Macao

Overview

Macao is the smaller of China’s two Special Administrative Regions: about 33 square kilometres of peninsula and reclaimed islands on the west side of the Pearl River estuary, returned by Portugal in 1999 after more than four centuries, with Portuguese still on the street signs and a casino economy on Cotai that outgrew Las Vegas.

Around 680,000 people live here, in half the area of Manhattan. The territory has its own currency (the pataca, MOP), its own immigration regime, its own legal system, and Cantonese and Portuguese as the official languages, though only around 2.4% of residents speak Portuguese.

You come for three things, and they sit in different parts of the territory. The Historic Centre of Macao, on the peninsula, has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2005 and covers eight squares and 22 buildings: a Jesuit church facade, a Ming-era sea-goddess temple, a Portuguese senate house and a Cantonese merchant’s mansion, all within a long morning’s walk of each other. The Cotai Strip, on reclaimed land between the former islands of Taipa and Coloane, is where the Venetian, Galaxy, Wynn Palace, MGM Cotai, Studio City, the Parisian and the Londoner stand in a row, and where most of the hotel rooms are. And Macanese food, a fusion that dates to the 16th century and exists almost nowhere else, which you eat in the villages of Taipa and Coloane as much as on the peninsula.

The gaming industry is around seven times the size of Las Vegas, and it shapes everything from the free shuttle buses to the weekend hotel prices. You do not need to gamble to use the resorts; their lobbies, shopping arcades and buses are open to anyone.

Plan on two days for the historic centre and the peninsula, and a third for Taipa Village, Coloane’s beaches and a long Macanese lunch. Day-trippers from Hong Kong manage the UNESCO core and one Cotai resort between the morning ferry and the last bus back over the bridge.

Two-thirds of the territory’s land is reclaimed from the sea. The land area has grown from 10.28 square kilometres in the late 19th century to 32.9 today, which is why the map of Macao you remember from ten years ago is already wrong.

History & character

A rented trading post, 1557 to 1887

The A-Ma Temple at the southern tip of the peninsula was built in 1488, and when Portuguese sailors asked what the place was called, the answer they wrote down (A-maa-gok, the pavilion of the mother) became Macau. Portugal established a permanent settlement in 1557, paying the Ming court an annual rent of 500 taels of silver. China walled off the isthmus at Portas do Cerco in 1574 to keep the foreigners on their side of the line; Rome made Macao a diocese in 1576, and Philip II raised it from a settlement to the City of the Name of God in 1587.

For the next two centuries this was the European door into China and Japan. The Jesuits built the Church of the Mother of God, now the Ruins of St Paul’s, between 1602 and 1640, with Japanese Christian craftsmen who had been expelled from Japan in 1587 doing much of the carving. In 1622 a Dutch fleet tried to take the city and was beaten off by about 150 Portuguese and Macanese defenders and their African slaves, with the guns of the new Mount Fortress deciding the day.

Monopoly, riots and handover, 1962 to 1999

The modern gaming industry starts in 1962, when the government granted a monopoly over all forms of gaming to STDM, the company run by Stanley Ho. Four years later the Cultural Revolution spilled across the border. The riots of the “12-3 incident” in December 1966 ended in the Portuguese governor signing an apology under a portrait of Mao in 1967, and from then on Lisbon administered Macao while Beijing held the real power.

The Joint Declaration of 1987 fixed the date, and on 20 December 1999 Macao became China’s second Special Administrative Region, with its own system guaranteed for 50 years. Portuguese rule had lasted 442 years.

The casino boom, 2002 onwards

The change that built the Macao you will see came in 2002, when the SAR government ended the monopoly and handed out concessions to SJM (Stanley Ho’s successor company), Wynn, Las Vegas Sands, Galaxy, MGM with Pansy Ho, and Melco with PBL. The Venetian opened on Cotai in August 2007 and City of Dreams followed in June 2009. Gaming revenue passed the Las Vegas Strip in 2007; by 2019 there were 41 casinos, 24 on the peninsula and 17 on Cotai, and gaming taxes were supplying 75% of government revenue.

