After changing back to my sandals after my Skechers shoes started falling apart, we headed to Senado Square.
It was a 15-20 minute walk from Holiday Inn Macau. While walking, we noticed so many, so many! gold shops. There are the usual Hong Kong jewelry chains like Chow Tai Fook and City Chain. What caught our eye were the beautiful gold items on display. Now, these are not your usual gold jewelry and figurines you see in Ongpin, and not even at high-end malls in Manila. The workmanship of the gold on display in Macau is exquisite! I don’t know how else to describe it. Pinong-pino ang pagkagawa. The workmanship was really fine and perfectionist. I didn’t see any mistakes or lopsided parts. The attention to detail is amazing.
There were Winnie the Pooh gold figures, Hello Kitty, the usual dragons and other mythical creatures, fancy necklaces and bracelets. I fervently hope to be able to own one of these someday!
We didn’t go in any of the shops anymore because: 1. we didn’t have time, 2. we weren’t going to buy any, anyway, since they probably cost a big fortune.
I didn’t take any pictures, and I would like to ask our fans in Macau or HK if they would be kind enough to send pictures of the gold so our other readers can see what I’m talking about! Send it through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram!
Macau was not the sleepy little fishing village I had imagined. If anything, it seemed richer than Hong Kong. Everyone was wearing branded bags, clothes and shoes. I don’t think I could have found a non-branded, tiangge item there if my life depended on it.
We finally reach Senado Square!
Now, I imagined Senado Square to be a place with lots of cafes where you can sit around, drink coffee, eat egg tarts and people-watch. It wasn’t really that kind of place. There was a big Bossini branch, a McDonald’s, etc…
We just followed where people were going and found ourselves in lanes lined with shops.
We saw almost everyone walking towards us bringing this type of plastic bag:
But we were too shy to stop someone on the street and ask them what it was!
But we figured, hey, everyone was buying it, whatever it was. It must be good!
So we did some reverse engineering and kept walking towards people who we saw holding that sort of plastic bag. When we came to a fork in the road, we stopped and observed people come from both sides of the fork, and went to the left because the people coming from the left were holding these bags.
While walking, we saw some people on the street giving out free taste of various Macanese pastries.
We finally figured out where the people with those bags were coming from!
Pastelaria Koi Kei!
There are actually several branches of Koi Kei in that area. But we went to this branch because the staff seemed friendlier.
This guy kept giving us free samples of the various meat jerkies. He just cut up a few bite-size pieces of the meat jerky for us to try.
Almost all the pastries sold inside also had free samples available.
The staff was friendly and kept urging us to try this and that. It helped that we were also friendly and kept telling them how delicious their products were!
They told us that even though they were more expensive than the other pastelaria chains, you can taste the difference. Pastelaria Koi Kei’s products were a cut above the competition. You know we wouldn’t resist trying out the other pastelaria free samples, didn’t you?
But the Koi Kei staff was right. Koi Kei’s meat jerkies were more moist and tastier than the competition. We ended up coming back to Koi Kei and buying pasalubong for friends and family.
Here are some of my favorites:
Ginger Candy – only MOP $20 per pack. The price was originally $23 but if you buy 3 packs, you get the discounted price of $20 per pack instead of $23. We had already eaten half the pack before I remembered to take a picture!
This ginger candy is really good! It tastes a little bit like kalamay but with ginger! It is actually quite soothing to eat when your throat is itchy or if you have a cough or cold.
Each candy is individually wrapped in edible rice paper (this is the edible sheet that is wrapped around the White Rabbit milk candy).
This is the Peanut Candy that Koi Kei is famous for:
The price is originally MOP $45, but if you buy at least 4 packs, you get the discounted price of MOP $40.
It’s sesame seeds and small peanuts bound together by a sweet, sticky syrup.
We also bought some meat jerky. You should definitely try all of them and then decide which one you like best! If you buy a minimum of 2 pounds of meat jerky (you can combine flavors), you also get an additional 12% discount on the meat jerky! For each meat jerky flavor, the minimum that you can buy is 1 pound’s worth.
Don’t worry, they seal it in nice, presentable ziploc-able plastic. Their meat jerkies are delicious, and I particularly liked the Thick Boar Fillet. To eat them, it’s best to cut them up into bite-sized pieces using clean kitchen scissors.
