#but guess what this time i am flying into kaohsiung

[thistransient]

I'm only in Macau for one night, and to be honest it's not popular for visa runs because there's no budget accommodation. I came here for the day when I was living in China in 2017, and went back in the early evening for this very reason. As such, I had never seen Macau properly in the dark (the quest for McDonald's with the Taiwanese kid at 3 am in October doesn't count), and was very curious. Man, it is shiny.

I took the public bus from the airport because the fare was 6 MOP and I had exactly 6 HKD in coinage lurking in my closet from previous voyages (they're interchangeable in Macau). My fellow bus-riders did not appear to be tourists. I took the risk of trusting google maps regarding the bus route, and only felt betrayed for a moment before I realised it was making a detour because of construction, and still headed in the general correct direction, even if it took a bridge that didn't seem to exist on the map yet. Spellbound by the glittering lights and the thrill of being somewhere new, I was finally enjoying myself (having been anxious for days previous already).

Between my hotel and the bus stop was more neon signage than you could shake a stick at, I was enthralled. Check in went smoothly, and I hastened back out to walk around and take pictures. The old city side of Macau was quite hopping considering it was nearly 10 pm on a Tuesday night and cold out, Taipei feels a bit sleepy in comparison (or maybe I'm not going to the right places). I had very sensibly looked up a bunch of restaurants in advance in an attempt to divert for once my usual fate of walking around forever and not eating (although I had brought a lot of bananas with me to the airport after realising they weren't going to survive a week at home, so at least I wasn't running totally on empty). As usual, even the best laid plans can go awry when there are too many things to look at (by things I mean giant crabs in the window of the seafood restaurant). Somewhere around 22:30 I realised I needed to consume something before bed.

The go-to late-night food in Macau appears to be...beef offal. Now, I'm not opposed to offal, I like some grilled intestines at the izakaya, but this was a boiled affair and there were an intimidating amount of bits on display at the kiosks. Afraid I was running out of options before reaching my hotel again, I stopped at a takeaway stand that had a picture of a 煎餅 (fried pancake wrap thing) and inquired with the guy as to whether it could be obtained. (All the signage and menu was in Chinese, so I had started with Mandarin from the get-go.) There was no 煎餅 to be had. I could, however, have a box of rice accompanied by...[here we had many of those silver trays in a bain-marie, filled with various soupy things]. I asked him what one was. He told me "Lú lòu". I was baffled and told him I didn't understand. He said it again as if I'd misheard him. No, I really don't know what that is, I insisted. He said it again more loudly as if I were daft. Finally I remembered that [n] often becomes [l] for Cantonese speakers and he was saying niú roù 牛肉...beef 😑 Well then. I asked if he had any vegetables, which appeared to be an offensive request, so I resigned myself to 50 HKD of rice and meat chunks. Shortly after I discovered if I'd just kept walking, there were plenty of other options, but either way, I had dinner. When life gives you meat chunks...you start chewing.

Tomorrow my return flight is not til 4, which means I should mosey to the airport a bit prior to 2, so if I go to bed within the next 15 minutes I might make it for breakfast and some more trotting around looking at things (an activity that was cut short in 2017 on account of it being mid-summer and the heat rendering me somewhat delirious). These days going places often feels like a heinous exertion while in the planning stages, but once I'm out there I start getting into the spirit of it. Enrichment. Outside of my enclosure, even!