Macau is an island about an hour boat ride away from Hong Kong. It is known as the Las Vegas of the area, and while I've never been to Vegas, there were several really interestingly constructed casinos on the island. To get to Macau, my group (28 of us- which is way too big of a group to keep track of, so I don't recommend that) took the turbo ferry. The inside looked exactly like the inside of an airplane except there were four sections of seats four deep.
As we got to the terminal on Macau,we were immediately approached by several people, all offering to give us a tour of the island, and after a group decision, we decided to take one (which was a fabulous decision because it was 4 hours and took us every where we wanted to go for like 15 USD).
The tour started at lunch. Apparently Macau used to be a Portuguese colony, so there are many of these restaurants here (like the one we ate at) as well as everything is written in Chinese, Portuguese, and English. Because of this Pedro (a student studying abroad here from BG, but is really from Brazil) was in his element and was able to talk to several people in his native tongue. He was loving it, and the rest of us were loving the food. The area where we had lunch was brightly decorated- I think, just for fun-but it was beautiful:
Form there, we ventured to the ruins of the Church of St. Paul. What is left is really just the front facade of the church, plus tombs and the walls of chapel areas. The intricacy of the facade was incredible, and hard to capture in photo, but angels and figures line the ridges to the top of the rather tall structure (you had to back up quite a bit in hopes of getting the whole thing into a picture). In front of the church was a rectangular block of hedges trimmed and colored in a swirling pattern that mixed well with the ruins and bustling town below.
the hedges in front of the facade
the tombs, mostly just rocks viewed through a window, but cool nonetheless
a sculpture in the front courtyard of the ruins
the gathering place of worship, named after Jesus
Form there our guide had us stop off to take pictures of the casinos, which, though short, was a cool thing to look at and a great group photo op
After that we went to a temple full of incense, much like every other temple, but because we had spent so much time at the other sights we didn't have much time at this site (we paid for 4 hours and that was all they were giving us), though we did get to see some interesting alters
After our short time there we made our way to our final destination on the tour, and the place the tour guide would leave us, the Venetian Hotel and Casino. Apparently gambling age is still 21 here, so I wasn't able to see the inside of the actual casino portion (or get to say that I gambled in Hong Kong) but there was a ton of other things to look at, including beautifully painted ceilings, characters moving about the hall for pictures and an indoor shopping street, complete with a canal and gondola rides! The whole place was incredible (and incredibly expensive) but we did spend a ton of time there and I wish we had ventured to other hotels to see what goodies they held. However, the pictures I have from this hotel are cool enough:
After several hours there, we made our way to the real reason we had ventured to this island- fireworks. This time of year, Macau has a fireworks battle between countries. That night was China and France, but for some reason France had to back out, which is sad because they had won the last several years and would have been very interesting to see. However, the display from China was incredible! The show lasted about half an hour and featured music ranging from what I believe was traditional Chinese music, to the background song from the Yule Ball in the 4th Harry Potter and even Love is an Open Door from Frozen! It was an incredible display, with no breaks and a wide variety of types and colors of fireworks. It rivaled the shows displayed at Disney! Here are some of my many many photos from the evening:
It was an incredible end to an equally incredible day!
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