Macao, also spelled Macau, is a city in southern China that holds the title of being the most densely populated area in the world. Gabriel Morris, a world traveler and travel writer, takes us on a tour of this vibrant city in his video on YouTube. With the support of his viewers on Patreon, Gabriel provides us with an inside look at the unique culture and atmosphere of Macao.
In this video, Gabriel explores various aspects of the city such as its historic Portuguese colonial influence, its distinct language and currency, and its bustling streets and vibrant back alleys. He also showcases the differences between Macao and Mainland China, highlighting the fact that English is widely spoken in Macao.
Throughout the video, Gabriel immerses himself in the local culture, trying some of the local cuisine including Portuguese egg tarts, which are a popular treat in Macao. He also gives viewers a look at the city’s beautiful architecture and lively public squares.
Overall, Gabriel’s video gives an insightful and captivating glimpse into Macao, a place not often included in typical travel itineraries. For those interested in budget traveling, Gabriel provides practical and informative travel advice through his guidebook “Gabe’s Guide to Budget Travel” and his book of adventure travel stories, “Following My Thumb.”
So, if you’re curious about a lesser-known but fascinating travel destination, check out Gabriel’s video on Macao and consider adding this unique city to your travel bucket list.
Watch the video by Gabriel Traveler
E Oh until constant Li and it constant bright it’s all the links to your in your mother Christ while you a TR to avoid people heart of this possession but you got to have faith and pray a little while my problem This is maau China let’s try to go inside the sofel hotel see what we can See Okay so I didn’t realize it was a casino okay so I stopped filming there realizing I probably shouldn’t be filming in the casino and then was walking around with the camera without filming and a security guy noticed the camera and told me you can’t film and basically said like go away because I
Was obviously not there to uh Gamble this is now the uh Lobby hello elevators to sixth floor thank You there is a restaurant here Wow and I am hungry so uh more of the casino there let’s see what’s happening at the restaurant and I will be explaining much more about ma cow Soon Okay this this place is different from where I’ve been traveling the past number of months look at This how much are the rooms here a lot more than what I’m paying even though where I am is not cheap okay I’m going toh put the camera away for now and investigate the restaurant so that is the restaurant they have a lunch buffet going on which I think is
Like 25 bucks so not bad actually because the cow is very expensive but I think that I will keep on cruising out of here and go find something to eat elsewhere but I asked them since I saw this uh cool Fountain and the view I asked them if I
Could just walk through the restaurant and uh go show the view so looks like this is actually yes it’s a pool and sort of a fountain but you can trim here I’ll get a hot tub and look at this okay getting some perspective Wow Look at that massive Hotel here okay let’s get out of here start walking the streets and I will explain where I am and what this place is all about So I can’t quite tell if this is an actual car or just something made as like an advertisement for Ola I guess food delivery pretty cute though looks like yeah maybe it is actually a vehicle that was kind Of altered everything taken out of the Interior something like that anyways uh let’s start walking and talk about maau my first time here just arrived yesterday evening year year okay sounds like another song is about to be started but uh let’s go see more of the city so
Maau is China it is fully part of China however it is an S AR special administrative region similar to Hong Kong there are borders between here and Mainland China I did not need a visa to come here nothing at all in advance I just arrived with my
Passport and was allowed in I think for 90 days 90 days or else 30 days but I couldn’t travel to the rest of China from here without having a Chinese visa the cow here is certainly comparable to Hong Kong in many ways Hong Kong was a British colony until it was United with
China in 1997 whereas maau here was a Portuguese colony and you will see much evidence of that very soon you’ll see what I mean okay right here on that sign deor CA Portuguese language you see it all over so maau was colonized by the Portuguese in the 16th century they attacked tried to take it
Over failed or repelled defeated by the Chinese and then basically they came back and said well what if we just pay you to be here and to be part of the trading scene and to have the ability to stay here and uh then ultimately settle and it became a Portuguese Colony again Portuguese
Chinese and so maau then was reunited with China in 1999 maau is the most densely populated region in the world officially a quite small area it is also one of the most expensive places in the world with the I think fourth highest per capita income globally and somewhere that
Uh is not really on the international traveling route in the same way that Hong Kong is so it seems like you hear about Hong Kong more you star for some reason see what else is along Here so what is that a whale or a fish It seems like Hong Kong is much more famous so to speak I wanted to visit it for years before finally visiting Hong Kong 5 years ago but I hadn’t really heard much about maau and so far first impressions are that I really like it Portuguese egg Tarts hello can I have
