Zhuhai & Macau (Typhoon) Trip

(My long owed post: I started long ago but just didn't set down to complete it) Hope this helps!

Kind of a short getaway for the sisters from 23 Jul to 27 Jul. We went on our own because the parents already went at the start of the year without us, and the friends all couldn't make it to the dates in the end. And the funny thing is, in the end the friends are also going, all at different timings. Haha!

Another reason was to kind of clear some of our leave. So we didn't cover any weekend. HAHA!

Let's start then!




Airline:
We bought return trip tickets for Air Macau through Cheaptickets. The flights are at unearthly hours but it allows us to fully make use of our time there. Departure from Singapore was at 6.50am. Good thing was mum called one of my uncles to pick us up to the airport. Bad thing was, I only slept for 3h or less, and we went to the wrong terminal. =x Had to take the skytrain to T2 instead. HAHA! It wasn't a big aircraft so we are not expecting much. But it was okay since it's quite a short flight. We had burger king breakfast after checking in so we can sleep on the plane. But in the end we still took the food, although none of us finished the food. And so it's still sleeping on the plane. =P

Return flight was at mid-night over there. But we did a lot of sitting around to wait because dajie was too unwell to walk around. And dajie being over anxious and kiasu person, cannot wait. I got a little pekchek at the end. We already gave in for the whole day leh, what more she wants? Anyway after that the flight was okay and it's quite empty, just that the man who came to sit behind me was quite irritating to kept on yawning VERY loudly throughout the night. Came back home and immediately concussed for at least another few hours before doing anything else.

Hotels:
Hotels for both places were booked online as well. Agoda.com I think. Not bad a deal, but we scanned through the pages trying to find the most suitable for quite some time as we have constrain for 3 person sharing a room, esp. for Macau.

1. Jiali Wan Hao Hotel (Zhuhai - Gongbei District)
Apparently it's quite a big hotel because we don't have to tell the taxi driver the exact address, just have to say the name and we were driven straight to the hotel. On the outside it looks big, and there's free wifi in the lobby. But the first cab driver was bad because he didn't want to drive into the driveway of the hotel and say it is very difficult to drive out later. -.- And it was raining leh! But fine, we just alight and make our way in with our luggages. But the rest of the taxi drivers are nice and quite helpful.

Forgot to take a photo of the room. But it's kind of awesome with business table, reading chair, and a big bed big enough for the 3 of us, but the bathroom is open concept and doesn't have a door. It's fine for us since we are sisters. The good thing is there's a curtain to cover the glass between the bathroom and room though.

2. Presidente Hotel (Macau)
It's not a big big hotel because we are not on that kind of very luxury trip. And the primary service we expected of the hotel was to able us to add on additional bed because we have 3 people, and not all hotels allow that. This one includes breakfast as well. :) And the room is really very big. And even without the extra bed, we are able to squeeze ourselves onto the ultra big bed, actually don't even need to squeeze. haha!

Weather:
Notice the emphasis of Typhoon in the title. Well, it is meant to be a very leisure trip, but it's way too leisure, that we didn't have much to do because of the weather. And it had to be when we just arrive there! For the 4 days we were there, rain almost didn't stop at all. So we couldn't any outdoor activities, not even sight-seeing because it's just hard to go with umbrellas and trees falling here and there.

Although we all brought pants of different lengths, all we wore for the 4 days were jeans, except for dajie who wore a skirt when we got to macau, and we suspected she caught a cold because of that. Luckily I asked erjie to bring a jacket. At first she still ask me, 'bring for what?' -.-

Shopping:
Shopping was really great the whole trip, esp. when we hit the sales period. We didn't buy anything that is really expensive, but I filled my luggage. haha! I think I bought the most, clothes and stuff.

1. Gongbei District
Good thing that the shopping street is underground so we are not affected by the weather. The place is very big, that it has 4 different exits that leads you to total different places. It is like Bugis Street x3 times. We took almost the whole afternoon to finish part of it (only). Actually I think we thought we finished it. HAHA! Anyway we went for Thai Massage. Damn shiok.

Went back again the next day for more shopping. They were having sale everywhere, probably because of the bad weather? I got myself nightie for CNY. Hehe. And we went to an area that we haven't gone to the previous day. Like new discovery. But the sales personnel at the center part is quite agressive and noisy. They kept on wanting you to change currency with them. But can just ignore lah. haha!

So apparently the other side has many small shops, separated by having different colour-coded area. So we had to recognise which colour have we covered and which area. Challenging, but really BIG!

