Out and About in Macau

After sampling some of the architectural delights of a few of the hotels in the City of Dream cluster, I had a relaxing lunch of sardines, choricos and grilled prime ribs done Portuguese style together with freshly baked bread and butter, all washed down with a Portuguese beer at a popular small restaurant called "Little Jumbo"(?) at Taipa.

I started to stroll lesiurely up the sleepy streets of the old town a short distance from the restaurant to go to the famous Lotus Park close by which houses 5 exemplars of old Portuguese architecture (Casa da Museu), being the former residences of high Mecanese officials and local dignitaries. But even before I reached the park, I could already see 18th or 19th century Mediterranean style architecture in bluish-green and white corner stones with dainty lamps in black cast iron. Must look very pretty at night Below is the Taipa Museum..

The street was deserted. The tourist crowd were presumably busy jostling with each other around the baccarat, black jack tables, hoping for the favors of lady luck or eagerly awaiting the sound of coins cascading down the metal dish at the base of of the "one arm bandits" , their eyes glued to the flickering screens above, their fingers tired with the "unstoppable" pulling at the levers.


                  The Museum of Taipa and Coloane History

Soon I found the granite steps leading up the street to the park, in colonial Portuguese style  against the bricks of two South China houses in a curious blend of East-West  harmony. The sky above was a glorious navy blue.

A school girl on summer vacation and a young house wife with an umbrella to shield her baby from the scorching heat of the afternoon sun were waiting patiently for their bus.


                  

The tangled roots and the sizes of the circumference of the trees lining the gently up-hill street  told me they must have stood there for hundreds of years, surveying the passers-by below with utter indifference to the color of their skin or their social status.

                    

Macau is not Hong Kong. It was a curious sight to see men's and ladies' underwear hanging out to dry in the sun outside the ground floor window of an old timer's tiny house,  completely oblivious to our "modern" notions of privacy and "decency". Perhaps privacy and "decency" had no place and no meaning for them in that secluded corner. They belong to another time and another kind of world.

I passed by another house which looked like something which but for the "No Entry" sign keeping out trespassers to the private alley, could very well have come from the palette of a Pisarro: so tranquil, so calm, so serene, so peaceful in the afternoon sun.

                 

If the other photo still had a minor jarring detail, this one would be perfect! A European house front of a very European street. Sure it was somewhere in the Orient?

I passed by further European style municipal houses, now turned into various kinds of museums.

                                  The Museum of Civil Affairs

I turned a corner. My eyes were greeted with the stump of an ancient tree guarding a  crossroad at the park, one leading up and another down. It was a soothing sight.

 

I entered the park proper and found on my left a massive looking toilet, one of the most solidly built toilets I have ever seen! Looks a bit like a modern day pyramid, doesn't it?

Further down the path, I discovered more old trees guarding the 5 houses which formed the "Casas da Museu" which were supposed to the main points of attraction of the park.. The sun was showering its gold upon the verdant leaves of its luxuriant undergrowth .

If you are big and strong, you better expect some free riders!

But your own offsprings can sprout practically anywhere along your trunk. How and why should you mind? They're your own, aren't they?

Once I turned the corner, modernity asserted its silent but domineering presence in the form of towering structures of glass and steel against the limitless blue of the sky .

But history answered back, in its own way, in dignified silence but hiding a little coyly  behind clumps of trees.

Opposite the sea of lotus, stood a towering symbol of the invincible march of "progress". History, this time in the form of the old church or town hall (?), was reduced instantly to a dwarf at its feet, its bell tower making a desperate but feeble attempt to assert its former glory. 

Before the construction of the gargantuan Venetian, it stood proudly at the side of the Lotus Pond like this.

But the trees were indifferent. They sprouted fresh leaves in sunny exuberance.

And of course. we should not forget the flowers! See how bright and happy they welcome the afternoon sun!