April 16, 2011. We only had three days to spend in Macau. Our second day was reserved for the standard city tour. To give you an idea of how small Macau is, Macau’s land area is smaller than Makati’s, or Manila’s. It’s just about the size of Pasig City. Needless to say, it is a very small “Special Administrative Region” of China.
Our first stop for the half-day tour of Macau was the A-ma temple. (I know, in any standard city tour in any East Asian city, there’s always a temple visit and they’re all pretty much the same). The tour included this in the itinerary not because it was an extraordinary sight or spectacle, but because it was a way of introducing tourists to a brief history of Macau.
It is apparently because of this temple why Macau got its name. When Portuguese sailors arrived in this territory many centuries ago, they asked for the name of the peninsula. The locals thought they were referring to the temple, so they answered “A-Ma Gau”.

















































































































law student, national democracy activist, film school graduate, photography hobbyist