In 1997 the British handed the island state of Hong Kong back to China. But we probably don't remember that two years later in 1999, the Portuguese also handed back their former colony of Macau - a typhoon-ridden dot, 50 minutes by ferry from Hong Kong, with no arable land, not even rice paddies, fewer than 500,000 people and less than a sixth the size of Washington D.C. But now the financial press reports that Macau has actually overtaken the famous Las Vegas strip in the US as the biggest casino magnet in the world.