My Last Day in Macau

FYI (note after writing): This post is really, REALLY long. Maybe drink some coffee or a Red Bull and buckle up before you read it.

So, I've missed plenty of flights in my life (still upset about those punk women at Vueling Airlines who made me miss my first ever European flight from Paris-Barcelona, forcing me to sleep in Paris' Orly airport by myself for a night). And I've almost missed plenty and plenty more flights in my life --- but my last day in Macau was probably the most fun and certainly the most memorable time I've ever had trying to catch a flight. I'll start at the beginning:

12pm - Day 3 in Macau, just woken up (still catching up with sleep, thanks to poker two nights earlier) and ready for the last of Macau. Me and my hostel buddy Chetan (an Indian IT guy whose been living in Singapore and is likely moving to HK) head out walking for this famous Portugese restaurant, A Lorcha (translates to 'The Sailboat'). My Lonely Planet book was all about it and a couple of friends from the states had recommended it to me.

Thing is, my LP book is from 2006, which means stuff that they really, really recommend get really, really overblown in a matter of years. So instead of an authentic, cheap, local Portugese place I thought we'd get, we got the touristy, expensive, commercial version where there were only Cantonese people and 120 HKD dishes. And food looked pretty blah.

Naturally, Chetan wasn't down for this pricey fare, either, so we decided to bounce --- which was semi-awkward because a) they already brought us bread and b) the lady sitting next to our table was a little heavy and blocked my chair in, so I had to ask her to get up twice in a matter of five minutes. I felt really bad about this.

No matter, we peaced it. After 15 minutes, we settled on a kind of funky but local spot that looked Cantonese considering that the menus they gave away outside were all written in Cantonese with no english at all. Whatever, seemed cool.

We sat down and this place just what I had hoped for (pretty much the opposite of most of the other Macau/HK restaurants). Portugese, Macauese and Cantonese food, all fairly priced, all with pictures, free hot tea and a cool urban/local vibe (obviously none of the servers spoke english, which is literally all of Macau residents and 99.9 percent of visitors. I'll probably do a separate post about later).

I got the mutton chop in pepper sauce (aka goat, a first for me) because the guys in the booth next to us both had it and it looked good (well worth $5 USD), as well as the Chinese soup of the day (essentially broth with a few pork bones for $1 USD) and a bottle of coke. Chetan decided on the whitefish (pretty average) and a piece of toast with almond milk.

Then shit got hectic. It started to rain. Really hard. Which I'll definitely come back to in a few hours.

For the record, when I say rain, I mean POUR. Like cats, dogs, monkeys, elephants --- whatever. It was step-outside-for-two-seconds-and-you're-drenched stuff. We were definitely not walking back the hour to get back to our hostel in this monsoony nonsense. So we ordered a couple more glasses of almond milk and hung out for another hour or so watching awesome HK telenovellas hoping it'd stop. It didn't.

3pm now, stuff hadn't gotten any better, so Chetan suggested a cab (a thought which had literally never crossed my mind -- I always figure since I'm on a budget, I can walk anywhere). But a cab would be like a $1 USD each, two minutes well worth it (D2 reference). After about 20 minutes of trying to hail a cab, we finally got one. Again, the language barrier made it tough to communicate where we were going --- luckily I had a map to point to and the cabbie had his glasses with him --- but 10 minutes later, we were home at 4pm.

4pm. Perfect, I thought. Plenty of time. My flight for Manila was leaving at 1015pm, leaving ample time to pack, hang out, shower, etc before leaving to catch a couple casino shuttles to the airport. That gave me a solid 3-4 hours, more than enough --- but I'm never on time and always in a rush (especially for flights) so of course I would figure a way to make things interesting (which was a bad idea considering that my red-eye is the only flight Cebu Pacific Airlines has daily, meaning if I missed it, it would mean missing my connection to Boracay, meaning another day in Macau and a lot of heartache). Oh well.

I wondered if they'd cancel my flight given the weather, but my Filipino hostel owner informed me they'd only cancel in a typhoon. A typhoon! I thought. Ha. She also thought I'd have to get to the airport 2 hours before my departure time, so I didn't really trust her. But I think she may have psychic with all the typhoon talk...more on this shortly.

Chetal rounded up his stuff and took off for HK and a cool Swiss dude (from Basel, no less) Lukas moved in in his place and was staying the night in Macau en route to five weeks in China and Japan. We hung out in our hostel's tiny kitchen, had some tea and cigarettes and a lot in common --- he was just as into walking around cities and getting lost as I was, though we definitely agreed it was a good way to go a little crazy, as well.

Anyways, I decided to walk with Lukas to the Macau Tourist bureau (only five minutes away), figuring I had nothing but time. But what was supposed to be twenty minutes turned into two hours after we walked to the ruins of St. Paul, spent 20 minutes getting cookie and candy samples at a local joint (I got full), hit 7-Eleven and dropped by the money exchange to get rid of my Macau Patacas before I got to the Philippines (they only trade for HK Dollars). It was 6pm by the time we got back.

6pm. Okay, I thought. Plenty of time. I can shower and pack my things, get to my shuttles and get to the airport, no problem. So I decided to spend 30 minutes on the computer checking out Boracay (next stop) and chatting with the Filipino hostel owner, but still, plenty of time to get prepped. Then just as I was about to start packing, Lukas asked me if I wanted to go grab a beer and food at a Brazilian place around the corner with him and Tim (a cool Dutch dude, who had also just moved in and just finished 8 months split between New Zealand, Australia and China and was headed home to Holland in a day).