Uh two of this yeah okay 104 one maybe maybe three three okay the four come in the Box four to box okay let’s go four so there are various differences between maau and Mainland China the language as I mentioned also they drive on the left side of the road as you can see
Here and they have their own currency called the pataka I had never heard of it before this cost 40 Paka there is about 7.5 Paka in $1 us so this was $5 or €450 looking forward to giving these a try I am hungry let’s get over to the
Square that I showed in the last video but it was dark and then there’s lots to see right around there so this city has a lot of really cool back Alleys so there you can see also English is widely spoken so I am only here for a couple of days I booked three Nights and then where I’m going next from here there was a direct flight nice cheap flight but it goes at 8:20 in the evening I guess every day and so I was considering should I book the flight on the third day after I check out but then I have the situation of
Check out at 12 and then I have you know my luggage all day and and also I wasn’t sure how much time I would really want to spend here I was thinking like big city you know probably just a day or two is going to be fine and so I decided to
Book my flight for tomorrow at 8:20 p.m. and I have the room for tomorrow night so that means that I can just hang out for the day have the room all day and then leave and catch the uh taxi over to the airport so I could always change my
Plans probably I’ll just go ahead with that but uh so far I just really like this city it has a great Vibe it seems more relaxed than Hong Kong it is smaller partly it might just be the neighborhood so this is the main Square I think Sano but it is less like overwhelming you know kind of chaotic City feeling than I expected it would be so I could actually imagine staying here for longer easy also the weather is just perfect right now it’s just like warm not hot not feeling you know all Thailand
Sweaty hot and humid it’s just pleasantly warmish all right I am going to take a seat munch on these let’s see how they are and if this is just going to do it for lunch or if I want to uh get a little something more little uh flower disaster there all right let’s find somewhere to
Uh sit down the restaurant that I went to last night is just right down here okay kind of quiet up here so let’s try this D belor carero 1516 to 1583 the First bishop of maau founder of the Holy House of Mercy so one of the Portuguese
Invaders all right nice uh quiet spot here sort of local food Portuguese yeah it’s quite good sweet but with egg so might be uh fairly filling all right going to munch and then go see more so those were quite good I had two of them and they’re remarkably filling so we’ll
See how long that lasts but I want to get something else more local some noodle soup or whatever sometime later here we have obviously a Portuguese Church which I showed last night let’s see if we can go inside it looks like it Yeah I and now let’s head for some ruins a short walk away and it should be an interesting Walk so one thing that I’m very curious about is where are most of the people around here from now I’m assuming most are from maau but as far as people from other places I mean this is a very touristy uh part of the city obviously so are there tourists from elsewhere
Because just looking then I don’t think that I’ve seen an obvious Western traveler so far today or from you know even India or Africa or wherever most of the people seem to be from fairly close by but are there many people here listening to the Language okay the language also of those guys seem to be like maybe African or something but uh are there a lot of people from mainland China is there an accent a different accent To people from elsewhere in China or are there many uh you know I don’t know Koreans or Vietnamese or Thai people or is it mostly the Chinese language because I’m not hearing like Portuguese it’s an official language but uh it’s not commonly spoken between the people even if they know the language
Then it’s mostly the Chinese language wow most densely populated city in the world looks like it so I thought that this would be a good opportunity to show my backpack situation as far as trying not to get pickpocketed many of you will know that that happened to me in Bogata Colombia I had
My wallet passport and change pouch all in the same pocket of my backpack it isn’t normal for me to travel with my passport and all of my cards at the same time I forget why I even had my passport walking around bogot I think I might have been planning to
Uh make a photo copy of it or something like that or it was just my first day and I forgot to take it out or something anyway you don’t want that to happen somebody walked up behind me managed to somehow open the pocket of my backpack and grabbed
My wallet not my passport but also my change pouch and so I lost all of my money all my cards everything I had no way to access cash that’s a whole story I won’t get lost in but obviously I don’t want that to happen again so here we have my
Backpack this one has an added security feature which is that my wallet is zipped up in there there’s my wallet and change pouch so first it is zipped up in there and then you zip this and when it is a tight situation like that then I will make a point