Who lives here

Macao is the most densely populated territory on earth, at around 20,300 people per square kilometre. Cantonese is the first language of 80% of residents and spoken by 87.5%. The Macanese proper, the community of mixed Portuguese and Cantonese (and Malay, Japanese, Sinhalese and Indian) descent that grew up here from the 16th century, number only about 8,000 in Macao itself, out of some 42,000 worldwide; their Portuguese-based creole, Patuá, is nearly extinct. The Portuguese layer you see on the street is mostly heritage: the churches, the tiles, the bilingual signs. The layer you taste is still alive.

Casino money has also paid for something the old colony never had: a public transport network, a light rail line, reclaimed parkland and a museum in nearly every restored building. Cotai’s resorts are the most visible product of the boom, but so is the restoration of the historic centre.

See & do

The historic centre, peninsula

Senado Square is the start of every walk. The 3,700-square-metre square was paved in Portuguese black-and-white stone and pedestrianised in the early 1990s; the Leal Senado building that names it, the Holy House of Mercy and the General Post Office face onto it, and the square was the meeting ground of the Chinese and Portuguese communities from the 16th century to the 18th. St Dominic’s Church is a few steps behind it.

The Ruins of St Paul’s are a single stone facade, 26 metres high, at the top of 68 steps. The Jesuit church behind it was built between 1602 and 1640 and burned during a typhoon on 26 January 1835; only the frontispiece and the crypt survived. Look for the Virgin Mary treading on a seven-headed hydra, captioned in Chinese characters, and the six Chinese guardian lions at the base: the carvers were Japanese Christian exiles. A small museum behind the facade shows the excavations of 1990 to 1995.

The A-Ma Temple at Barra, on the south-western tip, is the oldest building in the territory (1488) and the origin of its name. It is dedicated to Mazu, the sea goddess, and climbs the rock in six sections: gate pavilion, memorial arch, prayer hall, the Hall of Benevolence (the oldest part), the Hall of Guanyin and a Buddhist pavilion at the top. The Barra LRT terminus is next to it, so it is the natural end (or start) of a peninsula walk.

Mandarin’s House is the Cantonese half of the UNESCO story: the courtyard mansion of the family of the reformer Zheng Guanying. Open 10:00 to 18:00 with last entry at 17:30, closed on Wednesdays. Further north, the Lou Lim Ieoc Garden was built in 1906 by the merchant Lou Kau as part of his residence, in the style of the Suzhou gardens, and has been a public park since 1974.

Guia Fortress, on the 91-metre hill above the Outer Harbour, is the second zone of the World Heritage listing. The fort and its chapel date from 1622 to 1638; the lighthouse, built in 1864 to 1865, was the first Western-style lighthouse on the China coast. A cable car runs up from the entrance on Rua do Túnel, off Avenida Sidónio Pais.

The waterfront

Macau Tower is 338 metres from ground to tip and opened in December 2001. The observation deck sits at 223 metres, and the AJ Hackett bungy and skyjump platform at 233 metres is the highest commercial skyjump in the world. The deck costs MOP 208 for adults and is open 10:00 to 20:00. The Grand Prix Museum, near the Outer Harbour ferry terminal, opened in 1993 and reopened on 1 June 2021 after a four-year rebuild: 16,000 square metres over four floors, with the motorcycle race, the Formula 3 years and the Guia Circuit each given a floor.

Taipa Village

Old Taipa is the second walkable historic quarter, a grid of low Portuguese-era streets around Rua do Cunha, the food street. The Taipa Houses, five villas built in 1921 for Portuguese families, opened as a museum on 5 December 1999; they once faced the sea and now face a wetland left by the Cotai reclamation. Entry is free. The Museum of Taipa and Coloane History nearby charges MOP 5 and opens 10:00 to 18:00 daily except Monday. Pou Tai Temple and Our Lady of Carmel church are the two religious stops.

