Snack: Portuguese custard tarts

Image 1: Portuguese custard tarts in a shop at the base of Macau's St. Paul's church

Food synopsis: Warm puff pastry with sweet and milky custard filling, slightly caramelised on the the top

Location: Macau, at base of St. Paul's cathedral wall

Cost: HKD $10 for 2...

Equivalent to approx AUD $1.30 for 2... i.e. 65cents each!

For some reason, perhaps purely to distinguish themselves as a separate entity from Hong Kong, Macau describes their currency as MOP, probably secondary to Portuguese influence. No idea what it stands for at the moment.

Funnily enough, although I honestly think its the great idea, MOP are equivalent exactly to HKD.
And maybe Macau have currency unique to their city, like the Bank of Scotland prints different pictures on the notes and coins, but HKD is pretty much accepted as the standard currency. It's a very in-between place this city, because many of the shops also accepted RMB (Mainland China currency)... which again is very practical, since the Guangzhou province is within swimming distance away.

I'm guessing the origins of the ubiquitous "Portuguese custard tarts" in Macau are due to the many years of Portuguese occupation in Macau.

Official languages in Macau: Cantonese and Portuguese. Although after going there, it seems like there is zero population of Portuguese-speaking people. Pretty much everyone speaks Cantonese, Mandarin or English.

It's quite clear that the Portuguese have occupied Macau in the past. The street names are all in Chinese and Portuguese, and to me, it looked a lot like Spanish. What was really annoying as a tourist with limited Chinese reading capacity, yet Ia very unique characteristic was seeing/reading words with a Portuguese influence being translated into Chinese/Cantonese (i.e. in writing), and then translated from the Chinese/Cantonese version to English pronunciation, rather than a direct Portuguese to English translation. Had never come across something like that before, and made it doubly difficult to understand what on earth it was describing.

The influence of the church (Protestant I think??) on Macau was also quite a surprise. Instead of a usual "goon yum" statue, there is instead a massive golden statue of Mary from the New Testament (I think that's what the tour guide described it as)