2. Duty Free Mall(s)
Went to the duty free shops on the 2nd day. Still raining from morning till night btw. The malls are connected to each other, again, each of them are quite big. And it's rather empty since the rain was really heavy. And we totally braved the storm to go there. If not we would have nothing else to do. And again, everywhere was having sales. And most of them are 50% storewide. Everything is so tempting. Anyway I remember I gotten 2 pairs of Mango jeans (pants) there, at a really good price, because it was already on sales price, with further 20% with purchase of 2 pieces. So worth it, esp. when I only brought 1 jeans there and it was always wet. Good to have something to change on the following day(s).

Most of the brands there are like the top 10 brands in Zhuhai. And of course, some are not really cheap. So it depends on what you are looking for also. But no harm going there. We spent the whole afternoon there, before going to hotel to put our shoppings and proceed for seafood dinner.

3. Macau
Basically the shopping places are all the hotels. We were staying at the old district, so had to take the inter-hotel shuttle bus to the new district.

The older district doesn't have a lot of shopping places indoors. So the best place to shop is either City of Dreams or Venetian at the new district. Can be reached by taking the shuttle buses. We took from MGM to City of Dreams because that was the first one we found. There's probably some others as well but I'm not very sure where are they. But need to take note of the timing of last bus if intending to stay at the new side till late. Will be good to check which hotel offers the latest bus back to old district. We happily take it for granted that the bus will end quite late, and in the end we missed the last bus (by quite a lot) and had to take a taxi back, which was quite expensive we think (in comparison to Sg taxi and of course the China ones), it was about $9 for a 10min ride.

As mentioned, it's during the sales period so we were happily chiong-ing all the shops. Even the branded have quite a good selection of 50% off items. Greatest buy was at ZARA. 2 tops and 1 vest for me. Tops at 119MOB (<20SGD) each, Vest at 189MOB (abt. 30SGD).

And the malls are also places to take a lot of photos. haha! We hotel-hopped most of the hotels to just walk through and take photos wherever suitable.

Old district has a shopping street around the Saint Paul's Ruins. Obviously, to cater to tourist needs. Bought my souvenir for friends over there, not very cheap, but quite nice and cute. We didn't really shop because sister wasn't feeling well and want to return to hotel sooner.

Oh by the way, Hard Rock Cafe is over at the new district too, and they have 2 stores on 2 levels, collection is a bit different. And they have a cool wall mural made out of drumsticks, beside the escalator up to the 2nd level.


Food:
Day 1: Lunch was at the underground mall. Didn't know what we should have, so after walking through all the shops, we chose one of the smallest shop in the mall. Apparently their food is really good and cheap.

Had ShareTea. Not bad actually. But compared to the rest we had, this one wasn't that nice.

Dinner was at Mac. We were tired and didn't have any idea what to eat. So just settle there and decided to go back hotel early after we gotten some cakes and games to play.

Snack was light cheese cake and Neapolitan cake.

Day 2: Left hotel kinda late as we were hoping that the rain would have become lighter to see the chances of visiting the garden. But failed anyway. We walked to a dimsum place quite near to our hotel. It's quite big and actually there were quite a crowd there.

Snack at a cafe at the duty free mall. The tea there is good! they had hot bubble milk tea which er-jie had, and I had yuzu tea. The cakes were quite good too. We thought the thick toast looked quite good, but it was a bit too thick and dry. If not, it will be really good.

Dinner was seafood!!!! :D Despite the bad weather, we decided to go ahead even though the receptionist couldn't promise us the availability of seafood at the place we want to go. In fact we walked a while without the umbrella and then it started again. So we desperately got in a taxi and went off to the seafood place, which I think is Yong Ping. The sisters went to choose the seafood while I sit in the restaurant looking after our stuffs and wait for them, so I didn't take part in the choosing at all, but I trust them lah.

It was really cheap, in fact cheaper than what I expected. We gotten bamboo clams, clams, scallops and abalone! (For 130RMB I think). The restaurants there earn by charging the cooking fee (they call it the 加工费). But have to check the price of different cooking style before agreeing before you get a shock at the bill. Ours was 95RMB for cooking the seafood in stir-fry, steam, simple style. Additional kangkong cooked with garlic, which turned out to be a super big plate good enough for 5-6pax. Together with a can drink and rice, the bill was 120RMB. That's 250RMB=50SGD for the meal!

