- Ten things to know before you go to Macau.
I'm Chris, this is Topher and this is Yellow Productions.
We do travel guides
that are fun, informative and entertaining.
This is part of our series on Hong Kong
and the areas around it.
If you want to see more information about Hong Kong,
find links in the description below
or at the end of this video, even more videos on Macau too.
But still, let's talk about Macau.
Some general information first,
Macau has been a Portuguese Colony,
it was for about 400 years, from the 1500's until 1999.
Which now, it's a special administrative region of China.
Macau, it is very small.
It is like 11 square miles, but 640,000 people live here.
Every year though, in 2017,
30 million visitors came to visit Macau.
Most of them from Mainland China.
Macau is famous for two things,
One, the old Portuguese square,
being this old Portuguese colony,
that's one of the major reasons to come here.
Also, for gambling.
This is the only place in China where gambling is legal.
And so, the visitors from China who come here,
they primarily come to gamble.
In fact, gambling is so popular in Macau,
that the gambling in the casinos in Macau
have generated seven times what the Las Vegas strip
generates in gambling revenue.
That's pretty crazy.
If you are coming from Hong Kong,
it's definitely worth a day trip,
maybe even an overnight trip
if you want to spend some time in Cotai.
We will talk about getting in in a moment,
but you should know Macau has like four areas.
There is the Macau Peninsula
which has the main Portuguese village here
with the Ruins of St. Paul.
Going down south there is Taipa,
the Cotai strip where the casinos are,
and on the end is Coloane.
Before you go to Macau,
you will need to know about getting into Macau.
Chances are, the way you will be
getting into Macau is via a ferry.
I am standing at one of the Macau ferry terminals.
There are two ferry terminals in Macau.
This main one here and there is a second one in Taipa,
which is more convenient if you're going to the Cotai strip.
Most people come from Hong Kong
and come to Macau as a day trip.
There are four ferry terminals in Hong Kong
and two ferry operators, TurboJet, the red one,
and the Cotai WaterJet, the blue one.
The offer pretty similar services.
It takes about an hour from Hong Kong, or either way.
And I will recommend if you get prone
to sea sickness or motion sickness,
you might want to buy a ticket for the upper deck.
It is about twice the price of the lower deck,
but it moves a lot less.
There are a couple other options to come into Macau.
You can fly, there is an airport.
You can cross the border from China by land,
or you can take helicopters from Hong Kong.
It is only 15 minutes by helicopter.
Before you go to Macau, you need to know about
getting around Macau.
And so there's basically three options
for getting around Macau.
Well, four if you count your feet, you can certainly walk.
But of those three, there are taxis,
there are a lot of taxis in Macau.
When you come into the ferry stations,
there will be taxi drivers waiting there.
There's buses, Macau operates a public bus that runs around.
The service is pretty good.
But third, something you should get familiar with
are the free shuttles that the hotels provide.
Like the Venetian, the Sands, a lot of these
provided these free shuttles.
so if that is going where you want to go,
learn to use the free shuttles.
I'll point out, no ride share companies operate here,
Uber, Lyft, Grab,
none of those things are available in Macau.
So if you are looking for a taxi
there might be a bit of a wait.
We have experienced some wait
while we were waiting in a casino for a taxi.
If you come in the ferry terminals,
you'll see there will be a lot of people offering
like tours and things like that to take you around
they will offer and come up to you for taxis.
Take the official ones out of the official taxi rank.
And they will charge you in Macanese pataca,
but they are pretty cheap.
We will talk about currency in a little bit.
The fourth thing to know is that the number four is unlucky.
The number four in Chinese sounds like death
So you will not see fourth floors
in any of these hotel room buildings.
So onto number five, speaking of luck,
Let's talk about casinos.
You need to know about casinos before you come to Macau.
I mentioned earlier the Cotai Strip, right here,
this is where all the big casino hotels are.
The City of Dreams, the Wynn, the Venetian,
which I'm standing at right now.
But you should know if you are going into the casinos here
they're a little bit paranoid, actually, ultra paranoid.
Going into every single casino here,
you will go through metal detectors
and they do not allow cameras,
even to be shown in the casinos.