Coloane

Coloane Village keeps the Chapel of St Francis Xavier (1928) on its square and the Tam Kung temple at the south end of the waterfront street. Hac Sa (“black sand”) on the east side and Cheoc Van (“bamboo bay”) to the south are the territory’s two beaches, both busy with locals at weekends. The Coloane Trail loops 8 kilometres through the hills to Alto de Coloane, at 172.4 metres the highest point in Macao, where a 20-metre A-Ma statue has stood since 1998. Seac Pai Van Park below it holds the Giant Panda Pavilion (MOP 10, free for over-65s and under-12s).

Cotai without gambling

The resorts are attractions in themselves and charge nothing to walk through. The Venetian has indoor canals with gondola rides; the Parisian a half-height Eiffel Tower with an observation deck; Studio City the Golden Reel, a figure-of-eight observation wheel on the building’s face; Wynn Palace a cable car over its performance lake; and the Londoner a copy of Elizabeth Tower and the Houses of Parliament.

Food & drink

Macanese cooking is an early fusion cuisine, dating to the 16th century, and by one account it began when the wives of Portuguese sailors tried to reproduce European dishes with Chinese ingredients and the spices that came through the port from Africa, India and Malaya. Many restaurants that advertise “Portuguese” food here serve mostly Macanese dishes, and the two are best understood as a pair.

The Macanese dishes

Minchi is generally called the national dish: minced beef or pork stir-fried with onion and cubed potato, seasoned with soy, Worcestershire sauce and molasses, and served over rice; with a fried egg on top it becomes minchi chow dan. The name comes from the English word “mince”, and it is a home dish first, with every family cooking it differently. African chicken (galinha à africana) is chicken grilled or roasted under a piri-piri sauce; the usual story credits the chef Américo Ângelo, experimenting in the 1940s with spices brought from Portugal’s African colonies. Portuguese chicken (galinha à portuguesa) is a coconut curry and, despite the name, a purely Macanese invention. Pato de cabidela is duck stewed in its own blood and served with rice, from a Portuguese recipe that uses chicken. Serradura, “sawdust pudding”, is whipped cream under crushed biscuit.

Street food

The pork chop bun (zyu paa baau) is a fried bone-in pork chop in a crisp “piggy bun”, modelled loosely on the Portuguese bifana; Tai Lei Loi Kei, founded in 1968, is the shop credited with making it a Macao signature. Almond cookies are the territory’s main souvenir, dry and Chinese-style, sold everywhere, and the shops on the lane up to the Ruins of St Paul’s push samples of moist beef jerky at everyone who passes.

Lord Stow’s still sells from its café on the Coloane village square. Margaret’s Café e Nata on the peninsula is the rival: plates of hot tarts at 10 patacas each, plus sandwiches to order.

Cantonese, and what to drink

Day to day, Macao eats Cantonese. Central streets are full of rice and noodle places at under MOP 30 a plate, often with Chinese-only menus, and every casino hotel has a seafood restaurant at the other end of the price scale. Look for the character 素 (sou) for the small Buddhist vegetarian canteens on the peninsula. Portuguese wine is cheap and everywhere: around MOP 20 a glass in a restaurant, bottles from under MOP 100, and a cold vinho verde is the standard match for salty Macanese food. The legal drinking age is 18.

When to go

Macao’s climate is humid subtropical: January averages a high of 18.6 and a low of 12.7 degrees, July 31.4 and 26.1, and October, the best month, 28.5 and 22.7. About 2,120 millimetres of rain falls a year, most of it between May and September; June alone averages 374 millimetres and December 31. Humidity averages 79% across the year.

October to December is the window. Rain drops off, the air dries, temperatures sit in the 20s, and the Macao Grand Prix takes over the peninsula for four days, Thursday to Sunday in the second or third week of November. It has run since 1954 on the 6.12-kilometre Guia street circuit, and while it is on the crash barriers along ordinary streets make crossing the road near the Outer Harbour awkward. Book early for that weekend and you will pay for it; the rest of the season is fine.

