i took the first weekend in september to visit my friend esther in macau...i met esther while she still lived in seoul...she's a philippina, she married a korean, and now they have two sons...both her sons speak tagalog, korean, as well as a fair amount of english...esther is a lawyer, and her work is somewhat transportable...anywho, her husband was offered what seemed like a good job, so the family moved not too long ago...
macau is making itself out to be the vegas of asia...there are quite a few large casinos there already, and they're constantly building more...macau is similar to hong kong in that until not very long ago it was administered by another country, not china...macau received it's "independence" from portugal in 1999, two years after hong kong...so now the official languages are chinese and portuguese...but you don't see much portuguese, you see and hear mostly chinese with a bit of english...signage is in all three languages...most of the people who live there now are of chinese descent...
i got to the seoul airport before anything was open, which meant i was starving for a while...i wasn't planning to check any baggage, but it turned out my toothpaste was too big, so i made a stink and they let me go back through to the check in counters and i was able to check my bag...the security lady who said it was too big seemed surprised that i wanted to check my bag...did she think i was going to put the toothaste in a ziploc bag and check just that? anywho...
esther picked me up at the airport, and i could immediately tell the difference in weather...macau is a lot warmer and a lot more humid at this time of year than seoul is...(and seoul is plenty warm and humid right now)...she took me to her flat, which is how pretty much everyone in macau lives...it's like hong kong in that the population density is really high...i got to meet her kids, johann and joseph...then we took the bus to hac sa beach, and walked around for a while...it's a black sand beach, and we visited at high tide...there are lots of picnic tables around, it was nice to see families out enjoying themselves...we took the bus back to the main square, where you can still see a lot of portuguese architecture...the ruins of st paul are particularly picturesque, though it's only the front of the church that's there anymore...it was originally a church, but has also been used as army barracks...we ate dinner at a portuguese restaurant, and that night got a little dressed up to go to the venetian casino...it has the same themes as it's sister casino in vegas, but it's bigger...in fact, it's the biggest casino in the world, and had opened just a few days before i arrived...it's not completed yet, i have no idea when it will be completely done...i didn't do any gambling myself, but it was fun to wander around and watch people...i've never been in a proper casino before...esther's flat is only a 15 minute walk from the venetian!
the next day we took a bus to the border with china...on the chinese side of the border is a free economic zone, which means CHEAP shopping...we explored the area with esther's friend joe, and ate lunch in a revolving restaurant...fun...after coming back we explored another area of macau, the waterfront...there is a statue there, i can't remember the name of who it is...a goddess of something...the macau tower is also right there, and you can jump off it, (safety precautions are taken, of course) and we did see one person jump...
i went to the airport late that night, and got back to korea, though a few hours later than i had anticipated, and was late to work as a result...oh well...
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