630pm. Sure, I thought. Plenty of time to grab a drink and pack. I'd have to take the bus instead of the free shuttles, but no big deal, I'll be done in an hour.

So we walked down to Caravela, a very cool and European-feeling Portugese place tucked in the same building complex as our hostel, about a 30 second walk away. We sat down on the covered patio, ordered a beer and settled in.

Then came the rain.

I don't know if God was just super angry that night or if Storm from X-Men was on leave vacationing in Macau for the week, but whatever it was, it was time for rain. It made the rain from earlier in the day look like drizzle.

In a matter of minutes, water was owning the ground. POUNDING the ground. Just obliterating it. We moved tables because even though we were in a covered patio, it was splashing so hard, we were getting wet. We were literally yelling to each other trying to talk over the rain.

After a few minutes, the ground was covered, blanketed in water. It looked like Nashville. There was a row of Cantonese restaurants right across across from us, literally 10 feet away, that Lukas and Tim refused to move to when Caravela closed at 8pm.

"It doesn't matter if you have to go into the rain for one hour or one second, you will get drenched," Tim said apologetically. He was right. We joked that perhaps they could float another beer over to us in the river that had formed in the walkway between us and them. I wasn't walking 30 seconds back to my hostel in this, let alone waiting for the bus or making my flight.

"You're fucked," Tim said, with a smile, sympathetically. I agreed. He was right.

Then things just kept getting better. Next came the lightning flashes, just blowing up the sky. Pure light. And then BOOM, thunder. A blast so insanely loud, we all jumped, a Portugese guy behind us dropped and broke his glass, and then CAR ALARMS JUST STARTED GOING OFF! I mean, like, really? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?! CAR ALARMS?!? DID THEY GET STRUCK BY LIGHTNING?!? WHAAAATT??!?!?

I just started laughing. It was 815, I had two hours to get to the airport, hadn't packed or showered and figured that a) the bus was out and there was no way to even hail a cab with my bags in this monsoon and b) even if I did make it to the airport, they would cancel my flight. Murphy's Law, I said to Lukas and Tim (even though deep down maybe I figured stuff would probably work out, since it usually always does).

Finally, with Caravela long closed, we jumped across the makeshift river and sat down at the nearby Cantonese place. We ordered and predictably, in the next 15 minutes, the rain went from apocalyptic to hellacious to normal rain to light drizzles. Perfect. I now had hope. Finished my beer, jotted down the guys contact info and then took off running for the hostel.

845pm. No problem, I thought. Plenty of time to throw my shit in my bag, hail a cab and pray.

I got upstairs, threw my shit in my bag, triple checked to make sure I had all my junk and chatted with the hostel owner working at the time Cyril (a cool dude from Bangladesh), who told me about his plans to open a hotel there (I'm down to visit, I said) and quizzed me how to say "airport" in Cantonese so I could tell the cabbie. Every little bit helps.

Sprinted down three flights of stairs, ran to the main road and grabbed a cab in about 30 seconds. I tried telling him where to go in Cantonese (don't remember how to say it) but he looked at me puzzled. Luckily, I said airport and made a gesture with my hand to a plane --- he knew. And away we went. I motioned to ask if I could smoke a cigarette. He eagerly nodded, rolled down his window and smoked one of his own. Standard Chinaman.

Crossing the bridge, though the rain had stopped, there was multiple pockets of lightning shooting up all around the water, right over where the airport was. At this point, as we went over the bridge, I was pretty much expecting the cab to get struck with lightning, get hit by a rocket launcher or just spontaneously explode, just for the story's sake. But it didn't. And so, 20 minutes (and 60 Hong Kong Dollars) later, we made it, me and my Chinese shepard of a cabbie. If my life is "Children of Men," I guess this cabbie was my Clive Owen. Which makes me a pregnant African girl, but whatever, I made it.

I walked in the airport. Perfect, I thought. 915pm. Plenty of time to wait in line, get my boarding pass and make my flight. An hour. No problem.

And in the end, that's exactly what happened and I wouldn't have changed a thing. Because stuff usually finds a way to work itself out and beat Murphy's Law. It always does, even in Macau.

---

All and all, it was a pretty expensive hour, though, which was the only downside of my day. I had to pay 120 HKD to have my second bag checked (hate paying for stuff for no reason), and then they could only give me change in Macau Patacas (which I couldn't trade in the Philippines, meaning I had to buy a fat bag of Snickers at Duty Free for another 80)...add that to the 40 I spent on beer, 60 for the cab and my grand total comes to 300 HKD to get out Macau (which is still 40 bucks, so I can't be too upset). Mostly, I'm just angry at myself because I know I'm gonna devour a whole bag of candy in the next 24 hours. But as far as problems go, that's one of those good ones, I guess.

By 10pm, I pounded about six mini-Snickers, listened to some music and starting writing this DeMarcus Cousins' sized blog post. My flight didn't take off until 1045pm, but no matter. I was happy to wait, and for once today, not be in a rush.

It's 2:07am now and I'll be waiting in Manila's airport for the next three hours listening to some airport workers blast Closing Time (apparently Semisonic is big in the Philippines). Headed to Boracay (white beachs) at 530am. Will do some retroactive posting about my last days in HK and time in Macau when I get internet/sleep. As the Clive Owen references show, I'm running on fumes at this point and should probably stop writing for a while. So, hopefully will talk to you all soon. And if you ever feel like it, send me an email! iamjackross@gmail.com would love to hear from anyone that has a minute to drop a line. It will help keep me sane (or semi-sane) out on the open road. So please, please do!

On to the next one,
Love, Jack