Is this Asia or Europe?

Yesterday, Richard, Anders, Phillip, and Alexander (all from various parts of Sweden), Vinny and Ben (Minnesota), Carmen (Australia) and Sumana and I went to Macau to satisy what many people say a necessity if you are studying/living in Hong Kong.

Macau is a former Portuguese colony that is now a SAR (Special Administrative Region), like Hong Kong, of China. That means that they are more autonomous is economic matters and do have a chief executive and their own currency etc etc but are covered by China in terms of dimplomatic and security concerns. Which also means that with a few exceptions both Hong Kong and Macau have separate laws about just about everything (separate from mainland China).

Let me try and describe Macau to you. On the one hand you have this beautiful old-school European/Portuguese architecture and on the other hand you have Chinese and Cantonese characters lined up on the buildings (including the Casinos) and Asian people walking the streets speaking to each other in a combination of Portuguese and what I think was Cantonese. It was pretty awesome and yet confusing but such a beautiful place.

Anywho, we left our dorm about 8:40 and I realized that I forgot my Passport so I went back to my room and when I got there, I realized that I didn't have my key. The others went on to have breakfast and I met them up in the atrium where we met another pretty big group of exchange students heading off to Macau as well. We left UST and took the MTR to the China Ferry Terminal where we boarded a ferry to get to Macau. The ferry ride was kinda turbulent because the waters still hadn't calmed down from the typhoon but we made it to Macau and really didn't have too much of a plan.

As soon as we got out of immigration and into arrivals, we were pounced on by a tour guide that wanted 150 for all 9 of us to travel around for a good 4-5 hours. We got him down to 100 HKD per person to take us to lunch and then for a 4 hour tour type thing but some of the Swedes didn't want a tour so we ended up hoping on a bus and taking it to a market area where we were able to grab a lunch and then walk around. We ended up at the Ruinas de Sau Paulo and took some time to admire the view and the area. It was definitely really pretty. I could have stayed in that area for much longer just admiring the scenery and, of course, people watching. I'll post pictures up soon, I'm sure.

After wandering that area, we walked ourselves over to the Casinos (Macau is known as the Vegas of Asia) and we went into the Wynn and played. I played 10 cent slots and ended up winning 35 Hong Kong Dollars. And then I stopped. Haha.

We left the Casino to get dinner, which lasted about an hour and a half and then we went over to the MGM Grand overlooking Macau Tower and the water to watch some fireworks. After the fireworks we made our way back to the Macau Ferry terminal and came back to Hong Kong. A pretty good day.