Macau

I had scheduled a day trip to Macau simply because I had never been there before and I was curious about this geopolitical anomaly which was quietly handed back to China in 1999, after the HK handback, which got all the attention in 1997. Macau, like HK, has been granted a 50 year continuation of the current administrative system and is thus also a SAR. I was under the impression that Macau is an island but it's a peninsula joined by an isthmus to the mainland, and a couple of islands, Taipa and Coloane. There are 3 spectacular road bridges to Taipa.


Macau certainly has one of the more obscure currencies of the world, the pataca. Did you know that? I didn't. It's pegged at 1.03 per HKD so visitors can use HK currency and the recipient gains 3% in the exchange. Why did they bother to create their own currency though? I also didn't know before that the ISO country code for Macau (in URLs for example) is mo.


The trip took just over 60 minutes by jetboat. There was no opportunity to go on deck, and we were in fact required to stay in our seats whenever possible. So it was like a short airline flight, and felt even more so, given the border formalities on both sides. It counts as an external destination, and my passport was required. I had left HK, entered Macau, left Macau, and reentered HK, all on the same day.

As we approached the harbour, a fake walled Chinese city and hill hove into view. This was the first indication that Macau is into the fantasy tourism business. The many casinos there look like they could have been teleported from Las Vegas. According to statistics, it is a big money earner for the Chinese government, in fact recovering the spending of its citizens who gamble there, and a significant number of residents work in the casino industry. Certainly the short-skirted girls who were trying to entice visitors to board the free shuttles to the various casinos were.


I was hoping that the weather would be cooler than HK, but no such luck. If anything it was warmer. I needed to get out of HK for a while though. The night before, the crowds in the Sham Shui Po computer centre made me feel homicidal.

I boarded a public bus bound for the centre. Public signs were bilingual, in Chinese and Portuguese. Do shop owners know enough Portuguese to write their signs? Probably the signwriter takes care of that for them and anyway there are only a finite number of shop types: restaurant, bakery, hardware supplies, etc. I also wondered if Portuguese was on the curriculum for all school students in Macau. It felt a bit odd for me to be able to understand Portuguese in Asia. The other place in Asia where Portuguese is still used is I believe East Timor. However, according to Wikitravel, Portuguese is not spoken by most people. In fact I only heard it once between a couple of schoolkids of visibly Portuguese descent. So Cantonese was what I used.

Seeing a bunch of people get off the bus I jumped to the conclusion that this was the centre and hopped off. I was mistaken. I was in the middle of an unknown part of Macau, surrounded by high rise tenements. The canyons made it impossible to work out where I was in on the map. I wasn't too worried though. Macau is a small place and worst come to worst I could hail an taxi. Spotting a dim-sum shop I joined the queue to buy some take-away siew mai and bamboo shoots wrapped in tofu.


Everything looked old and worn out there. It's like I'd been teleported in time to an older version of HK.

I finally reached an open space with a large building at the end and this turned out to be Portas de Cerco, the border crossing into China. (Apparently a lot of tourists are from China.) I had in fact been wandering in a old residential quarter of Macau. I plonked myself on the floor at the furthest corner of the air-conditioned departure hall, where several other people were also sitting, and ate my lunch.

After that I went to the bus station adjacent and caught a bus to Macau Tower where I took the lift to the 58th level. There I got a good idea of the layout of Macau and could see China in the hazy distance.

There are various exciting activities outside the tower, ranging from a tethered walk, to bungee jumping.

Then it was down to the ground and a walk to the historic centre, where there were lots of visitors. This part of Macau is more modern and what one would expect of a 21st century city. There seemed to be some kind of mid-autumn festival celebration happening there.


The post office seemed to be doing good business in philatelic products.

The casinos here have out-of-the-world shapes, like this one.

I found the recommended Portuguese cafe and had a maça asada (baked apple) and orange juice for tea break.


Then it was back to the jetboat for the return trip. We arrived after dusk.


I still don't know what to make of Macau. It certainly is an odd place. I'll have to read up more on it.


(The evening's story will be continued in HK.)