Flight Log of Air Macau Flight 829 and 226 from Da Nang to Hangzhou with Half Day Tour of Macau

After eight days touring through North Vietnam, we were in Da Nang Airport and ready for our flights back.

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When I was first researching flights, Air Macau used to fly planes to Da Nang at night and back the next morning, after which I would have six comfortable hours touring Macau before flying back to Hangzhou at dusk. However, later they switched to returning to Macau later the same night to better utilize their fleet. On the passenger side, I didn't like this change at all as I would be landing in Macau the next morning, hoping to catch some sleep in Macau's cramped and expensive hotel rooms instead of comfort and value here in Da Nang. But given this was probably my only chance to visit Macau in the coming years, I decided to give it a try.

Down in the arrival floor, there were a few currency exchange shops. I found one and exchanged all our remaining Vietnamese notes. They were worth only a few dollars so rates hardly mattered (but they were pretty good). Amazingly, the friendly lady over the desk handed me change in the smallest VNM denomination as a souvenir (yes, even smaller than the ones I was offered in Big C Motorcycle parking lot a few hours ago).

As for Da Nang Airport, we were in the brand-new international terminal that opened less than a year ago, so everything was nice and pleasant. That is, until I found all the plentiful power outlet plugs were in Type G (UK), while the rest of the country used Type C (Germany) ones.

And the airport's poor power outlets were only the start of discord. I overheard there were some passengers being stuck at checkin / securities, and somehow Air Macau decided to delay the flight and wait for those people, which was weird for two reasons. One is that (I believe) Air Macau didn't have any codeshare partners in Da Nang, so dumping those passengers who were late (presumably) on their fault was perfectly natural. Another is that there was another Air Macau flight back to Macau later that night, placing those passengers on that flight seemed a better solution than having people wait on the first plane.
And this entire episode unfolded in a pretty unprofessional manner (which I believe staff of Vietnam Airlines, with whom Air Macau contracted to perform ground operations in Da Nang should be the one to blame). Our plane arrived from Macau pretty much on time, so long before boarding time on our boarding passes, lines began to form outside boarding gate. That's when the gate lady in Vietnam Airlines uniform frantically talked over interphone (presumably about the late passengers) and changed her story three times to us waiting in line that boarding would begin in 5/30 minutes and immediately. Well, based on our experiences throughout the trip, that's far beneath Vietnam's hospitality industry.

So we boarded the plane roughly on time but had been sitting on tarmac for no obvious reasons since. At the end of the day, we pushed back 35 minutes behind schedule, with no explanation from whoever expect whining fellow passengers.

After takeoff, we were treated with the (not-so-spectacular) city lights of West Da Nang before heading out to South China Sea, where amazingly sprinkles of light presumably from fishing boats decorated the ocean beneath us.
As for cabin service, it's the same snacks as our night flight to Hanoi with more packaging than the candy they contained.

Fast forward to Macau, the airport had two immigration checkpoints on its two sides with one under maintenance. Unfortunately, they didn't change all the signs so we were led to wrong one before being turned back. But apart from that, it's a tiny but efficient airport, from where we took the N2 night bus to our hotel on the North Island of Macau.

The morning of January 16, I got up at 7:30 and began a brief walking tour of Macau, which was just over an hour before we had to reach airport for our flight.

The most recognizable landmark of Macau was undoubtedly Ruins of St. Paul's, which are ruins of a 17-century church after fire destroyed most of it. Our hotel was not far from the landmark, and it seemed that once I’m on the streets, every person in my vicinity was heading in that direction. Rising sun cast beautiful shadows on what used to be the church's facade, while tour groups with selfie sticks thronged before it.

A few stairs away on the ramp to Monte Fort, tranquility was briefly restored as locals jogged up and down the hill fortress for their morning workout. School bell rang and I discovered that hidden behind trees, there was a tiny primary school whose students I ran into ten minutes ago heading for St. Paul's.

Up the hill there's Fortaleza do Monte, also known as Mount Fortress / Monte Forte, which was a 17-century fortress turned into weather observatory and finally Museum of Macau.

After joining the locals enjoying morning breeze and panoramic views, I headed downhill and continued my walking tour.

Not long after that I reached St. Anthony's Church, one of three oldest churches in Macau. Since Saint Anthony is known in Portugal as a marriage saint, thus lot of marriages with bouquets were held in the church giving it a nickname Church of Flowers.

It's a tiny but delicate church, no flowers inside that morning. Outside the church, a plaque about its history drew my attention.

After that, I headed back to hotel, had breakfast and headed for the airport.

Due to air traffic control, our flight was delayed by an hour. Our talkative captain tried his best to explain the traffic was over China's south-east shoreline while avoiding the professional word "Air Corridor A470". Guess this should be alleviated with the controversial opening of flight path M503, at least for a brief moment.

Another thing about Air Macau's pilots were that, they all seemed to have the habit of throttling up engines first then releasing brakes for takeoff. I knew that's common when runways were short, but that's not the case for any airports Air Macau flew into.

After that, standard northbound departure from Macau meant we were given an aerial tour of Zhuhai and Hong Kong.

After that, we flew North along coastlines of Mainland China. It was a clear day for the most part, so towns beneath us were clearly visible.

So after just under two hours, we were back in the city of Hangzhou.

However, after I got off the plane and halfway to immigration, I realized I left my passport in the seat pocket. By the time I got back to jet bridge, all the passengers had left but the gate lady was kind enough to let me back into cabin and retrieve my passport. And I got it before the janitors.
Didn't expect my trip to end like this.
END