I was in Macau for a few days after India. This was my first visit home post-covid. Some readers seemed to have enjoyed last week’s letter, so I thought I would write another travel post.
After I landed in Hong Kong in the morning, I took a bus and crossed the new 55-km Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge, the world’s longest sea crossing. The bridge reminds me of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, but it’s ten times longer and has a long underwater tunnel halfway.
When I arrived at the bus terminal, I found myself amid a dizzying array of new constructions. This unfamiliar area used to be the ocean, but the government created new land by filling the seabed. Since the city has limited space, land reclamation is a common practice for new development.
As a teenager, I used to pride myself on knowing the best car route to anywhere in the 10-square-mile city. But now, with all the new roads, I can no longer do so.
The tiled street signs are a visual cue that I am home. In the old days, the Portuguese street name was on the left and the Chinese on the right. But when Portugal handed the city over to China in 1999, the government replaced every sign so the Chinese names would be on top instead.
I played tourist and walked around the historic center.
Several new casinos have opened on the Cotai strip. There’s the Venetian, the Parisian, the Londoner, and the Lisboeta. I wonder what theme is next.
All the license plates in Macau used to start with the letter “M,” so they went MA, MB, MC, etc., followed by four numbers. As a kid, I used to get excited when I spotted a new letter on the street. It looked like all the letters had been exhausted, so the new license plates now start with “A.”
Food is a big part of my visits home.
There’s a noodle shop five minutes from my house. Despite inflation in the last twenty years, they still charge the same price of about $2.5 USD per bowl today. The shop remains immensely popular even though the owner is rude, the seating is uncomfortable, and you often have to share a table with strangers.
Everything here is homemade. The broth is made with shrimp head and fish. The handmade egg noodles are satisfyingly chewy. The dumplings come with a generous amount of shrimp and mushrooms. The curry sauce is irresistible.
I met up with my high school friends and had the African-inspired chicken dish I wrote about a few weeks ago. I handed some money to my friend who had paid for the group. He laughed at me and said, “Put it away—no one uses cash anymore!” Most transactions are now done via digital payment.
Seafood is integral to Macau’s cuisine, given its proximity to the ocean and its history as a fishing village.
A trip to Macau won’t be complete until egg tarts are served. This puff pastry confection with a beautiful caramelized top—called po tat (“Portuguese tart”) in Cantonese—is very similar to the pastéis de nata in Portugal.
This pastry symbolizes Macau’s gastronomy, but funnily, it was brought to the city by an Englishman named Andrew Stow, who worked as an industrial pharmacist in Macau in the 1970s. While on a honeymoon to Lisbon and Sintra in Portugal, Stow enjoyed pastéis de nata so much that he thought, “How come there’s not something like this in Macau?”
In 1989, Stow opened an unassuming roadside bakery in a quaint village on the city’s outskirts. Since he didn’t have the original recipe, Stow experimented and created his version. The shell of a po tat is made using the traditional French lamination technique like the Portuguese version, but Stow used margarine instead of butter. He filled the pastry shells with a custard mixture of eggs, milk, cream, and sugar (and skipped the cinnamon) and baked them for half an hour. The result is the perfect marriage of a flaky, crispy, and crunchy shell and a luscious, silk-like, wobbly custard filling.
I enjoyed two egg tarts, which left me with little room for lunch. No regrets, though.
At my parents’ suggestion, I also explored a few hiking spots. Travel was heavily restricted during the covid years, so many people explored new outdoor areas. I didn’t know these beautiful places even existed!
Four days went by quickly. Soon, it was time to leave.