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We arrived in Macau and went through some more immigration before we got some taxis to our hotel.
The orientation walk was at the pace of a quick jog, but it wasn't a very big place that we were being steered round. There was a large square that you passed prior to entering the shopping district and in turn the shopping district led through to the ruins of St Paul's church (800AD by the guide's account, realistically 1500AD.
The Macau Museum was quite interesting but unfortunately it had been a long day and I wasn't giving it the due attention that it deserved.
Hunger had set in so I popped into McD's - yes apparently they do have American chains on the mainland!!
Once I'd caught back up with the parents, we wandered down to the most famous Macau casino - the Grand Lisboa. Feeling a tad undressed in my combat shorts and flip flops, I wasn't too keen to stay there. We had a look around the tables, baccarat seemed to be one of the most popular choices, but there was various poker tables, 21, roulette and craps.
After the fleeting visit we returned to the hotel in time to meet them for dinner. Since I'd had my McD's I wasn't partaking in the dinner, which was slightly unfortunate because they decided on Portuguese food rather than Chinese.
Time was limited in Macau and we were meeting at 11.30 the next morning to move on to the "real" China. Macau is the only place where gambling is actually legal.
Because of the limitations, we only had time to go for a quick walk in the morning, so we ventured down to the old military fort, which was now just a turret and a colonial aged building. The next stop was the Jei Ju gardens (Not sure of the exact name, need to look it up in the book!!). This was a very pretty rock garden with a couple of small buildings a fish pond and some little bridges. There were a few old locals taking morning walking and having some chats - no youngsters to be seen anywhere.
We made our way back to our hotel. I stopped on the way to have a quick look at Rua Felicidad - Happy Street, where part of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was filmed.
Once everyone was organised, it was a short walk round to where we were getting a private transfer to the Chinese border. No doubt in an effort to save on money, Bing had organised for two people carriers to take 13 people and their bags - I wasn't having a bar of it. These were the type of people carriers that you couldn't even get your groceries in the back of the trunk, let alone six or seven backpacks. No one else seemed to be making any comments, but I was done with roughing it in South America, so I told him he had to get another car. It wasn't very well organised and one car ended up with six people, one with four and then our one only had three in it.
Although Bing had said it was at least 20 mins to the border, we arrived in five.
The border crossing was uneventful, but one thing I have noticed is that Asian Border agents are not happy smiley people - not one of them that I've come across in Hong Kong, Macau or China has said hello or smiled.
There was an hour's wait before we had to catch the bus to Guangzhou.
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