Macau, where China and Portugal meet, in a rare and exquisite way. For a Portuguese, Macau is somehow seen as a myth. You hear about it, you hear about the stories of a place where we had a strong role in the past, where nowadays people speak Portuguese in the streets and there are many colonial buildings. Even though the barriers were still on and no one could get out of it.
We went directly to meet Paulo, a friend of Madalena and had dinner in a Macanese restaurant Chinese-Portuguese cuisine next to his house. Luckily he offered me his place to stay for the week while he was still moving from his old house.
The new apartment was in a set of towers that were harshly hit by the Hurricane Hato in August which could still be seen by the number of broken windows with tape on the neighboring buildings. This place was exactly the idea of a Chinese copycat place.
With a copy of the Roman Colosseum, an amphitheater and many Italian looking quarters. To arrive I had to call a taxi and use a pre-recorded voice message from Madalena with the name in Cantonese because there was no way the taxi driver would have understood the English or Portuguese version of the name. I tried. For them going to the casino has a high social status value. Therefore all the Chinese mainlanders come to Macau especially to go to the casino.
All these casinos, as in Las Vegas have the best and most expensive shops in the world. Macau has two regions with casinos. For a Portuguese, the most interesting to visit are the Casino Lisboa and the Grand Lisboa Casino, both in the main peninsula.
