Macau SAR!!!

Simon and I went to Macau this Saturday. We woke up at 8h00 and were in the public transport an hour later. The final trip was made on a catamaran boat that takes the roughly 70km distance between Hong Kong and Macau in 1 hour. We got on the island (it is actually not an island anymore since major reclamation have made it a peninsula) around noon.

Macau is the oldest European colony in China and dates back to 1557!!! It was administered by Portugal until it was ceded back to China in 1999, two years after Hong Kong. It is a very dynamic region with steady growth and high GDP.

Upon arrival we quickly met Pramod Agrawal, a Indian working in London for a textile company named Entyce. Even though Simon thaught he was a plain vanilla fake watch dealer from downtown Tsim Sha Tsui, but his “all good jobs are only landed by French Napoleonists” prevailed. He was on a business trip in HK but had a day off. We found a tourist service for 600HK$ (about 100CAD) that takes us to all the sites in Macau for 3 hours. Macau is pretty small and the trip proved to be more than enough. We got an English speaking local which drove us all around the place in a 1995 Mercedes!!!

Simon at the portuguese fortress

First thing you notice throughout the streets of Macau is the striking similarity it has to the Mediterranean cities. The buildings are painted, red, green, blue, and yellow. Flowers are hanged on the side of the streets. It is simply less tense and warmer place than Hong Kong overall. Even the people have a laid back axpression on their face, Europe does something good to people!!!!

downtown square

First stop was a temple. All temples in China look alike. A big fat smiling Buddha in the middle of the room and a lot of incense sticks burning. The smoke from the incense is meant to go up to heaven and transmit wishes to the dead. It is a common thing to build paper belongings and everyday use object out of paper and burn them in the temples so as to give the dead what they need to have a comfortable life up there.

The best thing we probably saw was the almighty Saint-Paul cathedral: the official Macau landmark. It was completed in 1602 and was the largest Christian church in Asia at the time. Unfortunately it was destroyed by a typhoon in 1835 so only the façade is standing today.
The wedding date will be announced soon, I'm trying to introduce the harem in China. Macau proved to be pretty liberal on the concept and offered me a wife as a sign of gratitude!

From there on we saw many things, which are worth mentioning only if it is the first time you get out of your country of origin. The tour ended downtown, where our fine senses led us to a great Portuguese restaurant. We had ourselves nice marinated meat. By the way, Macanese use the potaca to pay for their purchases, but the currency is pegged to the HK$ so both circulate freely in the territory.

The whole day wrapped up in the “Lisboa” casino, now the second biggest in Macau. The average revenue of a Macanese casino is 5 billion dollars, which is higher than Las Vegas since last year. Four new casinos were under construction at the moment of the visit. We contributed to the region economy by rapidly losing 600HKD!!! It was absolutely worth it.

This tower was built in 1999. It is a copy of a tower in New-Zealand but 10 metres higher, 338 metres overall. It was built by Macau's richest casino owner to fill out the view from his hilltop villa. That's how I would like to see things some day as well!