Volare Staging

Coloane is the island south of Taipa in Macau. The center of the village is Eduardo Marques Square, which is also the best point to start your day here. To easily navigate around the sights in the area, I had with me a useful e-map from the Macao Tourism website similar to the one I got for Taipa. 

From the starting point, you'll easily spot the Chapel of St. Francis Xavier with its bright yellow walls. Just walk a little more, and the next thing you can enter will be the Sam Seng Temple. It is another one of those temples that you might just miss if you're not looking well enough. When you find it, you'll notice that it is quite small and old, obviously been standing for plenty of years.

For breakfast or snacks, Lord Stow's Garden Cafe is just around the corner. There's a take out counter if you want to bring home some egg tarts, and there's also a dine-in area for the cafe where you can take a break from your walking, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy some tarts just like I did.

Cotai in Macau is located in between Taipa and Coloane islands, which makes it an excellent and convenient way to start your trip these areas, especially if you're coming from the city center. For this trip, I stayed in Hotel Lisboa, which was a short walking distance to Star World. From here, you'll find the line for shuttle buses that can take you straight to Galaxy Macau. The buses are very comfortable, and more importantly, free for everyone!

When you arrive in the area, you'll find yourself surrounded by casinos and hotels once again. Most of them would also offer shuttle services back to the city, but as for me, I got down Galaxy Macau where I was instantly greeted with luxury stores and extravagant setup. I didn't spend much time inside since it was still early, and the place was almost deserted.

It is also in Cotai where one will find the famous Venetian Macau that offers shopping, dining, and gondola rides. This is where I spent some time as there were a lot of stores on sale for the holidays, and they had a food court that offered an inexpensive variation of dishes from different restaurants. It was also very confusing to navigate around the place, so after going around the same spots a couple of times, it didn't hurt to ask for directions on how to get out and get going.

A newer attraction would be the replica of the Eiffel Tower, which you will find at the Parisian Macau just nearby from the Venetian. It's not a one-is-to-one replica of course, merely a half scale of the real tower in Paris. Aside from that, the Parisian is also a great place to hang around for a while as it gives you a very European aura, with the interior making you feel like you're halfway across the world in France.

Back to reality, from the hotels and casinos in Cotai, it's an easy walk to Taipa and Coloane where you'll jump from modern to historic sceneries almost instantly. Check out what's in store for you in Taipa here.

Macau was my first solo trip outside of the Philippines. It was a great experience, and although I didn't spend a lot of time in the "Vegas of China" area (Macau Peninsula), I had a wonderful time exploring so many places. You can check out other areas of Macau that I've been on this link, but for those who don't have the luxury of time to step out of the city center like most, there are some highlights that you can check out, too.

I stayed at Hotel Lisboa during my trip, and it was accessible to other hotels/casinos such as Grand Lisboa, Star World, MGM, and Wynn Macau among others.  Pretty obviously, casino hopping is one of the first things you can do here. Aside from actually gambling, the unique interiors that these casinos have is one thing you can look forward to. There are also bars in some of these hotels and casinos, and as for me, I spent one of my nights listening to live music at the whisky bar in Star World. 

During the day, you can take a walk starting from the A-Ma Temple. Be willing to take the stairs when you get here as it's a pretty big temple, and is the oldest in the Macau Peninsula. You'll see other temples when you walk around, but it won't be anywhere close to this one.

The Ruins of St. Paul's is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Macau, so expect it to be really crowded, and a it'll be a little bit difficult to get a perfect photo. The facade is still intact for this once great church, and also, there's a museum that you can enter when you visit. From there, you can end your day at Senado Square (Largo do Senado) where you can also have some good dinner or street food. There's a small Tim Ho Wan store in one of the streets, which is very contrary to how it's set up as a mall-based restaurant in the Philippines.

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Siem Reap, a town in the Kingdom of Cambodia, is the passage to the vestiges of Angkor, the seat of the Khmer kingdom from hundreds of years. It has been one of the places I’ve wanted to visit when I first started traveling around Asia. There are many temples you’ll discover in Siem Reap, and I can name top three that stood out for me.

If you have some Indiana Jones dream, then Ta Prohm is the place to visit. This temple is a mixture of beauty by nature and by design. Shrouded in dappled shadow, its disintegrating towers and dividers secured in the solid grasp of some magnificent root frameworks.

Next up is the Baphuon pyramid temple, which some have called the ‘world's largest jigsaw puzzle'. Getting at the topmost part of the temple is quite a climb, but even amid the heat, you’ll want to look up since you’d feel so close to the sky.

The last one on my list is probably the major reason why I wanted to go to Cambodia - to see the Angkor Wat Temple, which was shocking for both its intrinsic details and amazing scale.