Macau, Special Administrative Region, China

As you can probably guess I have moved on in my travels and to a very special location. I now find myself in the extraordinary city of Macau. This city has a very interesting past as a former colony of Portugal until it's Chinese takeover in 1999. This has given the historical side of this city a strange character given it's position in the world. The main town square is comprised of your typical European style buildings. The city is also well known for it's development of massive casinos. They even boast more casino revenue than Las Vegas. Some of the famous casinos from Vegas have set up shop here, such as Wynn, MGM, and Venetian. When you mix in the blended past of Chinese culture and Portuguese colonization with gambling, what you get is Macau.

Here's some strange things I've noticed so far.
1. The airport runway is an island with a bridge to the mainland. It's worth looking up on Google Maps.
2. There are 3 currencies here. Macao Pataca, Hong Kong Dollar and Chinese Yuan. I've already seen all of them and appear to all be accepted everywhere.
3. The official languages are Cantonese and Portuguese but you will also find Mandarin and English. Road signs are written in the two official languages. Was definitely a surreal experience to get my customs form and see three completely different languages on it.
4. Grocery stores in China are an amazing place to visit. Multiple isles of soda, candy and chips.
5. Tomato chips are not ketchup chips. After 6 months of being told my Aussies that I was having tomato sauce and not ketchup, I figured that tomato chips were ketchup flavored. Wrong.
6. I have no idea what any of the food is here. Mostly because 80% of restaurants don't have any English on their menu.

I went out today with the intention of not taking many photos or gambling very much. Turns out I made be slightly addicted to both those activities. I guess I'm just getting some gambling practice in before I get to Vegas in October.

Should have some photos for you soon.