Day 2: Slow Pokes Crawling to Macau...

~ 15th March 2014, Saturday ~

*gasp* How far is the ferry terminal?

Yeehaw~! We were staying so near that we just need to cross the road and walk a few more miles metres before we reach the ferry terminal. There were a whole fleet of taxis at the building. The ferry terminal is at Shun Tak Centre. Google map will help you out and you will know where I was. I'm from a small village and I have not seen that many taxis in one place, waiting to pick up passengers. Oh, well. I don't need to take taxis back at home. I just drive off to wherever I want to go. When you're travelling, you are at the mercy of public transportation but still, the most reliable form of transportation is your own two legs. You will be pretty amazed by your own capability to walk from one town to another, make the wrong turn, ended up in another place, and walked all the way back where you came from, yet you felt like you could throttle half the globe on foot.

*ka ching ka ching* 

We went to the counter and we thought we could get the 8a.m. tickets but there were no more seats left. First aunt said it's the weekend, so there would be humans that would go by the drove with over-night suitcase to have fun in Macau, mainly to gamble away their wealth. We, on the other hand, were going to Macau to wash our eyes, to widen my horizon as I've not seen the building with only the front part left standing... you know what I'm talking about. Other than that, I have no reason to go to Macau. Again, I missed the opportunity to go to Macau during my previous trip due to my visa problem.

For photography purposes... 

What to do with the extra hour in hand? Read the newspapers.... shucks, I can't even read a single word except for a few English words printed. Do you know how much I hate Chinese words? I would look at a word, remembering that I've seen it before somewhere, but I totally have no idea what that word means. So, thank God for translators. I have translators all around. 

The ferry terminal...

We walked out of the building and had a good view of the foggy atmosphere. The ferry terminal was not one that I would say a state-of-the-art. It's just an old building that I believe is churning in a lot of income. There are many ferries plying the waterway. 

Let's go.... ALL ABOARD~!!!!

Yay~! We're the fantastic four who would not contribute anything to the gambling world. I'm just there to place my footprints all over the place. At least I have widen my territory horizon... errrmmm.... see more beautiful buildings from the Portuguese era. And learn a few words in Portuguese other than eating the all famous Portuguese egg tart. Come... come... let's see what we do in Macau for the whole day for a non-gambling person. We have lots of fun, too. As long as I'm there, I know how to create a fun-filled environment. Hehehehe.... 

I'm Malaysian.... We're Malaysians...

After traveling to first world countries, I see that most of the people in first world countries have third world mentalities. Two years back, I have someone asked me whether we, Malaysians live on treetops. Hello~! What year was it now? My house is probably more modern than yours. And this year itself, surprising enough, a lady who sat next to me in the bus *I will show you which lady as you follow me in my travels to Taiwan* This lady made a remark that made me sat up straight. I felt so insulted with this Taiwanese lady that if she's not older than I am, I would have lashed out on her. That lady has come to Malaysia before and she mentioned that Malaysia has left a very bad image in her pea brain.

We're Malaysians~!

According to the Taiwanese lady, Malaysians are one messy lot of people. Mainly because of our skin colour. I wasn't that fair either when I was in Taiwan so, she said I have dirty colour. My gosh... that was so insulting. I thought the whites who are racists would only say that to the blacks. I'm not even black neither am I white. I'm brown. We, Malaysians are brown~!!!!!!!! What is wrong with brown? If it's dirty, please don't eat chocolate. That makes chocolate looks like the colour of your shit. By the way, my Malay hostess is fairer than I am. So, does that make me the 'dirtiest' of all? 

Nasi pulut durian~!!

This is my first time attending the traditional Malaysian style durian party. Come on, most Chinese enjoy this as well. That's the stinky durians which taste wonderful, mix with the cooked coconut milk, a few teaspoons of sugar and some glutinous rice. Is your health siren giving a loud cry? Give thanks, eat and be merry. I usually feast on durians alone, never with glutinous rice. So I gave it a try. 

Hand-squashing style.... that's finger smackin' good...

And another remark that the Taiwanese lady made that I retaliated in a gentle manner. She said Malaysians are so unhygienic because Malaysians eat with their hands. That makes me wonder which part the lady has visited that ALL Malaysians eat with their hands. I ate with my hands whenever I like it since in primary school. Unhygienic my arse! We have no tummy ache or anything. We're fitter than anybody else after consuming hot and spicy and sweet and sour and salty and raw and whatever you can think of. No issues of diarrhea. I showed and painted an imaginary picture for the Taiwanese lady who was sitting beside me while eating her box of lunch with the smelly bamboo shoot and showed her how my hands would squash the food. I was kind enough not to do it on her rice. But she covered her lunch box immediately and put it back into her bag. Good.... do not insult a foreign tourist. Before anyone travels to another country, please do some research first.

Simply Malaysian~!