We were walking into a casino and
this girl had a camera around her neck,
and they said you got to put it in the bag
before you come into the casino.
It's actually gotten a lot better now than it used to be.
When I came here 10 years ago,
they actually put a sticker over my camera
with a no-camera sign over it,
really keep your cameras away
when you're in the casinos here.
In the casino hotels its okay to take
photos and videos in the common areas.
But here, at the Venetian, if you go past that point,
with the white screens, then no cameras after that.
Before you come to Macau you need to know about the money.
The currency in Macau is the Macanese pataca.
MOP is how it's abbreviated.
The Macanese pataca is basically
equivalent to the Hong Kong dollar.
Actually, they will except both currencies here,
Hong Kong dollar and Macau patacas.
But you might use Macau patacas - actually,
you might use Hong Kong dollars,
and they may give you Macau patacas in change.
The big restaurants, and things like that, the casinos
they will all take credit cards,
but the little places around
the Portuguese village, you will want some money,
but probably make sure to spend
all your patacas while you in Macau,
before you go back to Hong Kong,
because they won't know what to do
with your Macanese pataca.
By the way, the official exchange rate is
one Hong Kong dollar is equivalent to 1.03 Macanese pataca.
But you will find many stores have signs
that they accept it one to one to one.
The next thing you will need to know
before you go to Macau is about the language.
So, there's two official languages in Macau,
one is Portuguese, being a former portuguese colony,
the second one is Chinese spoken Cantonese.
English is not one of the official languages,
though they do speak a little bit of English.
You will see everything, pretty much signed
in Chinese and Portuguese, maybe in English.
But by the way, the Portuguese,
if you've learned portuguese in school,
they have a special dialect here called Macanese Portuguese.
Before you go to Macau, you should know about shopping.
The best shopping in Macau, its in the Cotai strip.
In these big casino hotels.
Right now, I am in the Venetian Grand Canal Shops.
This is probably my favorite place for shopping in Macau.
Why? Because you can shop and walk along the Grand Canal
and see gondoliers, that sing,
sometimes, she must be tired.
The other one is singing right now though.
Around the Portuguese square,
there's a lot of, like, souvenir shops, things like that.
But if you want luxury shopping, Cotai Strip.
Something you should know about Macau,
is that lots of Macau, outside
of the casinos and the commercial, like,
Portuguese district, kinda feel a little empty.
Like, this is the Fisherman's Wharf Shopping Mall.
This was like a very ambitious project.
They've, like, created different scenes around the world.
Walking around here at 1pm on a Monday, it is empty.
And a lot of the shopping areas
in Macau kinda feel that way.
This one maybe in particular cause
it is just off the beaten casino path.
But where is everybody?
They are either seeing the Portuguese sights
or they are coming here for intense sessions of gambling.
If most of the visitors to Macau come from mainland China,
and they come almost only to gamble,
so that's where they'll be.
When you come to Macau, if all you do is go to the casinos
and go to the Portuguese center,
you will think that it's either really cute
or really ritzy in the whole thing,
I would encourage you, if you want to see the real Macau,
get off on some of the side streets.
Like, take a look at some of these wires.
I mean when this was a Portuguese Colony,
it feels a bit like its a little bit of a place
that the land time forgot or governing forgot.
And it is all within the shadows, take a look up there,
of the casinos, that's the Grand Lisboa casino.
And just two blocks from it are
these really unpainted apartment buildings.
Hmm.
To continue your exploration of the real Macau,
just there from the shadows of the casino Lisboa
as you're walking around, make sure
to check out the city's churches.
This is the ruins of St. Paul.
You can't go inside, but most of the city's churches
you can still go inside during daylight hours.
But Macau's a really interesting cross
between Christianity and Buddhism.
And so there's many temples in this city too.
Check out the churches and the temples.
Its a pretty interesting walk to do
the church and temples walk through Macau.
Boy, and let me tell you, if you like incense,
(inhales)
the smell of incense, the look of incense,
or pictures of incense you will love
the inside of some of these temples.
So when I said you can't go in this church,
I mean you can go in the ruins,
this is the ruins of St. Paul,
there used to be a church here.