January and February are mild on paper, but cold fronts can drop the temperature by 10 degrees in a day, and older buildings are built for heat, not cold. Chinese New Year (the eve plus the first three days of the lunar year, in late January or February) is the one local holiday that fills every hotel and shuts the small shops.

March to May is warm and steadily wetter, with the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in late May or June. June to September is hot, wet and typhoon season. The Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau (SMG) issues signals numbered 1, 3, 8, 9 and 10, copied from the Hong Kong system; at signal 8 and above the whole territory shuts down and you should stay indoors.

Two other calendar points matter. The mainland’s National Day holiday (1 and 2 October are public holidays in Macao, and the mainland’s Golden Week follows) brings the year’s biggest crowds to Cotai and the historic centre. And Fridays and Saturdays are expensive every week of the year, because Hong Kong comes over to gamble at the weekend. Mid-Autumn (the 16th of the eighth lunar month, September or October) and Macao SAR Establishment Day on 20 December are the other public holidays to plan around.

Getting there

Macao has an airport, two ferry terminals, a 55-kilometre bridge to Hong Kong and three land crossings from Zhuhai. Immigration is separate from both Hong Kong and the mainland, so every one of these is a passport-controlled border; the rules are in the practical section below.

By air

Macau International Airport (MFM) opened on 9 November 1995 on reclaimed land at the eastern end of Taipa. It handled 7.6 million passengers in 2024, almost all on regional routes. Air Macau, the flag carrier, flies to mainland cities plus Bangkok, Singapore, Seoul and Tokyo; there are no long-haul services, so from Europe or North America you connect through Hong Kong or a mainland hub. Bus AP1 links the airport with the Outer Harbour ferry terminal and the Border Gate for MOP 4.20, plus MOP 3 per bag. The Taipa Ferry Terminal is next door to the airport, and an airside shuttle lets transit passengers reach the ferries and the Zhuhai border without clearing Macao immigration.

By ferry from Hong Kong

Ferries were the main route for decades and are still the pleasant one. TurboJET sails from the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal at Sheung Wan to the Outer Harbour terminal on the peninsula 24 hours a day, every 15 to 30 minutes by day and hourly at night; the crossing takes an hour and the cheapest one-way fare is HK$142, with HK$20 per bag on top. From the China Ferry Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui, boats run every half hour from 07:00 to 22:30 for HK$133 and take about 90 minutes. Cotai Water Jet, a Sands subsidiary, runs from Sheung Wan and Tsim Sha Tsui to the Taipa Ferry Terminal, the right choice if your hotel is on Cotai. Passenger numbers have fallen sharply since the bridge opened, so timetables are thinner than they were.

By bridge

The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge opened on 24 October 2018: 55 kilometres of viaduct with a 6.7-kilometre undersea tunnel, from Lantau to an artificial island at the Macao and Zhuhai border. Private cars need permits from both governments, so the practical option is the HZMBus shuttle, which runs 24 hours a day, up to every five minutes, and takes about 40 minutes port to port; pay with Octopus or Alipay at the machines, or cash and card at the desk. The Hong Kong port is reached by bus B4 from the airport, B5 from Sunny Bay MTR or B6 from Tung Chung. At the Macao port, bus 101X goes to Senado Square and the Ruins of St Paul’s, 102X to the casinos and 103X to the Taipa Ferry Terminal, or take a free casino shuttle.

From the mainland

The Portas do Cerco (Border Gate) post at the top of the peninsula handles the walk-through to Gongbei in Zhuhai and is open 06:00 to 01:00; the Qingmao checkpoint nearby, opened in 2021, and the Cotai (Lotus) checkpoint to Hengqin run 24 hours. High-speed trains from Guangdong and Shenzhen arrive at Zhuhai, on the Gongbei side of the line. The LRT’s Hengqin Line, opened in December 2024, crosses to Hengqin Port on the Cotai side.

