Taipa Village is the old residential heart of the island of Taipa, a jumble of low Portuguese colonial houses, Chinese temples, local restaurants and bakeries that somehow survives intact despite the skyscrapers rising around it on all sides. The cobbled Rua do Cunha is the main eating street, lined with restaurants selling Macanese food, Portuguese salt cod, egg tarts and the famous pork chop buns from Tai Lei Loi Kei.
The village has a relaxed, local feel that the peninsula's tourist zone lacks. Houses of Taipa Village, a row of pastel-coloured colonial buildings converted into a museum showing domestic life in Macau across Portuguese, Chinese and Macanese communities, is worth an hour. The Pak Tai Temple at the top of the village is a working Taoist temple. A pleasant contrast to an evening in the Cotai Strip casinos a few minutes' walk away.