Macau was a Portuguese colony till 1999 and was transferred to China as one of the two special administrative region (other one being Hong Kong). Even though it has its own currency pegged to Chinese Yuan (CNY), Hong Kong and Chinese currencies are also widely accepted in all places.
Macau is touted as the Las Vegas of east and it does seem to live up to its tag (for good or bad). Several large casinos attract large amount of tourists via Hong Kong and main-land China. One drive across Macau would reveal a frenzy of construction activity. Our guide told us that few more bigggg casinos are coming with they are adding 10,000+ hotel rooms.
Macau is just a boat hop away from Hong Kong. In fact, we flew in to Hong Kong and took this boat right from the Hong Kong Airport jetty for a 40 minute ride.
Macau Tower the most visible and most visited place in Macau.
Macau Tower by night from the ground. We had some kind of a private party organized for us and had the Tower all for us exclusively for an evening.
A glass floor at the observatory point.. Seen similar stuff in CN Tower, Toronto as well.
Chinese 'Poikkal Guthirai' and artists
Ruins for St. Paul's Cathedral is a major tourist attraction
Chinese temple with giant incense coils..
Statute of
Old Portuguese house/s now a tourist spot
More photos in flickr
Ram,
ReplyDeleteGreat pictures.
- Sriram
Ram, Awesome pictures. What kind of food do they eat in Macau, I wonder.
ReplyDeletePictures are so nice... Good work.
ReplyDeleteRam,
ReplyDeleteSeshu of http://www.tiffinbox.org/will be at Chennai for next few weeks.You may want to set up a podcast interview with him.
RR
Ram,
ReplyDeleteyou have traveled extensively.. but can't you differentiate between a man and a woman?.. The statue is that of Mother Mary .. certainly not Christ. :-)
-Patrick
Charlotte, NC
Awesome pictures,Ram, especially the one of poikkal kudhirai.
ReplyDeletepretty pictures and loved the one with poikaal kuthirai!and what colourful costumes!
ReplyDeleteSriram, Sridhar, Raj & Usha
ReplyDeleteThanks..
Nithya
Food is all Chinese with few vegetarian options..
On my vegetarian friendly scale.. (of 1 - 10).. Macau would be around 2-3 (with 10 being most friendly..)
Raman
Portugese language still 'officially' followed but I understand, it is being slowly phased out..
RR
I checked out the tiffinbox site.. and thanks for the lead.. pl. give me some more info on this guy..
Patrick
Sorry.. I stand corrected..
The Macau Tower shot was brilliant in composition :)
ReplyDeletePK
ReplyDeleteThanks..
Ram,
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of my macau experience years ago. At the time, they didn't have the macau tower. Must be newly constructed I assume. That bridge looks just as beautiful as it did before. Thanks for sharing the pictures.
Did you have issues with ppl not speaking english there :) ?
Prasad
ReplyDeleteDon't know when the tower was built.. there is lot of construction activity going and wouldn't be surprised if the tower is a recent additon..
My stay there was limited and interactions were with my colleagues only.. so language wasn't a problem..
Hi ,
ReplyDeleteI plan to visit Hongkong and macau next month. can u tell me the places to visit.
sankari
Sankaari
ReplyDeleteGood time to visit HongKong / Macau.. the weather would be farely decent. I have pretty much covered the places I went during my trip.. One place I did not go was Casinos.. but they have larger casinos than Las Vegas.. so that might be good addition..
If you are a vegetarian... you might have to look hard to find a place to eat..
Otherwise, Macau is a fairly contained place and easy to get around in Taxis.. which ply by the meter.
Have fun