Day 3: We went back to Macau just before noon to check in and then proceed for brunch. Sister was ready to spend on something good, but the Italian restaurant at Wynne's was too much. We gave up the idea and went to the cafe restaurant at the first level. Apparently, they serve good food at reasonable price and we all had a full and fulfilling meal. I miss the iced milk tea! It comes with ice made from milk tea, the tea doesn't get diluted at all! (Thumbs up for the effort seriously!) Even the toast tasted fantastic! Had a really filling meal before we set out for shopping for the rest of the day.

Dinner was at Italian restaurant at Venetian. It's the one beside the 钜记饼家. It's quite a quiet corner, not exactly cheap, but delicious. We had quite a late dinner actually. After which, got our favourite almond biscuit at the biscuit shop!

Day 4: Breakfast was at our hotel. Complimentary american breakfast. It's not as good as the one we had on the previous day and in fact, if we pay for it, they are about the same price or slightly cheaper only. *the woes of staying at a non-five-star hotel. HAHA! So anyway, that's how the sister's condition got worse.

What was lunch I can't really remember. But I remember I bought a Pork burger on our way back from the ruins. It was good actually, but not exactly what I have expected it to look like. But after that I insisted on looking for the cafe St. Margaret's for its Portugese tart. Hehe. :)

After we got to City of Dreams and get our luggage deposited, proceeded to Venetian again since it's bigger and there's much more places to walk around. Had some dessert instead of main course. Dessert was good actually. It was just a random shop we passed by and just hop in. But quite pricey though. It's at one of the hotel I can't remember which (Oops).

Dinner was at Venetian's food square, to get porridge from 海皇. It's my favourite porridge place in HK btw. We had that because sister thought of eating something light and we thought big sis can eat some also but in the end she wasn't in the appetite.

The last straw: Big sis kept on chasing us to leave the place because there's some smell she cannot stand (due to the sickness). But hey, we already gave way and it's not like we want to eat very slowly. And then we split to get her medicine and water. But well, I guess it didn't really work so we ended up sitting at City of Dreams Mac to wait for time to pass. Sister had to even volunteer her jacket to cover the stomach area. That's why we say she caught a cold because she was wearing skirt the previous day and she denied the reason. Whatever. We totally have nothing to do so I watched Running Man with sister while big sis took a nap. But she was too paranoid most of the time and we set off earlier to the airport in the end. And still got to wait. So practically we wasted the day lah to say. But we can't just leave her alone. (Actually we did, she rested at a place while the 2 of us venture to the areas in Venetian that we didn't go through the previous day, which was quite some bit) I was just unhappy because of that, we did nothing except for sitting around and more sitting around. And there was nothing at the airport, esp. it's just a small airport and it's late at night, we can't expect much/anything.

Other attractions:
Apparently we couldn't visit any attractions in Zhuhai as they are all outdoor and there's no way we could go to any of them.

We watched the Dragon Treasure show at City of Dreams though. Wanted to catch the Water dance show, but there weren't tickets left for the shows we can attend so we gave up the idea. Dragon treasure was 60MOB each ticket, it's an omni-theatre show. Quite nice actually. If you run out of things to do, just get the tickets there, they have shows based on 30min interval or 60min interval, depending on the time period.

Other tips:
1. Consider going to Zhuhai first then to Macau and/or HK. That's basically what most of the people do. Because for us, we are flying Macau air there and back from Macau, we will have to luge our luggage there and back Zhuhai, it will be easier to handle a less filled bag.
2. Can consider staying at Zhuhai because accommodation is cheaper, if not going to gamble lah. So can go Macau shop a day and go back Zhuhai to sleep. (it can be a bit of hassle though, but that's what the locals of ZH suggested to us). But the buses to customs end quite late.
3. Deposit of luggage at hotels. One of the best place to deposit will be the casinos. We went to City of Dreams on the last day after checking out, so that we can shop a bit and relax there, however, hotels do not except external guests storage. Thus, we were told to go to the casino, they have a very big storage space so fret not.
4. MOB and HKD can be used interchangeably at Macau. It's good to have a bit of MOB anyhows, just in case, and moreover you are going to spend there right. We even mixed the currency while paying in the same shop. But if you are going to HK, using up the MOB first might be a wiser choice. Not recommended to use RMB there though. Some shops consider 1RMB=1MOB, which is not worth it. Some take in 1RMB=1.2MOB, but still it depends on how much the exchange was.
5. There's wifi at Macau airport, free for 30min. The 30min is accumulative, so don't think that you can just kept on signing in and out and get 30min each time. Other than that, not all hotels have free wifi.

Okayyyy... That's all! Till the next trip then! (It's settled for Beijing from 30 Nov to 8 Dec! Gonna be so so so so so so cold! Brrrrrr....)