If you read last week’s post, you know we spent an entire day walking around Macao. But, in the end, I qualified it by saying we walked around Mainland Macao. That means there’s a whole island to the south we didn’t touch on. On this day, we’ll be walking around all of Taipa, as well as going to the Venetian and Studio City. Our first task was crossing over the island to head to our first stop, the Taipa Houses – Museum. To do so, we walked over an hour over a long bridge to Taipa.
1. Taipa Houses – Museum
The “museum” is a complex of four houses. Four of the houses were restored to recreate the homes of affluent Portuguese during Macau’s colonial era. The area was much more scenic, overlooking the sea. But, recent land reclamation efforts have left it overlooking a small lake.
The houses have various artifacts of colonial life inside. The most interesting thing is the various wooden statues throughout the complex. I took photos of several, but there are many more scattered about.
2. Pak Tai Temple
The Pak Tai temple has a history dating back 160 years. Back then in Macau, people’s livelihood was dependent on fish, and so they worshipped PakTai, literally the Northern Emperor, who was believed to have the divine power to withstand floods and fire. The temple was then erected in his name.
3. Museum of Taipa and Coloane
Close to the PakTai temple is the Museum of Taipa and Coloane. Coloane is a village south of Taipa (sadly we had no time to visit). The museum has various prehistoric artifacts, information, and presentations discussing the history of the area. Honestly, it wasn’t very interesting and we actually skipped it over once before we realized what it was.
4. The Venetian
To the south of Taipa is the Cotai Strip. Therein lies the Venetian Macao, our next stop on this trip. The Venetian is a luxury resort and casino, owned by the Las Vegas Sands Company. It is modeled after the Venetian in Las Vegas and has many replicas of famous Venetian (that’d be Venice, Italy) attractions. The Venetian is actually the largest casino in the world, the largest hotel in Asia (single-building), and the seventh-largest building in the world, by floor space.
One of the main reasons we went to the Venetian was to check out its San Luca Canal, modeled after the one in Venice, Italy. There are many shops in the area and you can also ride along the canal in a Gondola. When we made our way towards our next stop, we also passed the Parisian, a similarly styled hotel/resort. Of course, I snapped some pics of that, too.
5. Studio City
Our next and final stop is Studio City. Another hotel and resort, Studio City is the first to integrate studio and film facilities, retail gaming and hotels. Inside the resort are all kinds of luxury shops and other attractions. The main reason for going there was to ride on the Golden Reel, the worlds highest Ferris Wheel. But first, we hit up the Batman: Dark Flight attraction. They advertised some VR, flight simulation thing but it was just a bat-plane simulation. It was still pretty cool and the “plane” was moving (you were strapped in with 20 their people there) while the scene played on a screen in front. It was relatively immersive.
Speaking of VR, there was a whole VR playground with various moving seats and other equipment. We planned to try it out but it was super expensive and not worth it. With that, we’ve arrived at the end of the post and the end of our time in Macao. Today wasn’t; as packed as our last day exploring the mainland, but it was still fun and the experiences were enjoyable. Make sure you read the previous post if you haven’t, and stay tuned for some (a lot) of Taiwan content.
