Macau

We caught the ferry for Macau early on the Saturday morning of my trip to Hong Kong. A fast ferry departs every hour, and we picked up tickets at the ferry terminal then headed over to a Starbucks to look over the guidebook.

I was going to Macau with Evan and his friend David, who also graduated from Baylor. We were out to sea within the hour, cruising across the South China Sea on our way to Macau, the second Chinese Special Administrative Region that until 1999 belonged to Portugal. The boat took a little over an hour.

After going through customs upon arrival in Macau, I met up with my friends, and we caught one of the free shuttle busses from the ferry terminal to the Venetian Hotel. It's just like the one in Vegas, with the canals running through the lobby.

I grabbed a Portuguese egg tart, and we headed down to have a look at the casinos. It's exactly what you would imagine, but the thing that I noticed first was the smoke. We saw signs announcing that as of 2014, smoking inside the casinos would be outlawed, but for now, people were enjoying their privilege. I can't even remember the last time I've been at a restaurant where they allowed people to smoke indoors.

Leaving the casino, we walked down a busy pedestrian street on our way to the Macanese House Museum. Macau is much smaller than Hong Kong, and it's easy enough to walk around the areas you want to go to.

Even though Macau has been a part of China for fourteen years, you can still see the colonial influences, especially in the architecture and street signs which are all written in Portuguese, Cantonese, and English- in that order.

The Macanese House Museum was small, just four old colonial government houses that had been recreated. Still, for 5 Macanese Patacas a ticket (less than a dollar), it's definitely worth seeing.

Macanese House Museum

After that we hailed a taxi to drive us to what is probably Macau's most famous landmark, the ruins of the Church of St. Paul. Although it burned down in 1835, it is still the cultural heart of the city. Just behind the church facade is the Fortaleza do Monte, which now houses the Museum of Macau.

By the time we left the museum it was getting on towards dusk. We walked around the ruins of the fort for a little while; we had some time to kill before dinner.

the cannons on the old fort seem to be aimed right at one of Macau's biggest casinos

Evan has a classmate from Macau who had gotten us a dinner reservation at a Portuguese restaurant near the water. We met up with Carrie, and she took us downtown past the old colonial government buildings to the restaurant.

Macau Government Building

After a delicious dinner we got tickets on another ferry, and were soon on our way back to Hong Kong.

Macau at night