Macau 2013, Part 1

It's this time of the year that I love to spend looking back over old holiday photos, reminiscing about the good times ......has it really been a couple of months since I was overseas??

We visited Macau earlier this year for a short day trip, marking my first ever trip overseas anywhere other than Hong Kong. And since it was such a short trip, we woke up crazy early to make the most of our day, (catching up on some sleep on the hour long boat ride) packing as much as we could into the hours we had, starting off some sight seeing at Guia Hill! To save us some walking uphill, we took the super short (and cheap!) cable car ride which takes you part of the way up- the whole ride takes about a minute!

Next stop is the obligatory Ruins of St Pauls.

Queues at Xiaoshanghai Guotie

...but not before we make our first food stop!!

We spy the queue at this little store in an alleyway, so we join to see what the fuss is about. It's a little shanghainese joint specializing mostly in dumplings and pork buns which is perfect as we really want to try Macau pork buns!

Their dumplings are apparently pretty good, and they also offer some other snacks but we're only really interested in the pork buns- we need to leave stomach space for lunch!

The pieces of pork sizzling away look and smell amazing, especially as we didn't have much of a breakfast.

A short while later, we have our pork buns! 

We're quite disappointed that it didn't turn out anywhere as amazingly as we were hoping, but the bun is soft and the pork is tasty- it makes a decent breakfast!

We walk past a couple more pork bun stores with lengthy queues and more attractive looking pork buns- maybe we should have bought them here instead!

There's plenty of interesting stores along the tourist strip, but we're having trouble keeping up with our travel companions and don't get at stopping by all of them. There's plenty of food tastings and we don't hesitate to try them all!

Our favourite is definitely the almond cookies, as they generously give out whole cookies for tasting. I'm not usually much of a fan of almond cookies but these were really good!

Or does everything just taste better when you're on holidays?? 

We finally reach the Ruins of St Pauls, crowded with plenty of tourists. I'm not too big on taking pictures with a famous wall, much less with walking up countless flights of stairs for more photo ops with cannons and whatnot but with plenty of food around, I'm not complaining!

When we've finally gotten enough touristy shots, we make our way to lunch through the back streets of Macau. It's incredibly quiet and kinda scary- at some point, we got chased by a fierce dog.....thank goodness it was on a (rather long) leash!

It's rather interesting though, as we trek past a bit of everything- different types of housing, fire stations, restaurants..........

.....and past Macau's only hospital.

After getting lost navigating a bit, we find our lunch destination- Nga Heong, a rather popular Burmese restaurant. It's very busy, but they manage to squeeze our group upstairs- the stairs are crazy steep though, and I already start to wonder how I'll manage my way back down :)

Coconut Beef Brisket Noodle in Soup

There's magazine and newspaper excerpts on the wall about the restaurant, which makes it easy to pinpoint its most famous dishes. Looking around at other people's tables also helps as it seems that everyone orders pretty much the same things. 

We go for the coconut beef brisket noodle in soup rather than the usual chicken one just for a change- it's quite an unique dish, with noodles, beef brisket and pieces of Chinese crullers bathed in a thick curry-like coconut soup. It's interesting and the tastes are pleasant, but we don't really see what all the hype is about.  

Coconut Chicken Noodles

The noodles also come in a dry version, where instead of the soup, it comes as a thick sauce. Taste-wise, it's quite similar to the beef brisket noodle, but I prefer the unique-ness of the soup noodle than this version, as this one is quite alike to curry chicken with noodles. 

Pig Blood Jelly

We also order the pig blood jelly, which is a lot smoother and jelly-like than the yum-cha version I'm used to. The soup is rather tasty too!

Fish Soup Noodle

The restaurant's other famous dish is the fish soup noodle (Mohinga), which according to Wiki is the national dish of Burma. It's fish soup with rice noodles- I only had a taste of the soup and quite enjoyed it as it was very tasty and not too fishy. 

And after this satisfying feed, we were off again to do more touristy exploration............but I'll leave that for next time :)

Xiaoshanghai Guotie
No.3 Maicaodiwei, Macau, China

雅馨緬甸餐廳 Restaurante Birmanes Nga Heon
G/F, 27F Rua De Fernao Mendes Pinto R/C, Santo Antonio