Macau
Macau Special Administrative Region is a former Portuguese Overseas colony. It consists of a peninsular and two islands, Taipa 氹仔 and Cotai 路氹 in the Pearl River delta in the south of the People's Republic of China. Macau may also be spelt Macao in Chinese is is 澳門 which transliterates to Àomén in Mandarin Pinyin or Ou3mun5 in Cantonese. One narrow land border joins the Macau peninsula to Guandong (Canton) province. A second border point is formed by the friendship bridge which joins the newly reclaimed land of Coloane 路環 to the Mainland.
Like Hong Kong, Macau has retained special status within the People's Republic of China. Under the system of one country, two systems, Macau has a highly independent government and legal system that is distinct form the rest of China. The region has it's own currency, the Pataca, though mainland RMB and Hong Kong dollars are widely accepted. Also, like Hong Kong, the Macau SAR has it's own customs and immigration policies. This means that travel between Macau and Hong Kong or between Macau and mainland China are treated similar to travel between foreign countries requiring the associated passports, visas and customs checks.
Macau is relatively small covering just 28.2 square kilometres of land as of 2005. This figure is increasing as land reclamation work continues. The city of Macau is located on the Macau peninsula. Most old buildings are found on the Macau peninsula. The old center of Macau contains a large number of colonial Portuguese buildings which have been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site covering 25 locations throughout the city. To the south of the peninsula are the two Macauese islands of Taipa and Cotai. Three bridges join Taipa to Macau city. Between Taipa and Cotai, a large area of land has been reclaimed. This district is known as Coloane and is the scene of much industrial and commercial development with many large Casino's setting up here. Off the East coast of Taipa, another large area of reclaimed land forms Macau airport. Taipa and Cotai have only recently been developed, due to poor communication links between the islands.