On a day trip from Hong Kong, Ben and I traveled by ferry to Macau, another special administrative region of China, and a former Portuguese colony and territory, turned back over to China in 1999. It is the most densely-populated territory on the planet, and it has a very high standard of living and one of the top three life expectancies in the world. It’s a relatively small region, so despite the density, there are just over 700,000 inhabitants. Casinos are a main attraction there, and Macau brings in more visitors than most places in the world. One could say that it’s China’s Las Vegas, but really, Las Vegas is a tiny version of Macau — about seven times smaller by gambling income!! There is a Parisian and a Venetian, just like in Las Vegas, and Macau has four of the five largest casinos in the world. There’s also a Londoner Hotel, and it looks cool with its own Big Ben and what resembles the Parliament Building.
We walked by and into some of the casinos. Traffic was very low that day, and things were quite empty, so it was difficult to understand how there is more gambling there than in Las Vegas, but we were there during midday on a Friday. Perhaps there is a mad crush of mainland Chinese tourists who arrived that evening and spent the weekend, but I’m not sure.
The main purpose of our Macau visit was to attend matches of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Cup, which was very coincidentally and fortuitously happening during the handful of days during our Hong Kong stay. The tourney was held at the Galaxy Macau in a wonderful modern venue. Ben was really pumped because he’s a big table tennis player, and he knew all the international highly-ranked players, both women and men, who were playing that day during our time there.
As you likely know, table tennis is a hugely popular sport in China, and many or even most of the world’s best players are normally from China. So needless to say, the tournament matches were shown live on TV, so Ben could continue watching, even when we weren’t physically at the arena anymore. 😁
We didn’t find that English was spoken much, if at all, by people we encountered in Macau. And the street signs were in Chinese and Portuguese, but I’m not sure how adept the average Macau resident is at speaking Portuguese.
After watching all the matches we had tickets for, we took the train up from the southern island of Macau to the older, northern, section, which is smaller, but which shows very clearly the legacy of the long Portuguese presence.
Walking around the old town areas of Macau was very much like traversing through a Portuguese town in Portugal itself! Quite uncanny.
While walking through Macau in the old town area, one can clearly see the buildings on the mainland China side.
We had a good experience in Macau, and I’m pleased that Ben found that the table tennis tournament was going on then because I’m not sure I would have planned to visit otherwise. It’s definitely worth a day trip from Hong Kong!
Today’s English language fun:
An “oronym” is a phrase or sentence that sounds the same as another phrase or sentence. Here are some examples in English:
– The good can decay many ways. –> The good candy came anyways.
– The stuffy nose can lead to problems. –> The stuff he knows can lead to problems.
– Some others I’ve seen. –> Some mothers I’ve seen.
– I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.
– Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy, was he?
Today’s Stoic quote:
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” ~ Marcus Aurelius
Major Meander 