Macau is a 500 year old colony of Portugal’s that was handed over to China at about the same time that the British handed over Hong Kong. It’s an interesting mix of Cantonese, English, and Portugese cultures. Even the signs are in all three languages.
Today Macau is better known for it’s gigantic casinos. We went for the UNESCO world heritage sites.
In central Macau are the old colonial buildings surrounding a series of plazas like the one you see below. As you can see, this architecture is strongly influenced by the Portugese.
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| Jeff at Senado Square, Macau |
But If you follow the super-cute wavy brickwork from the fountain deeper into Macau, you start to see the strong Cantonese influence that has ruled Macau for hundreds of years.
And then suddenly you are completely swallowed in a crowd of what seems like well over a billion people. Apparently weekends are a zoo in Macau as all the mainland Chinese stop in for a visit to gamble.
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| The Rua de Sao Paulo on a Sunday afternoon |
Pork sheets (our working product name) were a very popular snack food, many different flavors where available. You could just select your flavor and amount and the vendor would cut off the desired size with scissors. They must be delicious because people were thronging the dozen or so storefronts that we saw selling pork sheets.
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| Pork sheets available in a variety of flavors |
We decided to pass on the pork sheets and went for the African Chicken at a small restaurant around the corner from Senado Square. African Chicken is a dish that is famous in Macau and migrated here from the Portugese colonies in Africa.
Once lunch was finished, we waved goodbye to Macau and went running back to the relative sanity of Hong Kong. It was a good dry run, however, because tomorrow we leave for Mumbai.
