Macau – World Heritage and Casinos

me — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:22:25 +0000

After spending 4 days in Hong Kong, I decided to spend a night at Macau before continue my journey back to Vietnam. Approximately one hour after departed from Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui via Turbojet ferry, I finally arrived in Macau. Like in Hong Kong, I did not make any preparation. After asked around, I hoped into a public bus and alighted at Senado Square. My search for accommodation began from there. To my surprise, the accommodation in Macau cost almost as expensive with the one Hong Kong. Most probably it was because of public holiday. Same goes to the food.

Arrived at Macau with Turbojet.

The weird thing about Macau and Hong Kong is even though both are considered as part of China, citizen of mainland China still has to apply some kind of entry permit (similar to visa) to enter both countries. Whereas me as a Malaysian, has the privilege to enter both countries freely.

Like Hong Kong, Macau was occupied by foreign power before. In Macau’s case, it was the Portugese. Even though English is widely used, the official languages are Chinese and Portugese. That is why road names and sign boards are in both languages. Since I can’t read and speak Chinese and Portugese, it was pretty hard for me to remember the road names over there. Who can remember road names like… Avenida Norte do Hipodromo, Rua do Almirante Costa Cabal, Avenida do Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida, etc…? Not me and not the local Chinese. I had trouble explaining my destination to the bus driver who was a local Chinese. Most of the time I gave up and let the bus take me to where ever it goes.

Heritage buildings and casinos are featured prominently in Macau.

Most people go to Macau for only one reason. The casinos. There are 27 casinos listed in the tourist map and you can find them at every corner of the map. No wonder it is known as Asia’s Las Vegas. Just for the sake of experience, I tried my luck at Grand Lisboa casino just because it is the tallest and has the most bizzare looking building. Each floor has different minimum bet limit with ground floor the lowest at HK$100. It goes up HK$100 for each floor. The highest floor I went that night was second floor (minimum bet HK$300). It was 3 hours of pure entertainment.

Lobby of Grand Lisboa Casino

Other than the casinos, Macau is actually a nice place for sightseeing as well. On 2005, it was recognized as World Heritage. When I was there, Georgetown and Malacca have not recognized as World Heritage yet.

Here is the heritage trail I took by foot.

After walking for whole day, I finally reached the Macau Tower and rested over there. One thing about the tower is, it is expensive to go up and even more expensive to ‘jump’ down. Yes, that’s right. You can jump down from the tower if you have $1,288 MOP. It is the World tallest bungy jump at 233m high. If I have better luck last night, maybe I would jump down… or maybe not.

I continued my journey to Zhuhai again and stayed one more night there before going back to Vietnam. Oh no, another long bus ride.

These are the photos I took in Macau…

With that, it concludes my 3 weeks journey to 4 countries.

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Macau – World Heritage and Casinos