Getting around

The peninsula is small enough to walk, and walking is often quicker than a bus that has to loop round the one-way system; the historic centre from Senado Square to the A-Ma Temple is under an hour on foot. Getting between the peninsula, Taipa, Cotai and Coloane needs wheels, over one of four bridges: Governador Nobre de Carvalho (1974), Friendship (1994), Sai Van (2004) and the new Macau Bridge (2024). Traffic drives on the left.

Casino shuttles

The free shuttle buses run by every major casino and hotel are, in practice, the visitor transit system. Almost all serve the Outer Harbour terminal every 5 to 10 minutes; the big Cotai resorts (Venetian, Wynn, City of Dreams, Galaxy) also run to the Border Gate, the Taipa Ferry Terminal, the airport and the bridge port, and some link their Cotai and peninsula properties. Nobody checks whether you are a guest.

Buses

Transmac and TCM run the public network. There has been a flat fare of MOP 6 on every route since 2018; drivers give no change, Hong Kong coins are accepted (except the HK$10 coin), and since 2024 Alipay, WeChat Pay and UnionPay work too. With a Macau Pass card or the MPay app the fare drops to MOP 3 (MOP 4 on the express routes ending in X) with free transfers. The card has a non-refundable MOP 30 fee plus a minimum MOP 100 top-up, sold at convenience stores and border-crossing vending machines, so it only pays off over several days. Routes 21A and 26 are the useful cross-territory lines: 21A runs from the A-Ma Temple via the Lisboa, Taipa and the Venetian to Coloane Village, Cheoc Van and Hac Sa; 26 goes from the peninsula via the airport to Coloane Village.

Light rail

The LRT Taipa Line opened on 10 December 2019: 13 stations over 12.5 kilometres from Barra, beside the A-Ma Temple, across the bridge and round Taipa to the Cotai resorts, the airport and the Taipa Ferry Terminal. The Barra end opened on 8 December 2023; short branches to Seac Pai Van (1 November 2024) and to Hengqin Port (2 December 2024) followed, and an East Line is due in 2029. Fares are MOP 6 to 12 by distance, half price with an LRT card or Macau Pass; trains run every 5 to 15 minutes from 06:30 to after 23:00, and the machines take cards and payment apps but not Hong Kong dollars.

Taxis

Macao’s taxis are black with a cream roof. The meter starts at MOP 21 for the first 1.6 kilometres, then MOP 2 per 220 metres, plus MOP 3 per bag in the boot. Have your destination written in Chinese; the Portuguese street name on its own often draws a blank.

Practical info

Country-wide basics (time zone, tipping, tap water) are in the China guide. Everything below is where Macao differs from the mainland.

Entry. Macao has its own immigration. British passport holders get 180 days visa-free, EU citizens, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Brazil, Switzerland and Norway 90 days, and the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand 30 days; passports should be valid for 90 days beyond your stay. Mainland Chinese visitors need a Two-way Permit with an exit endorsement. Entering Macao from the mainland or Hong Kong means clearing their exit controls too, and going the other way needs a mainland visa or Hong Kong entry of its own; if your Chinese visa is single-entry, a day in Macao uses it up.

Money. The pataca is pegged at MOP 1.03 to HK$1, and Hong Kong dollars are accepted at par almost everywhere; more Hong Kong notes circulate in Macao than local ones. The reverse does not hold: patacas are hard or impossible to change outside the territory, so spend them before you leave and pay in HK$ if you are heading back to Hong Kong. Notes run from MOP 10 to MOP 1,000, issued by Banco Nacional Ultramarino and the Bank of China. Unlicensed street money changers were outlawed in October 2024; use the banks or the casino cages.

Language. Cantonese first, then Mandarin, which has been compulsory in government schools since the handover and is understood by most people. Signs are bilingual Chinese and Portuguese; English is fine in the resorts and at the sights, less so in local shops, buses and taxis.