Of pulling the zipper down all the way so bring that one down all the way and then this one as well like that oh bummer great this backpack needs to be replaced anyway so now you have to get that through that see if you try to pull it up like that
This thing is in the way so someone would have to manage to open that and then open the other thing that’s just highly unlikely to happen so this is more secure but really the lesson of the bogat situation so here we have the ruins that I was going To the lesson of the bogat pickpocketing incident is don’t have all of your stuff in the same place especially while walking around a uh you know sketchier place I have my wallet here and I have credit card debit card driver’s license but we have another credit card and
Another debit card back in my room as well as my passport back in my room I leave my passport in the room while exploring and if I’m especially sort of sketched out about a city then I will strip things down even more I won’t bring my wallet so I did this on Copan
Just recently a couple days ago while exploring around there knowing that we were going to be going to beaches Etc and maybe leaving my backpack on the beach or whatever and Copan being kind of a uh you know some more touristy and a little bit more questionable place
Then I took some cash just a little bit out of my wallet Tai bot and put it in my change pouch and then left my wallet back in my room and took out a couple of other things from the backpack to make it so that I just had like the Bare
Bones minimum stuff and if the backpack got stolen I would just lose like my rain jacket and water bottle and a little bit of cash and not the most essential stuff okay so this is is quite Fascinating obviously the facade of I guess a cathedral met day I’m guessing day is God like Deus what a contrast the old and the New so this is the ruins of sa Pao sa Paulo means St Paul the ruins of St Paul’s are the ruins of a 17th century Catholic religious complex in Santo Antonio Macau China they include what was originally St Paul’s College and the Church of St Paul also known as Mater
Day a 17th century Portuguese Church dedicated to St Paul the Apostle today the ruins are one of macau’s best known landmarks and one of the seven wonders of Portuguese origin in the world interesting so Mater day is not Portuguese that is Latin and yes day is God m is mother so
Mother God but it’s actually Mother of God and so it is referring to Mother Mary Mother of Jesus Son of God okay let’s uh see what’s in here so there you can see a little bit left over from the uh rest of the church that wall is massive over on the left
There okay not too much to see here let’s head for Uh another place I have in mind here we have uh some photos looks really the same throughout the Past Century and a half two centuries wow 1834 1875 90 30 1970 what happened that uh destroyed the church an earthquake let’s see about that so I wasn’t paying full attention when I saw the first image 1834 notice there is more to it it is in fact intact because in 1835 the church was destroyed by a fire during a typhoon on 26th January 1835 that is a uh bad luck story either one is bad but you combine a fire with a typhoon and you’re pretty much screwed okay now we have a very nice looking Park and some pretty
Trees so right next to the ruins of Sal Paulo is the Monte Fort built by the Portuguese in the 17th Century So Soe [Applause] [Applause] Alto Santio record inant lindri Esa Patria built by the Jesuits from 1617 to 1626 this was the city’s principal military defense structure and was crucial in successfully holding off the attempted Dutch invasion of maau in 1622 it was built on top of Mount Hill strategically located in the center of
The Macau Peninsula watching over the city in all directions there are no weapons facing mainland China indicating that the Fortress was only Built for defense against attacks from the sea in 1965 a weather Observatory was installed at the site and the Fortress was demilitarized in 1976 everything seems to be free around
Here Museum of maau okay let’s get the Views Looks like another Portuguese church out there King woo hospital so English there it’s seems like they are basically moving more towards English the newer buildings have more English and the older ones have more Portuguese so I’m not sure if that would be mainland China right there but it could
Be it is very close it is only 12 square miles all of maau all right let’s go see a little bit more CA de Jorge ales nice Plaza and park here walking over to another main Square The Bagel kiosk So there’s a game board I’m assuming what is it they’re uh playing something on one of the tables but I think that they had another Board of Their Own maang I’ve played it before when I was a kid long long ago so I forget what the board is like public toilets
And let’s make use of it and I will let you know if it’s free yes there you go free of charge amazing everything is free around here so there you can see 1848 tiatro do Pedro the 5th this is St Augustine’s Square very Portuguese so uh that is going to uh
Conclude this video another church it looks like but I have to say I’m definitely very impressed by maau [Applause] really nice uh atmosphere people are very friendly super uh Advanced efficient and expensive see you later Hallelu [Applause]
Video “MACAO | The Most Densely Populated Place on Earth” was uploaded on 01/28/2024. Watch all the latest Videos by Gabriel Traveler on Gretopia