After a month in southwestern China and a very long series of flights from Lhasa, returning to Hong Kong was a good way to get used to Western life again.  An afternoon boat trip to nearby Macau was the last excursion on this journey.  This is Macau’s most famous site, the 400-year-old facade of St. Paul’s, which burned down nearly 150 years ago.

Another view of the thin facade from the base of nearby Monte Fort.  The church ruins rest atop a large hill overlooking the city, with a huge stairway leading up from the streets below.  The church, though designed by Jesuits and built for Catholic worship, was actually built by Japanese Christians escaping persecution in their own country.

The view of Macau from Monte Fort.  Macau was given to Portugal in the mid-1500’s as a gift for ridding the government of piracy along the coastline; the Portugese gave it back to the Chinese in 1999.

Jesuits built the fort, hence the religious references such as this one within the military compound.

During the early 1600’s the Dutch invaded this Portugese colony, but a shot fired by one of the fort’s cannons blew up the Dutch gunpowder-carrying ship, taking out most of the invading fleet with it.

Despite the heavy Portugese and Catholic influences in Macau, Buddhism is the main religion here, and Buddhist temples can be found throughout.  This is the entrance to the A-Ma Temple, overlooking a harbor to the southwest.  A-Ma was the goddess of seafarers, and the boat people of Macau still come to this temple during springtime on a pilgrimage.

Across from the temple, sunset on the harbor.  Really, there is too much to see in Macau in a half-day, so I hope to make it back here during a later trip to Hong Kong to see more.

Macau is famous for its gambling, so no trip would have been complete without a trip to one of its casinos.  Inside, the atmosphere is quite different from Las Vegas; security personnel at the door gruffly demand that you check in your bags and cameras, and the casino itself is crowded with serious gamblers playing games I have never seen before.  Most of the gamblers come from Hong Kong.  I thought about playing a few hands of blackjack, but the rules were different than those in the US, so I just watched.

Yet another entry in my occasional “Great Signs of China” series.  I saw this on Hong Kong Island outside a subway station just before taking the boat trip to Macau.  I’m not sure if the sign was refering to the state of the building itself or of the people inside, and I didn’t go in to find out.  Certainly I saw many blissful sights during this month-long trip, as I hope a few of my pictures have shown.