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Day 55
Macau was once colonised by the Portuguese and now, like Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. It still has a lot of evidence of its former inhabitants (apparently less than 2% of the residents here are Portuguese now) both in architecture and food and we set out today to see this for ourselves.
Our first stop was the Senado Square, the main central square surrounded by Portuguese buildings and with mosaic style cobbled pavements. This, combined with the portuguese steet names and signs, made us feel like we were nowhere near China, only being reminded by the glimpse of the Cantonese translations of all the signs. Just off the square we saw the beautiful Sao Domingos Church before visiting the ruins of St Paul's Church which now has only the church facade standing.
Just next to the ruins is the Monte Fortress which has plenty of canons and houses the Macau Museum. We decided against the museum today planning to see as much as we could outside before the day's promised storm hit us.
We followed a walking tour in a leaflet we had picked up from the ferry port
that took in the sights of the Penha Peninsula. Lots of little hidden gems nestled amongst some rather ugly apartment buildings. We visited several pretty chruches, the Dom Pedro Theatre, the Bishops Palace Chapel, saw the Headquarters of Macau SAR, the Macau Tower, the A-Ma Temple and the Maritime Museum. A great walk if a little hilly on a hot day!
After some bus shenanigans we made it over to Taipa, an island of Macau connected by several bridges (not sure why one won't do). Just before we got off the bus it started to rain - and I mean rain! It absolutely bucketed it down and we were drenched from head to foot in the space of about 30 seconds! Dripping our way through the door of a restaurant we dried off as we sampled some of the delicious traditional Portuguese fayre.
We had wanted to explore Taipa Village a little more but the rain, which doesn't normally put us off, had not let up and we didn't feel like swimming around so caught the bus back over to the main island.
We went shopping to buy Mark some shoes and found some excellent top of
the range 'plimsolls' style shoes for just over a pound - bargain - bring on the betting tables!
Getting dolled up for the evening in the finest our backpacks would offer - we brushed off the tux and ball gown and sipped our vodka martini in our 5* suite - well we managed to find some smartish stuff to wear (including the classy plimsolls) and fired down a couple of beers at our amicable but basic bed for the evening (check out the pics), not quite the same as Bond - but we think we did pretty well for the budget version!
Ready to go and having drained the last of the beer (i swear one of them had embalming fluid in it) we headed for the Grand Lisboa one of the big Casinos on Macau and a short walk away (again not quite the chauffeur driven Rolls we were hoping for - but an effective way of arrival none the less). With concerns as to whether the bouncer would spot the 18 pataca plimsolls still strongly in our minds, a bead of nervous perspiration ran down Mark's brow. The bouncer stopped us, only to ask us to
put our umbrella in the cloakroom downstairs. Phew, we were in and ready for the high stakes tables!
Entering the casino we took a walk around to check out some of the gaming tables - some of which we understood and some of which were an absolute mystery! We lingered longer at the Roulette because we understood it (due to an old christmas prezzie favourite) and then worked out a version of Poker called Carribbean Poker stopping to see some of the dancing shows which happened to be scantily clad ladies some involving poles - very classy!
Having spent enough time on the sidelines we decided it was about time for us to get a piece of the action, however not being regular Macau Casino goers we had a pallaver changing our Macau Patacas to Hong Kong Dollars (for somw strange reason they dont accept their own currency in the casinos) and then work out how it all worked. With a tight budget such as ours - it doesn't allow for a huge pot of gambling money so we decided to play Roulette on the smaller (and lower betting limits) table putting on 50HKD (about 3 quid or
for the fellas 10 beers). It was great fun and we managed to double it with some canny betting before collecting our winnings and going to check out those who were playing for real.
We left haivng had a great night and feeling quite proud of our winnings! Ok, so we only won about 3.30 pounds but for us this is an additional 10 beers in Macau...or 25 beers in China...or a night's accomodation for both of us in China ...or 3 meals for both of us in China ... the choices were endless.
Back at the hostel we crashed out planning to rise early and hit the beach at Repulse Bay back on Hong Kong island.
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Check out that tower
ha ha the tower in Macau lokos like Blackpool!! Yeah!!!!! Home from Home.. and loving the wallpaper.. I bet Mark you loved it.. !!!