The Las Vega of Aisa

---

MACAU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had a three day weekend so Laurent and I decided to gamble our money away in Macau.

Our hotel was in Zhuhai which is the Chinese side of the border. WE got the ferry there and went to the hotel to drop our bags off. We walked to the border and after making our way through started the walk to the HOP ON, HOP OFF bus depot. Well, we thought we were walking that way. We walked for hours, stopping for lunch and to use the outside gym equipment! By the time we reached reached there, we realised we had missed the last bus. We carried on walking and ended up at the Ruins of St. Paul's. They are the ruins of a 17th century Portuguese church, when it was first built it was one of the biggest Catholic Churches in Asia. Unfortunately we arrived too late to look around but saw the ruins from the outside.

We walked around some of the Portuguese style streets and ended up at the Historic Centre of ​Macau. An area in Macau that still has the Portuguese influence in its streets, buildings and even the food - Portuguese egg tarts were everywhere. After walking around some more we arrived at the Hotel Lisboa which had three casinos inside. Once we had looked around we chose a game to play. I bet 10hkd (£1) and won 70hkd (£7). Not much but I was proud of myself. After watching other people's games we realised how late it was and got a bus back to the border.

The next day we got a bus from The border to Seac Pai Van Park in Coloane where the Panda enclosure was. We paid and went in to the enclosure. There were two black and white Pandas play fighting and using their play equipment. It was amazing to see Panda's that close to where I was standing playing with each other. After we left the enclosure we went around the other animals, Red Pandas, a variety of Monkeys and some birds. Once we had finished in Seac Pai Van Park we headed for the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel tower was on the Macau strip where the main hotels and casinos are. We went in three of them. The first hotel we went in to was a Hollywood theme. It had a casino, a shopping centre, two stages and the figure of eight. The figure of eight is a Ferris wheel 130m in the air. The figure of eight was meant to represent two asteroids hitting and going through the building, carrying on with the Hollywood theme. The view was amazing but it was still pretty cool to be in the figure of eight Ferris wheel.

The next hotel was a French theme focusing mainly on Paris. That was where the Eiffel tower was. We didn't go up the Eiffel tower but did look around the hotel and casino. We noticed that Thriller the Michael Jackson musical was playing there so we decided to enquire about tickets. Unfortunately it didn't open until the next day.

We then went to the Venice hotel. We had read that there was a gondola ride in the hotel but after looking around we couldn't find it. There was work going on outside the hotel so we assumed it must have been that. The hotel is the 7th largest per square foot in the world and has the world’s largest casino. We got a bus back to the border and did the short walk back to our hotel.

The next day we had pre-booked tickets for the hop on hop off bus and Macau tower. This time instead of walking and possibly getting lost we got a bus to the bus depot. The bus took us around the most iconic parts of Macau. There were three stops where we had already decided we wanted to get off the bus.
The first of these stops was Macau Tower which opened in 2001. It is 338m high and had amazing views over the city. There was an activity centre at the top allowing people to walk around the outside of the building and bungee jump, unfortunately I wasn't prepared and couldn't do the activities but I'd have loved to. We did watch a few people doing them though and they looked like they were enjoying themselves.
After getting back on the bus the next stop was A-Ma Temple. It's the oldest temple in Macau dating back to 1488 and was made for a sea goddess Lin Mo.
Approximately four hundred years ago the Portuguese landed near a temple. They asked the local inhabitants the name of the land, but the locals misunderstood, thinking that the Portuguese were asking for the name of the temple. So they answered 'Ma Ge'. Later, the Portuguese translated the named into 'Macau' and used it to refer to the land.
The temple was really interesting, a lot of it had been built in to the rock and the natural surroundings.
The night before when we got back to our hotel we had looked up the Gondola ride and found it was inside the hotel. Lucky for us the strip was the next stop on the bus so we hopped back on. When we got there we started looking around until finally we found it. We didn't take a gondola ride but walked around. You can easily see how this hotel is the 7th biggest building in the world!
We finally had to go back to the ferry crossing to get our ferry home.
Macau was an amazing weekend. We saw so many new and old things and the Portuguese influence is still very powerful.

---