Macau Day 1 (Macau Tower, cafe360 & Fireworks Display!)

With a lot of good blessings from above, I got to spent a wonderful 4 days and 3 nights at Macau last week. If you don't know why, read this post. The trip was kindly sponsored by the Macau Government Tourist Office and supported by Tiger Airways along with a string of awesome sponsors which I will talk about as we go along :D.


It was my first trip to Macau and I had been so busy I didn't even get to research about the country. Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise since I was so pleasantly surprised by the whole country xD
 
It was a nervous Saturday morning in Changi Airport's budget terminal for me because I missed the chance to meet my travel bloggers prior to the trip. If you are interested to know who else went with me, check out their profile here. After a long wait at the check in, we finally boarded the plane! I snoozed or tried to snooze most of the time on the plane so no commentaries for this portion of the journey. 

 

Day one in Macau started around 3+ pm as we checked into the awesomely beautiful Grand Lapa Hotel. Grand Lapa is managed by the Mandarin Oriental organisation so you know how many Stars we’re looking at here ^_~

 

Check out the lobby! AHhhh I want to have a cosplay photoshoot there ><! Kuroshitsuji anyone =x?


My room card with the complimentary pre paid SIM card from Macau Government Tourist Office. The SIM card gave us endless surfing for the next 4 days as you can see from our non-stop instagram-ing xD

My room :D


After a bit of leisure time to bond with our room, it was time to visit the Macau Tower!


This is Money from Macau Towers. No seriously, that’s her good name.

An icon of the Country, the Macau Tower stands tall at 338 m (1,109 ft) and boast to have the second highest commercial skyjump in the world.

Everyone of us were forced onto the glass floors at level 58 much to many of their dismay XD

The mandatory glass floor picture with my shoes to exhibit my incredible courage xD  *gets slapped*


Can you tell who's faking a smile xD ??

Entrance fee to access the observatories is priced at $80 MOP/ Adult according to this website. I have to leech the information off another site because everything was kindly sponsored by Macau Towers so I don’t have any hint of cost.

Yes…most of the time, it’s like this. What do you expect of bloggers xD?

Money (erm, the PR lady) brought us to view the special conference rooms and exhibition halls inside the Macau Towers itself. Apparently the Macau Tower holds many international conference and events in their building much like our Expo or MBS. I bet you thought the entire building was only for people to jump off XD

Speaking of jumping off, we were given exclusive permission to stand at the platform beside the Bungee jump off station and I think many of the bloggers were scared out of their wits xD

 

This Caucasian dude’s pretty cool about his jump. Either that or he just has the best poker face XD

 

Usually the bungee jumper won't have time to scream but everyone else looking will scream for them xD

The Skywalk, is a no handrail walk around the main outer rim of the Macau Tower, 233 meters above ground. It will set you back at $688MOP/ pax.

I would love to experience bungee jumping once in my life but that will set me back at a minimum of $2488MOP >_<||| One day, I will get there ! … Or can someone sponsor me ;_;?

The view down from above

The Observatory lounge at level 58 follows a circular architectural design so people can walk and view the scenery in 360 degree. On the walls are relevant information and graphics to set you in the mood. One portion of the wall displayed the list of the world’s tallest towers according to their height with the Macau Tower highlighted in a different colour.
I would have taken a landscape picture of that list with the Macau Tower inside but…

… bo bianz ( without a choice). Sometimes there are just random teenagers who happen to be camwhoring in front of your subject. So you just have to take the next best thing which is the teenager along with the subject and then make fun of the teenager afterwards XD No fish, prawn also good right =D ? *gets killed by Joey*

After the effortlessly hair raising experience on top, we took to the lift again and went to Cafe 360 for dinner!
Cafe360 is a restaurant located more than 219m above ground and of course, within the Macau Tower itself. I love how the internet describes this restaurant as Macau's ‘ Most conspicuous restaurant’, and hey, who can disagree ? 
They serve a wide variety of dishes ranging from Sashimi to Tiramisu, Roast meat and Indian Naan. But of course, the highlight of the restaurant is their unparalleled bird's eye view of the country (duh, you are in the tallest building in the country after all) and rotating view.

I'm not a food connoisseur so I shall refrain from reviewing the food. I can only tell you I took 3 plates of food and 2 plates of dessert alone :x

Like most girls, I have a soft spot for tasty desserts. And being a Tiramisu lover, I was very very pleasantly surprised at how GOOD their tiramisu was O. O.

 

Tiramisu might seem like a very easy to make dessert but trust me when I say the baker makes all the difference! Tiramisu is supposed to be an exquisite Italian dessert that seamlessly combines the alluring aroma of Coffee with the smoothness and sweetness of whipped cream. 

Some tiramisu just taste like soggy biscuits with diluted coffee and cream –.-;

The one at Cafe360 was heavenly T. T, I could barely tell where the coffee and whipped cream came together. It’s like you can taste both of them together but still have both their signature flavour stand out distinctively while complimenting each other. And it was so light and fluffy! Arghhh I made it sound so complicated but really, IT'S JUST SIMPLY GOOD LAH !

You can see the tiramisu on my plate in the picture above along with my chocolate coated Strawberry, Strawberry mousse cake and miscellanies berry sauces. The Strawberry mousse cake was really good too T__T And the chocolate crème cake thingy T__T. And the chocolate fondue T_T …

I was always the last to finish our meals and I remember myself digging furiously into my cakes at cafe 360 while the rest waved goodbye to me and swaged away for the Fireworks T_T.  I managed to grab another fondue while we waited for the lift to come though =x. Gluttony Kaika.

After the fabulous spread at Cafe360, it was time for the highlight of the day ; the Macau International Fireworks Display Contest !  The teams competing that night was Korea and Thailand.


And yeah! We got front row VIP seats along with the families of the Macau Tower Directors ! exclusive much!

Thus begun the sparkly skies =)

 

All the photos in this trip are taken with the Lumix GF5 and zoom lens which was kindly sponsored by Lumix. After using the camera everyday for the past few days, I conclude that this camera takes amazing photos in very low light conditions. As you can see, all the fireworks pictures were taken without a tripod. 

It was a continuous 30 mins of fireworks performance each which makes it 60 mins worth of fireworks in total!  For a fireworks deprived Singaporean who's only fireworks encounter is at the NDP. This full hour of sparkling sky was a sight to behold.

The performance ended at 10:30pm and that marks th end of our first day in Macau =) Hope you guys enjoyed reading about my trip, remember to leave me a comment!