It burned down three times and that's all that's left.
That's all that's left.
This is a classic sight in Macau.
The best place to take that Instagram photo,
or if your getting engaged to take
your engagement photos here too.
Before you go to Macau you should know about the food.
Traditional Macanese food a fusion
between Portuguese food and Cantonese food.
Dating back over 400 years of history,
it is often considered the world's first fusion food.
Of course you will find a lot
of good high-end Chinese food here as well.
You will find those in the casinos.
Mmmm, I am drinking Hong Kong milk tea,
a lot of influence from Hong Kong
but definitely when you are in the old city center,
the old portuguese part, check out some
of the Portuguese-Cantonese fusion restaurants.
Something super popular to get
in Macau is the pork chop bun.
If you were getting this in Portugal,
it would be called a bifana.
We have had them in Portugal,
but here is how they taste here,
there is a bunch of little stalls that sell these,
the one we are at is called Tai Lei Loi Kei
and it is right in front of the Ruins of St. Paul.
This one is on a regular Portuguese-style bun.
They can also do it on a croissant, right here,
or they can do it on a pineapple bun,
which is a Hong Kong specialty,
but they were sold out of those,
so lets give this a go!
Mmmm.
That's pretty good.
Its a thin slice of pork chop,
the pork chop is lightly breaded.
Its a nice fluffy bun, it's hot.
Pretty delicious.
A good afternoon pick-me up.
Around a bunch of super touristy things
around St. Paul's.
Check this place out.
When you come to Macau you need to get
an egg tart, or known as a Nata.
A Pastei de Nata, it is a portuguese colony after all!
And these are Portuguese egg tarts.
If you have been to dim sum restaurants in Hong Kong,
or dim sum restaurants in the world you will see
egg tarts sometimes referred to as dan tat, egg tart.
But they came from here, they came from Macau.
This is what popularized it.
There's two stores that made it popular,
Lord Stow's which is the original,
and right now I am at Margaret's Cafe e Nata.
Husband and wife team.
The wife runs this store now.
And you get these egg tarts, they are hot,
they form a long line, this is a busy popular place.
Don't come on Wednesdays, because they
are closed on Wednesdays, And you can, mm, get
a fresh flakey egg tart out on the street.
Mm.
See how flakey it is, its fresh.
And if you have egg tarts that aren't fresh
they kinda all stick together, but
mmm, a hot fresh one, mmm,
kinda taste like an egg custard in a crispy croissant.
Definitely worth your time.
And the wait?
We only waited, mm, five, seven minutes in line,
but just know how many you want to order
when you get to the front,
they really want to keep that line moving.
10 Hong Kong dollars of Macau pataca each,
which is about $1.25 US.
To taste some of the original original egg tarts in Macau,
visit Lord Stow's Bakery, its right there.
That's the original location.
We are not there, we are at the Venetian Hotel
where they have a location with the egg tarts.
These cost a little more than at the other place,
these were 12 Macau patacas.
There's Lord Stow right there,
he looks like a pretty friendly guy doesn't he.
With a lot of egg tarts.
So lets give these a try and see how they compare.
Warm, buttery, flakey.
I feel like this one might be
a little bit more buttery than the other one.
Its a little warmer, but if you blindfolded me
and gave me a taste test, I am not sure
that I could tell the difference.
I will give Lord Stow's a plus
because the location is nicer.
And if you take a look over there,
it's in the Venetian, and you can actually see
the Venetian shops off in the distance.
A little bit nicer than that middle
of Macau weird, apartment complex eating area.
Before you go to Macau, you should know about spitting
because many of the visitors will be here from
Mainland China you will here a regular (spits).
You might hear that right into your neck,
you might see that right into a trash can,
But if you hear (hacks)
it's a sound you will here quite a bit
cause they're just spitting, it's okay.
It happens all the time in Macau.
In Hong Kong they're not to happy
if you do that on the street, but you will hear it here.
And the last thing to know is that
we've got more videos if your coming to Macau or Hong Kong,
you'll find links in the description below.
Or you can click this one or this one
to watch some more of our videos from this series.
Are you still rolling?
I think we're done
We're done.