take a ferry and skip all the frustration at customs. However, to our knowledge, the ferry terminal in Zhuhai was much further away from the city centre and anywhere beyond the shopping street in Zhuhai is considered dangerous for a foreigner. So well, we rather have the frustration than anything else worse we want to think off.
Zhu Hai
So after you cleared the Zhuhai custom, walk straight across the open space to the roads. Cross the 2 way traffic road. Turn right immediately after crossing and walk (about 2mins if u dun stop to browse) along a row of shops selling CDs, hair salons, until you see the tiles on the floor turn yellow. Turn left into that big street and you are on the shopping street on Zhuhai. It’s a long street with many many shops and this is where you can shop and shop and shop. I managed to buy a jacket and Alvin went on to buy 2 winter jackets. We like to buy winter clothing in China and Hong Kong because they are of very good quality and reasonably priced. In addition, all their winter clothing can be laundered in normal washing machine. Which mean I dun have to spend extra money to bring to a laundry shop to dry clean or wash it.
After completing the street, we walked back to the direction of the Zhuhai custom. Crossing back the road, you can head down the underpass which will bring you to a whole floor of underground shopping. What is worthwhile to get here is women’s shoes and accessories. Lines and lines of shops can be found at various shops. But I suggest you can just stick to 1 shops because apparently, if they don’t have stock in this shop, they actually went over to another one to get the sizes. They seem to belong to the same owner. I bought 2 heels, cost me RMB 58 (approx. S$ 11.60) and RMB 68 (approx. S$ 13.60) each… hee hee hee… I was so delighted !!!!!
The fad in imitation now in China and Hong Kong is fake Tiffany & Co. Exactly the same colour of boxes and paper bags, silver with the same Tiffany brand embossed and there’s no way you can tell the difference from a real Tiffany.
Macau (again)
By then, it was almost 4pm and I can heard the ‘chu pa bao’ calling me. We followed the directions and headed to the escalator that will bring us right to the entrance of Zhuhai’s custom. We took about 50 minutes to clear both customs and quickly hopped into a taxi. I showed the taxi driver the name of the place (Taipa Island) that we wanted to go… I told the taxi driver in cantonese,
‘I want to go here, ‘tam zai’. The place with very famous ‘chu pa bao’. The lady taxi driver replied without hesitation, ‘oh…Tai Lei Loi Kei’. Wow ! It was indeed famous. She drove us and dropped us right in front of the shop.
It was that crowed already but no one seem interested to take our order….. Finally when we managed to stop 1 shop assistant, we were disappointed that the ‘chu pa bao’ were sold out but we managed to try the ‘chu pa’ toast. Same pork chop…hee hee…. Pardon my teeth print on the toast…I was so eager to try that I forgotten to take a picture…. We also had curry fishballs and sotong combination. It is very nice too. I tried the traditional Macanese milk tea also. A lot of milk and I like it a lot. Initially Alvin said it was salty, as he ate, it become delicious and he goffled down a bowl of pork chop ‘kuay tiao’ soup and a plain piece of pork chop !
You must be wondering what so great about this pork chop bun that I keep mentioning it non-stop. I caught a HKG food TV programme 1 day recommending this pork chop bun. The bun itself was made traditionally baking in a firewood lit oven, baguette type of bun. Pork chops are marinated thoroughly with brandy used. They only start selling the buns at 3pm and it is long queue everyday and all the buns are sold out within 3 hours.
Next time if you go to Macau, spend some time to go there to try it. After which, stroll along the tranquil streets of ‘Tam Zai’ and admire the preserved heritage building with European accent.
We decided to go back and buy the ferry tickets for 7pm ferry before touring Fisherman’s Wharf. To our horror, all the ferries to Kowloon were sold out ! The earliest available was 11.45pm !!!!!! We quickly ran over to another company that the ferry will reach Hong Kong island, Sheung Wan . The situation was equally bad and the earliest available was 9.15pm. The counter gal was frustrasted as we were hesitating and she raised her voice…. ‘do you want the tickets? Last 2 seats already’. The minute we heard that, we quickly threw her the money. So lucky !
So, we had about 4 hours to spare. We decided to go over to Fisherman’s Wharf after it is dark, so we waste time at Yaohan which is just opposite the ferry terminal.
Fisherman’s Wharf (located beside the ferry terminal) was officially opened on 24 Dec 2006 and there are many restaurants there. I was captivated by the buildings and keep snapping pictures. Sands casino was just opposite and there is no way you will not noticed the big word ‘Sands’ whenever you go at the Wharf.
We headed over to Sands ‘entertainment centre’ hopping to find cinema and realised the entire complex is casino and that’s the only entertainment. We dun gamble but we moved around seeing people’s play. There was a performing stage and there were some HKG artistes performing. UI can recognise both artistes but dun know their names and apparently they used to be at TVB and they have now moved to ATV. We had drinks at the bar and enjoy the entertainment for the rest of the evening until it was time to go back to the ferry terminal which is only 10 minutes walk away.
The ferry was took back to Hong Kong was faster in speed but unfortunately we hit the rough seas at one time and the ship was going up and down like roller coaster. I can feel my heart sinking each time the ship goes down. I really hated that feeling and that is why I dun like to take roller coaster. I grab on to Alvin’s hand so tightly and cried during that ordeal. And because of the up and down, I vomited….boo boo….. all ‘chu pa bao’ gone….
Hong Kong
We reached Hong Kong island Sheung Wan finally and safe ! By then it was almost 11pm and we thought shops might still be open at Tsim Sha Tsui but no, many were closed. So, we can’t shop anymore and returned back to hotel to call it a day.
It has been such a long tiring day. Custom and ferry was horrendous much to the credit of the New Year’s holiday. Anyway, we are already planning for a more relax 3 cities holidays in Spring.
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