Hong Kong can certainly feel like a small place a lot of the time. I now play a game with my girlfriend (although I'm not sure how much she is aware of it) which involves comparing how many people we each know that we have inadvertently bumped into during a day. She has been in Hong Kong longer than me, so frequently (if unknowingly) wins, but I like to think this is more of a product of the fact my friends stay inside during the day than anything else. I went a cool 2-0 up one lunchtime with a couple of spectacular efforts, including the brother of my physio, which, to be honest, felt a bit of a reach, but every goal counts and all that.
To escape the madness, we took a little trip to Macau for a couple of nights away, which, due to the vast size of pretty much everything there, is somewhere you are pretty guaranteed not to see anyone you know unless you are good friends with baccarat-addicted middle aged mainland Chinese men. What is quite weird about the place is, despite having all the outward glitz and glamour of Vegas, I have never been to more joyless places than the casino floors there. Most punters sip water or tea silently whilst losing small fortunes in perfume scented, gold and diamond covered palaces. It was totally and utterly depressing and, after about 5 minutes, made you want to be literally anywhere else but there unless, apparently, you were the aforesaid baccarat-addicted middle aged mainland Chinese man.
We were, thankfully, not in Macau to gamble, but to see Bruno Mars earn more money than many people earn in a lifetime for doing an hour and ten minutes of work, some of which involved us singing for him. It was, nonetheless, very enjoyable but certainly a sharp reminder that in Macau the house always wins. My girlfriend also spotted one of her sister's friends (still 2-1 to me), which felt like an avoidable goal to have conceded in such a crowded theatre.
The following night, having trawled through enough gaudy casino floors to last a lifetime, I had planned an excursion to Old Taipa Village, a short walk from the various ungodly creations on the main Cotai Strip. It was, I was told, a bit like being in Portugal or the Mediterranean, and had good little Portuguese restaurants to match. I had planned a sort of "grub crawl", a roving tapas style walk around the area to sample the local delicacies, before ending proceedings at one of the sit-down restaurants for a final bite and a self-congratulatory glass of wine. Having (over) sampled the local pork jerky, pork chop bun, milk tea and egg custard tarts on said grub crawl, we arrived at our final destination, Xiolas O Castiço, in a less-than-hungry mood, but in good spirits. Perhaps as an ironic counterpoint to the glamorous casinos down the road, the inside had all the charm of your grandparents' place which hadn't been renovated since avocado-coloured bathrooms were a thing. Tatty, moth-eaten, but still full of warmth and, frankly, exactly what you'd expect on a back street eatery in an un-gentrified part of Lisbon.
The night's over-exuberance prevented us going too wild, but we did order the salt cod croquettas, clams in tomato-y broth, grilled sardines, a terrible glass of white wine and an ice cold bottle of beer (which is really impossible to fault in the circumstances). Prices are very reasonable and portions decent. Everything we had was passable - if a little too salty - without being spectacular, but I guess that's kind of the point. It is everyday type stuff you would get in Portugal in an authentic atmosphere, but served to you in a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China less than a kilometre from replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the canals of Venice. It is a little bit of sanity (or further insanity, depending on your viewpoint) amongst madness. It's not much of a review, I guess, but again, that's kind of the point. What's more, neither of us saw anyone we knew on the waddle back to the hotel, which meant I had chalked up a much needed 2-1 victory, which, let's be honest, was the real point of the trip all along.