Alison: We arrived in Macau following an overnight train to Shenzhen on the south coast of China, an unnecessarily long bus journey from the train station to the ferry port, and a ferry ride to the Macau terminal. We were not in the best of moods after this mammoth 19 hour journey and Nigel escaped with only one black eye! We successfully navigated to the hotel and were surprised when we were asked whether we wanted a luxury room since we both looked like a couple of tramps. Unfortunately the luxury room had a luxury price and we declined!

Despite being exhausted, we got cleaned up and went straight out because we could only spend a couple of days in Macau as our flight to Thailand from Hong Kong was looming. Macau has a strong Portuguese influence and we were very impressed with the architecture that we saw. We went to a lovely square called Largo do Senado and it had a nice Mediterranean feel. A mix of whitewashed buildings with very colourful simple looking buildings, and intricately tiled pavements. Macau has some very delicious local specialties which we sampled....it would be rude not to! The beef jerky and the pork buns were good but by far my favourite were the egg custard tarts... they were out of this world :-)  

Nigel: As time was of the essence, we woke up early the next day so that we could see the other sights of Macau . A little hungry, we managed to find the most secluded Mc' Donald's in Macau, possibly in the World and got breakfast from there. We only happened to find it due to Alison's poor navigational skills, so once we set off again, I was in charge and we soon found the first item on our list, The St Augustine Church. The church is part of a monastery founded in 1586 by Spaniards. The facade was originally of barouqe style but the existing facade is more neoclassic dating from 1814.(cut & paste is brilliant) From there we decided to walk to the ruins of the church of St Paul. There is only one side of the building remaining and this is supported by abutment walls, so that it won't fall down. There is a viewing platform that your'e able to walk up, which gives you great views of the city and the square below. As there isn't a great amount to see and do there, it was not long before we were off to the next thing on our list. We don't really do musems, but we had read the the one in Macau has the title of being the best in Asia. That is some accolade and we thought maybe it's worth a look. The museum is situated at the top of the steepest street in Macau and it was very exhausting due to the heat, but we thought it would be worth it. Then to our surprise and annoyance we went to the main entrance only to find that it didn't open on a Monday. Of all the days to go. How can they say its the best when it doesn't open on a Monday (we're not bitter or anything). From there we made our way over to the Macau lighthouse which again is situated on another steep hill and was dangerous to get to as you walked on a very busy road, but had no pavement. The panoramic views from the lighthouse were spectacular and you could see many sights in Macau, including the Casinos, which we were going to go to that evening. There was one more place we wanted to see and its a street near where we were staying. It's made famous as parts of Indiana Jones were filmed there, but once we got there we realised that we had already walked it. After this we went back and got ready for the night of winning loads of money. There are several casions in Macau and it is reported that since they have been open, they take more money then the ones in Las Vegas. We thought we would try the Casion Lisboa, which from outside was very bright and colourful. Once in though we found it very difficult to spend our money, which is hard to belive in a casino. First we had to change our coins to Macau dollars (MD), which we did, then we were told that the fruit machines didn't take Macau money and only took Hong Kong dollar (even though we were in Macau). So we changed our money again, only to find that 5 HKD is equivilant to 50p. So after a while it started to get expensive, so we decided to move on from there to the MGM palace, which if it was anything like its American counterpart, we thought it would be impressive. Unfortunalty there were no boxing matches going on, but we went in. Again after playing on the machines for a bit and not getting any return on our money, I decided to take a picture of Alison in the casino, only to be told by security that no pictures were allowed. That was the final starw and we decided to go back to our room as we had to catch an early ferry over to Hong Kong. We thought that we had seen the last of the sights of Macau, but nope we hadn't. The bus that we took was the same bus that we got from the ferry but going back the opposite way and we thought this must get us there. Yes you gussed right, we didn't get to the ferry but the border crossing from China to HK. Another sight ticked off the list.