Gone skiing

Saturday afternoon took us to Macau on the hydrofoil from Hong Kong, about a 55 minute trip . There are a lot of islands out there --probably to be built on by next year.- Macau is an interesting little place. We picked up a private guide at the port who gave us a tour of the 0ld city of Macau. This has been made a UNESCO world heritage site. It has a wonderful Portugese colonial past and was founded by the Jesuits around 1600. Much of the original old city has been retained, with cobblestone streets, and Portugese tile sidewalks. We then had him drop us off at a very typico Portugese restaurant. Steve, the guide told us that living there was very inexpensive compared to Hong Kong, thanks to their very flourishing casino business. Sir Stanley Ho has had this pretty much to himself and is one the world's richest men to thank for it. You may remember he used to like to entertain Princess Diana and get his name in Hello magazine. Portugal returned Macau to China in l999, and a few years later Sir Stan's hold on the casino business was lessened a bit as new licences were handed out. In have come the Las Vegas boys who see Macau as the future of gambling in the east. An airport has been built, and charter airline in the works that is going to service Korea ,Japan Malaysia Thailand etc.
We stopped at one --the new Sands which is now the biggest Casino in the world. It was also very busy on a Saturday afternoon. Cannot imagine what Saturday night will bring in the way of customers. By the way, they didn't seem to be too worried about building Celine Dion type entertainment rooms. There was a very lack lustre little lounge on the main floor and that was just about it. These people come to GAMBLE.
We say good bye to Hong Kong and understand why so many of you have let us know that it is one of your favourite cities. There is a definite kinship with Canada. Roots is opening a store, Manulife in huge there and in China, and there is even a quite wonderful totem pole from BC we discovered when doing our morning walk in Kowloon Park. So many we met had relatives in Canada who emigrated in the early ninties ahead of the hand over to China. But for now things are very cool indeed in HK. They consider themselves lucky to have their feet in two camps and we consider ourselves very lucky to have had a wonderful visit.
On to Shanghai.. as ever Katie