I spent last Saturday in Macau with publisher Fran Gallagher. We saw the historical part of the city and the incredible development that has been occurring in the past few years. The amount of visitors and buildings is incredible! My first trip to Macau was in 1997 when it was a small, sleepy town with a rich heritage of Portuguese influence. There was the Mandarin Oriental, Hyatt Regency and the Lisboa to choose from as far as hotels. It was a very local community with a few casinos and barely any traffic. Fast forward to 2008 and the change is like night and day! Every day is a new development and a new hotel being finished. The Venetian, Wynn and MGM hotels are complete and I believe there are 50+ new luxury hotels scheduled to be open in the very near future. The Venetian alone has more than 75,000 visitors daily and the Wynn Macau is far exceeding the profits of the Las Vegas property! We had a quick tour through the Venetian (I made a small contribution to the blackjack tables!) and then we headed into old Macau. The majority of the building in Macau is on reclaimed land, and bridges connections to islands that were not even in existence 10 years ago. We walked a winding path to see the ruins of St. Paul’s facade, a Jesuit church that burned in the 1800s. Now, only the front of it is standing (also the cover of GT’s July issue!). Walking up to the church was like walking through a maze of wall-to-wall people, mostly visitors from mainland China, who were, on the whole, a great group of tourists. It was also impossible to take a picture of the church without getting any other tourists in the shot. I asked the local who was showing us around if there would have been any tourists on the street ten years ago. She answered that no, there wouldn’t have been tourists, and taking a picture would not have been a problem. It goes to show that in a world being threatened with rising fuel prices and questionable economies, there is always room for growth and a positive outlook on the future. -Alex Young, vice president and associate publisher