HK vs Macau!

As we all know, Hong Kong considers itself in competition with Tokyo and occasionally in competition with Singapore, or NY and London, and absolutely not - like, not ever, ever, ever - with that silly little Portuguese backwater out there somewhere else in the Pearl River Delta, called ... mmmm, what was it again? Oh, that's right! Macau.

Macau Island as seen
from Taipa Island

However, a few years back Macau let in Las Vegas and now it's all casinos and flash and rich and blowing HK out of the water in the seriously good entertainment stakes (serious International performers are choosing Macau for their concerts instead of us, which is annoying us considerably) and it's kinda getting our attention a little, although we'd never, ever, ever consider having any casinos here!

Stanley Ho's new place!

But since we have been in Macau for the past few days, I asked Richard and Gloria if they could see any differences between the two places and they came up with two things:

Macau has better food and worse manners!


Of course Macau has better food. Like, DUH!!! I mean it was a Portuguese colony for 500 years, and those Portuguesers are serious foodie-types! And there they were, back in 1513, just come from 100 years in Goa, which is another serious foodie-place, and they'd arrived having already developed their own unique Port-Goa fusion cuisine, and they're meeting with another serious foodie-type-people, the Cantonese! So what is bound to happen when you have three foodie-nations coming together and making a cuisine together? You get bliss, that's what!

HK however was British and the British only like food they ate as children; give 'em sausage and mash, fish and chips, spotted dick, figs newton and they're happy as Larry. Thus the sublime Cantonese foodie-ness was wasted on them. So, like I said, DUH!!! Of course Macau has vastly better food.

HK Traffic

As for the other one? Richard said that the main difference he noticed was that "HK has traffic lights everywhere and everyone obeys them, except at the pedestrian crossings. The crossings, sure, also have traffic lights only people cross whenever they feel like it ... and the cars always stop to let people pass. However, in Macau, there are no traffic lights and pedestrians are always too scared to cross the roads because it's like every driver feels it's his/her duty to kill every pedestrian they see around them!"

Which of these would you
prefer to have run over you?

Actually, I noticed that as well. In Macau, cars actually speed up when they see someone trying to cross the road.

Horrible manners those Portuguese!