Macau: Day One (Part 2)

09.03.14 (night)

After getting our much-needed rest, we proceeded to head out to explore the Macau nightlife.

As I've mentioned earlier, my mother had done tons of research on Macau's popular restaurants. The agenda for tonight was to eat at a Portuguese restaurant named A Lorcha. We tried making reservations for dinner, but it was fully packed. The restaurant told us that we could come in at 9pm, which meant we had to wait for a while before we could take a cab to A Lorcha.

walkin' around, enjoying the cold air.
yes, neon lights in the background.

This is the part where it gets a bit desperate. At about 8:30, we hailed a taxi and told him we wanted to go to A Lorcha. Like many taxi drivers in Macau, he told us he didn't know these "English" words, and asked us for the Chinese name of the restaurant or the name of the area around it. We told him a couple of landmarks around the place and showed him a map on the iPad. He agreed to take us there.

Turns out he knew where those landmarks were and took us to a hotel nearby (but not really, as we found out soon enough). He said, "Okay, the restaurant should be around here," and dropped us off. Feeling a little hungry and cold, we walked briskly down the road to find the restaurant, expecting it to be just around the corner.

After what seemed like hours, (okay, maybe just fifteen minutes), we still could not find A Lorcha. Our hands were numb from the cold and we were all shivering in our jackets. The streets and shops having no signboards made everything worse. We walked up and down, turned left and right, but could not locate the restaurant. We finally decided to ask around.

Feeling desperate, we stepped into a nearby restaurant and asked the shopkeeper were A Lorcha was (I know, I know, asking a restaurant owner where another restaurant is isn't exactly the nicest thing to do). Like many of the locals that we've encountered in Macau, he was not very polite and didn't seem very willing to help. After many attempts of trying to translate the Portuguese names into a Cantonese phrase, we finally got directions to the place (the locals here have a seriously low command of English, for some reason).

The restaurant, we discovered, was nearby, if you were driving. Walking there would be quite a distance, let alone it being winter. We trudged on, determined to find the famous Portuguese restaurant. After goodness-knows-how-long of walking on dark, empty sidewalks, the A Lorcha sign was spotted.

PRAISE THE LORD, our stomachs said.

The interior was an imitation of a ship-like room:

quite cute, isn't it?

The head waiter (or maybe he was the boss) introduced some best-selling dishes to us:

the buns came with the following dish

these clams are really popular

mixed seafood rice with portuguese sauce
(includes prawns and oysters)

chicken in portuguese sauce

Review: This restaurant deserves all its high ratings! Obviously, the warmth of the food makes everything taste better, but I've never tasted such delicious Portuguese sauce. It's authentic and feels very homemade, with a nice creamy texture and a taste that could make you quite addicted to it. The clams' sauce is for the bread, and the combination works perfectly. The amount of seafood they give is ridiculously much, especially the four to five large oysters that they serve. I'm usually a picky eater, but there was no picking for me in this restaurant! Each and every dish we'd ordered came in a large portion, but we polished the platters clean. It was just that yummy.

Looks like all that walking was worth it! 

Getting some warm food (and some really delicious food at that) down our bodies had re-energized us, and we left the restaurant feeling satisfied. But to our dismay, we realized we were a little lost as to how to get back to the hotel. We did not know how the public transport worked here, and not a single taxi seemed to stop for us. We stood there shuddering in the cold, with the biting wind hitting our faces.

We finally decided to take a leap of faith and study the bus timetables and lines. We hopped onto a bus that was heading toward Lisboa, a landmark hotel/casino near our hotel. The warmth in the bus was welcoming. I've never felt so comfortable in a bus before. It was also one of the first few times I've taken public transport, and that's inclusive of the times I took public transport in Malaysia.

The bus headed to where we expected, and we reached the Lisboa bus stand safe and sound.

Casino Lisboa in full neon at night.

My dad thought it'd be cool to take this photo since we all had our hoodies up in the rain.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

And that's it! We quickly made our way back to our hotel, where we took our beautiful warm showers and crashed into bed.

Oh! And one thing really amazing about Macau; even where the busiest roads are, the cars stop for anyone who wants to cross the road using the zebra-crossing! Now that's something Malaysians should learn! I've never felt this safe crossing roads before!