Ni Hao

Better start learning Chinese! Chrissy and I are in Macau, a former Portuguese colony and now a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, just like Hong Kong. Macau is booming! It is the gambling Mecca of the Far East and there is a strong push to build multiple casinos around this little peninsula. This morning on the news I heard that China’s economy grew at 12% in the last year. Macau is just a very small corner, but it is obviously growing rapidly.

We are staying at the Best Western on Taipa. (Taipa is a small island off Macau connected by several bridges and a ferry system). The BW is almost in the center of the small city. The buildings right outside our window were definitely built without an eye to the future.
Either the Portuguese built them when they didn’t know how the Chinese would handle the turn over of the territory, or the Chinese did so quickly just after. Regardless, not much extra effort was put into them. There is barbed wire on the roofs, bars on the widows up to the 13th floor and beyond, and the buildings are falling apart. Behind these buildings is a large 5 acre parcel which has many trees and scraps of building materials. I am sure that this area will be restructured shortly. Across from our window to the northwest, beyond the shabby built buildings, there is a glut of tall, newly built, nice apartment buildings. We are on the 13th floor, the top of the hotel; the apartments buildings are at least twice the height of our hotel.

To the west and south of here there is an 'old town' area with narrow, windy streets lined with smaller buildings, temples, shops and restaurants that show a definite Portuguese influence. Some buildings are in ruins with roofs fallen in and portions overgrown by banyan trees.



We took ourselves on a short walking tour through this part of Taipa. This area is known for it's quaint Old Portugese styling and for the very short shopping street, the Rua do Cunha. Most of the shops on this street are food stores, but there are a couple of cheap souvenir shops. At the end of the street is a fresh fish market. We poked our heads in and we saw some fish still swimming in Styrofoam boxes.


Chrissy took a picture but then didn’t come in any further when the butcher opened a cage and showed us his basket of live frogs. I walked around the corner and saw fresh chickens hanging on hooks, chickens being plucked, and fresher chickens were waiting in their cages.

Just beyond this little street, the city returns to modernity. There is a McDonalds right across the street from an open air local restaurant and a very large casino is being built nearby.

It will be one or five of six casinos currently being built on Taipa. The Venetian is completed, but the Galaxy and three others are being built across the street from it. Chrissy counted 14 cranes all in operation on just one of the structures. In addition to the cranes there were three concrete pump trucks in operation. On both sides of that building were similar construction sites. Already, Macau has almost 20 casinos; including the reincarnation of the Sands. All of this is on a little 40 square mile former colony. Soon Macau will have all of the culture of Las Vegas without any of the dirt and grime left by the Portuguese and the Chinese then we will have to shop elsewhere for our fresh fish and frogs.