Holy Macau

We took a day trip from Hong Kong to Macau on Saturday - it's a good outing because Macau is small enough to see in a day, and it's an easy hour on a ferry, with a quick passport stamp at either end.
Macau is a former Portuguese colony (much like HK is to England) which shows is some of the architecture, food etc. Like HK it was handed over to China in the 90s but still has special status, so it has its own visa/entry rules and the populace have been exposed to the West so don't need tiresome internet restrictions to prevent uprisings.

All the historical sights are on the main island - the most striking are the ruins of St Paul's church - only the frontispiece remains after a fire. There are also some lovely examples of European architecture, some in the centre and some dotted around at random in between nondescript grey semi-modern buildings that have seen better days.

 Ruins of St Paul's

We wended our way past Kun Lam Temple, San Domingos, St Dominic's church, Senado Square, and the Barra Temple, all worth a quick look.

And then there's the new. Macau is the unlikely home of a lot of casinos. Big, Vegas-style casinos, and more seem to be springing up rapidly. As you'd expect, some of them are fairly ridiculous.

We headed over to the smaller island, Cotai, to go to the Venetian - apparently the world's largest casino. It's just like the Venetian in Vegas, complete with Bridge of Sighs and tower, canals and gondolas, shopping arcade with painted blue sky ceiling - but presumably even bigger.

We came here to see Cirque du Soleil.  CdS is effectively a bunch of people with circus skills set to music and thrown into a stage show. We first saw one of their shows in Vegas and didn't really fancy the sound of it, but there are half a dozen different CdS shows permanently staged there so we thought we'd gamble on seeing one (at the MGM Grand, I think). It was brilliant. It had a proper story and amazing staging, culminating in a running battle on a vertical stage. It was so good we tried to see another one, but it was sold out on our last night there. We saw a different show at the Royal Albert Hall last year. It was still impressive, but being a touring show it couldn't pull off such impressive set pieces, and rather than a story it had a framing sequence where a young girl follows a mysterious stranger into a strange dimension. Unfortunately, the Macau show was more like the RAH show - no story at all, although I suspect each act may have been a thematic representation of a planet in our solar system. I could be wrong, and I have no idea how they're handled Pluto's change of status. Some acts were really good, and there was some great staging with a giant globe that hung from a track all around the auditorium. We booked online and seemed to get our tickets for half the advertised price, and even the cheapest seats had a great view, so a decent evening.

Good day trip. Easy to get to, easy to get around (you can walk round the main island and all the casinos lay on very frequent free buses to the ferryport), but not really worth an overnight stay unless you like Vegas-lite.