1. We, Malaysians, do not stay on a treetop.... we do climb up trees when we were small but modern kids climb trees via their electronic gadgets if there is such a game which requires them to climb up a tree...
2. Not everyone eats with their hands... and we do wash our hands... *doink*
3. If you think Malaysian food is gross, to us, yours is as gross, too....
4. If you think we have dirty colours, go bleach yourself.....
5. And YES, we remove our shoes when we enter a person's house... if you wear your dirty shoes into my house, I will make you sweep and mop the floor and you will be blacklisted from coming to my house.
6. If there's not enough chairs, we are more than happy to sit on the floor... Your floor must be too dirty for anyone to sit, ours is not....
7. Different country, different ethnicity, different lifestyle... get your facts right... if don't know, ask... if not sure, ask... You don't find everything in Google.... 
8. If you think that lady wearing headscarf is a terrorist, you have only yourself to terrorize.... you're mad.... 
9. If you think we only speak Malay language, you must be rather shallow in your knowledge. Malaysians can speak Malay language (our national language, which I'm proud of with my Penang slang), English language, Mandarin, Hokkien dialect (something like Taiwan's national language, I bargain my way in Taiwan using their language), Cantonese dialect (we can survive in Hong Kong), Teochew dialect (can survive in the village of Teochew people in China)... we're multi-lingual people.
10. Do not believe everything you read in the newspapers.... the politicians can bicker away, we're not politicians... we're just merely Malaysians.... 

Just having a conversation.... 

This is called fellowship. It's just a simple gathering with simple food and much laughter to share with. A glimpse of how Malaysians go about in their lives. Do come to Penang island, you will know what is a food haven.... 

Bak Chang, 粽子, Glutinous Rice Dumpling...

I'm proud of my bak chang....

I started marinating the meat on a Saturday night after church. Then, I multi-tasked a bit here and there between boiling the fig, washing the glutinous rice in two different steel bowls, soaking the Chinese mushrooms and removing the black mud from the salted eggs to get to the yolks. Hubby helped me cleaned and soaked the bamboo leaves. My kitchen produced really nice smell in the wee hours of midnight or early in the morning and you can smell cakes and sorts in the afternoon. Suzie came over on Sunday, after church to teach me how to cook the glutinous rice and then to wrap the dumpling perfectly. I got to the wrapping but I dare not tie it just in case the dumpling decided to unwrap itself while hanging dearly on the strings and everything will go to the floor. Suzie is so fast, as fast as I click my camera. I thought we were going to sit in the kitchen for hours and hours but in then end after 1.5 hours, we were done with 1.5kg of glutinous rice and waiting for the pressure cooker to kick in and be done with its work. Simple yet tedious. Nothing is easy, the preparation kills and the washing suffocates. Eating is the easiest. I'm not going to go into details of every process because I feel that you can easily get all the information through YouTube and other websites. I don't have the time to write into details. Too many things to do. Work starts in another 5 minutes. *sigh* I wish I can have the whole day to sit in front of the computer to look through my thousands and thousands and photos and to write about them before I totally forget about it.

Day 2: Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park

~ 15th March 2014, Saturday ~

It was our second day in Hong Kong. Waking up in a different place and having a big bowl of instant noodle for breakfast before we took off. I'm not the fussy type when I'm on a holiday. Anything goes as long as I can save time. I can go without meals just to make full use of the time but nowadays I need my basic three meals or else I will be biting off people's head.

We took a walk, crossing a street or two for a morning walk. I did not know where my guide was gonna take me... until I saw the map of the place. Thank God for English words or I would not be bothered about my own whereabouts.

Sun Yat Sen....

So that's Mr. Sun Yat Sen, standing tall in the middle of the park. I have not read much about him so I would not say anything about him lest I state the wrong historical facts. Go Google about him if you are interested. 

Where to?

The park is seriously very big. Everything out of Malaysia seems to be extremely big. Again, I was just a village girl entering into a big city. If I'm staying there for good, I will go to the park every morning and have my jog there. The coolness of the morning was just awesome. I needed a jacket to keep myself from shivering. But, let's be honest, if I'm staying there, and with such chilly morning, I would choose to stay under the comforter and never get up unless I have to go to work.

Some morning activities in action....

There were so many hardworking people, or are they just health freaks? Good exercise early in the morning. There were people walking their dogs, some were dancing away with their portable radios blaring away, a mix match of unmatched songs, playing badminton without the badminton court. The only huge difference between the park in Hong Kong and mainland China is you won't be seeing grandmothers pushing baby strollers in the park. You can only see that in mainland China. Seriously too many babies in China.

Some school activities taking place...

They must be from international school? Westerners having their morning fitness activities at the park. Actually I was doing a brisk walking around the park. Just walking around with my camera. No sweat. I don't intend to sweat. 

The beautiful park...

The middle of the park was really beautiful. I'm attracted to anything pink or red or even yellow. I'm attracted to bright colours. Fancy having a park in one corner of the map and then the rest of Hong Kong is just a jungle of tall buildings. If the grass is not wet, trust me, I would have roll myself on the grass. Erm.... so what is it that I'm suppose to see here? I have no idea. I just know that it's a beautiful park and I need to go off after 30 minutes of washing my eyes admiring nature amidst the towering concrete jungle.  

Going off to the next destination...

Let's go. My day 2 just started. It's still a long day. It has yet to start. And you have 28 days to follow me as well. It's a good thing that I've seen Sun Yat Sen's Memorial Park because our plan to go to Sun Yat Sen's Museum in Taipei was cancelled by us because we were too tired in Taiwan.