Internet. The mainland’s blocks do not apply. Google Maps works, and so do the rest of the services you would need a VPN for across the border.

Electricity. 220 V, 50 Hz, on British three-pin (BS 1363) sockets as in Hong Kong; older buildings may have the round-pin BS 546 or Schuko types.

Heat and cold. Summer outside is 35 degrees and humid; inside, the air conditioning runs at 18. People catch colds from the switch, so carry a long sleeve even in July.

Where to stay

Most hotels are still on the peninsula, with a growing high-end stock on Taipa and Cotai and only a few quiet options on Coloane.

Peninsula. Stay here for the historic centre on foot. The Pousada de São Tiago, built into the 17th-century Barra fortress at the southern tip, is the heritage address; the Mandarin Oriental is the other upper-end name on the peninsula. The cheaper hotels north of the Lisboa are convenient but the district is seedy after dark, and hotel “saunas” around the Inner Harbour are usually fronts for the sex trade rather than spas.

Cotai. This is where the rooms are. The Venetian has 3,000 suites and is the largest single-structure hotel in Asia. City of Dreams next door is four hotels in five towers, about 2,270 rooms in all, including Morpheus, the Zaha Hadid Architects tower opened in 2018 with 780 rooms. Galaxy, Wynn Palace, MGM Cotai, Studio City, the Parisian, the Londoner and Grand Lisboa Palace complete the row. Base yourself here for shows, pools and the LRT, not for the old town.

Taipa. A smaller stock of mid-range towers such as the Golden Crown China, Grandview, Hotel Taipa Square and Regency, close to the airport and the village.

Coloane. The Pousada de Coloane sits above Cheoc Van beach with a Portuguese restaurant; the Grand Coloane Resort (formerly the Westin) at the eastern end of Hac Sa is the territory’s only seaside resort, with a golf course and a pool, a ten-minute walk from Fernando’s; and there is a youth hostel at Hac Sa.

Mid-week Cotai rates can undercut a peninsula boutique, so check both before assuming the resorts are the expensive choice.

Neighbourhoods

Macao is four pieces of land joined by bridges and reclamation, and which one your hotel is on decides how you spend your evenings.

Macao Peninsula

The old city, 8.5 square kilometres hanging off Guangdong by a 200-metre isthmus, 4 kilometres from the Border Gate to the A-Ma Temple, with Guia Hill (93 metres) in the middle. The Inner Harbour on the west side faces Zhuhai across a narrow channel; the Outer Harbour on the east holds the ferry terminal and the reclaimed NAPE district. The five old parishes still name the quarters: Nossa Senhora de Fátima in the north is the largest by population, Santo António the most densely packed at about 118,000 people per square kilometre, Sé the centre, and São Lourenço the Barra district around the A-Ma Temple. The strip north of the Lisboa casino has cheaper hotels, small casinos and a run of Portuguese restaurants, and also most of the touts and sex trade.

Taipa

Taipa is 7.9 square kilometres with 112,000 people at the 2021 census, and it is where the airport, the universities and much of the population are. Taipa Village, with Rua do Cunha, is the historic core; the two hills, Taipa Grande (159 metres) and Taipa Pequena, are what is left of the two islets it once was. The Jockey Club racecourse closed in 2024. Calmer than the peninsula at night, and the best base if you want the airport, the LRT and a walkable old quarter at once.

Cotai

The name is a splice of Coloane and Taipa. A causeway joined the two islands in 1968; landfill through the 1990s widened it, and the 5.2 square kilometres of resulting flat land has formed one continuous block since 2005. Nothing here predates the boom except the ground itself, and nothing is not a resort, an arena, a convention hall or the road between them. The Macau East Asian Games Dome, from the 2005 games, and the University of Macau’s campus on leased land across the channel on Hengqin are the exceptions.

