Macau 澳门

(There was once an old wooden Cathedral here, but it burnt down sometime in the 1900s. Now all that stands is its stone front. Behind it you can see the old crypt. But it was sort of a let-down.)
(A view down the street from the burnt-out cathedral pictured above. That tall Christmas-tree looking building to the left is a casino. Macau is famous for casinos!)

(Cathedral in the center of old Macau. The interior is pictured above!)
(Lunch, some of the best noodles I have ever had. Along with some hot tea to prevent any "colds" we may catch from the rain. As you can see I am soaked. I have had many a dish of noodles in China, and these were some of the best.)
(Bilingual Portuguese and Chinese street signs.)
("Downtown" of Macau, does it not have that Portuguese feel to it? The only reason it looks empty is because it was cascading that day.)
(The Macau schools' uniform looks like an actual uniform! Where as on the mainland [China] everyone pretty much wears track-suits. These girls are waiting for their friends under the cover of an overhang. It was pouring rain that day.)
(Vegetable stall in an alley.)

(Buddhist temple in Macau, those bee-hive looking things are rings of incense. Families or businessmen usually donate them. For good luck purposes or good business negotiations.)
(A calendar inside a Buddhist temple. It lists all the auspicious things happening on Thursday the 5th of March. It also lists the Lunar calendar date. Which requires a different set of vocabulary for Chinese.)
(Typical street in central Macau. Me with my good Thai friend Porsche!)
(Ladies helping a mannequin in the Venetian Casino in Macau.)
("St. Mark's Square" inside the Venetian Casino of Macau.)
(After officially crossing the border into Macau I took a victory photo!)

Last week I was very tired of Chongqing. The weather was depressing, and I just needed a change of environment for a while. I last minute decided to go to Macau and Hong Kong (via my friends in Zhuhai). I had just found out I had some days off, and decided to book a flight to an ocean side city in southern China called Zhuhai. Zhuhai is across the border from Macau. You can walk across and get to Macau for free! However since the trip was very last minute, AFS was not informed. (You need at least 2 weeks to get travel permission). So I just told my parents and my friends in Chongqing. And anyway I am back in one piece and there weren't any big problems!

Macau is made of a group of little isles off the coast of China. There are two main ones connected by bridges both of which have casinos on them. Macau used to be owned by Portugal starting from the 16th century to December 20th, 1999. However no one in Macau really speaks Portuguese apart from some expats and students that attend the Macau Portuguese School.

I felt really at home in Macau for some reason. The mixture of Chinese helter-skelter apartment complexes and the brightly painted Portuguese churches did not bother me at all. I liked it a lot. At one point my friends and I just wondered aimlessly through the residential district of Macau. Waving to old ladies, looking into little roadside shops, taking pictures and exploring. I thoroughly enjoyed all the hand painted store signs that hang above the street. I especially liked that in Macau as well as Hong Kong everyone writes traditional characters, not the ugly simplified ones that they use on the "mainland." (Although I am biased because my teacher is from Taiwan. I learned traditional first.)

However in Macau no one can speak Mandarin. Everyone speaks Cantonese. Which is completely different from Mandarin. For example the word for "Excuse me," (when asking someone a question) in Mandarin is "ching wen" while in Cantonese it is "m goi." Cantonese has nine tones (three of which are vocal pitches) while Mandarin has only four tones. I tried learning some Cantonese on my travels, I can speak "shew shew" (Mandarin: "ee dyan dyan") a little.

I was hoping for lovely weather in the southernmost parts of China, but I did not get it. Actually I got quite the opposite! It was pouring buckets in Macau for the two days we were there! In the noodle picture above you can see how soaked I am. Our shoes were so drenched that we all bought sandals. I heard that if it rains people from Canton often wear sandals. However I didn't know this until after I bought them. By about two in the afternoon we were soaked to the bone. We rode a bus to the Wynn casino and rested on a comfy couch. (That's another thing so lovely about Macau is that all the buses are paid for by the casinos. Since the casinos are almost everywhere you just get from one part of Macau to the next via casino buses FREE!)

Something I tried in Macau that I recommend to anyone who goes there is a Portuguese egg custard tart. Especially if it is raining, the warm egg tart will taste amazing! It is a "special local product" of Macau.