Coloane

The southern block, 8.07 square kilometres and 4 kilometres long, 5.6 kilometres from the peninsula, still an island in shape. It has the territory’s only real hills and beaches, one village on the west shore facing Hengqin, and a history of piracy: in 1910, after pirates kidnapped 18 Chinese children, Portuguese troops fought a ten-day battle here, and 13 July was kept as a holiday to mark it.

Coloane is also where the low-rise Portuguese streets were never demolished, and it still feels like a village rather than a district.

Nightlife

After dark Macao is the casinos, and the casinos are the resorts. The minimum age on the gaming floor is 21 (local civil servants are barred altogether, except for the first three days of Chinese New Year), and every casino has ATMs and exchange counters. The old casino district is the southern waterfront of the peninsula, where the original Casino Lisboa still displays antiques from Stanley Ho’s private collection; the newer and bigger floors are on Cotai. The Venetian alone has about 3,400 slot machines and 800 tables on some 550,000 square feet, the second-largest casino floor in the world, and a 15,000-seat arena for concerts, sports events and televised award shows.

The one show people cross the border for is The House of Dancing Water at City of Dreams: a 90-minute acrobatic love story staged in and over a pool holding five Olympic pools’ worth of water, created by Franco Dragone, opened on 17 September 2010 at a cost of US$250 million. It closed in 2020 for upgrades, so confirm it is running before you build a night around it. The front rows get towels.

Bars outside the resorts are thin on the ground. On the peninsula the only real strip is along Avenida Dr Sun Yat-Sen in the NAPE district near the Kum Iam statue and the Cultural Centre, going from about 23:00, with the DD3 club on Fisherman’s Wharf from around 02:00; in the historic centre there is little beyond a small stand with tables in the main square that shuts about 21:00. Taipa has an Irish Bar on Avenida de Kwong Tung open 18:00 to 03:00 with one of the better draught ranges in the territory; on Cotai the Blue Frog inside the Venetian, opposite the arena, does American food and a long shots list from 07:00 to 02:00.

Language

Essentials

1. Yes係hai6
2. No唔係m4 hai6
3. Please唔該m4 goi1
4. Thank you多謝do1 ze6
5. You're welcome唔使客氣m4 sai2 haak3 hei3
6. Sorry對唔住deoi3 m4 zyu6
7. Hello你好nei5 hou2
8. Goodbye拜拜baai1 baai3
9. Good morning早晨zou2 san4
10. Good afternoon午安ng5 on1
11. My name is …我叫…ngo5 giu3 …
12. Do you speak English?你識唔識講英文？nei5 sik1 m4 sik1 gong2 jing1 man2?
13. I don't speak Cantonese我唔識講廣東話ngo5 m4 sik1 gong2 gwong2 dung1 waa2
14. I need a doctor我要睇醫生ngo5 jiu3 tai2 ji1 sang1

Out & about

1. The bill, please唔該埋單m4 goi1 maai4 daan1
2. How much does this cost?呢個幾多錢？ni1 go3 gei2 do1 cin2?
3. Two of these, please唔該要兩個呢個m4 goi1 jiu3 loeng5 go3 ni1 go3
4. Do you accept cards?可唔可以碌卡？ho2 m4 ho2 ji5 luk1 kaat1?
5. Where is the bathroom?洗手間喺邊度？sai2 sau2 gaan1 hai2 bin1 dou6?
6. What's the wifi password?Wi-Fi 密碼係咩？Wi-Fi mat6 maa5 hai6 me1?
7. Today / tomorrow今日 / 聽日gam1 jat6 / ting1 jat6
8. A glass of water一杯水jat1 bui1 seoi2
9. A beer, please唔該一支啤酒m4 goi1 jat1 zi1 be1 zau2
10. Is breakfast included?包唔包早餐？baau1 m4 baau1 zou2 caan1?
11. Could you take a photo?可唔可以幫我影張相？ho2 m4 ho2 ji5 bong1 ngo5 jing2 zoeng1 soeng2?

Also available: Mandarin