Macau

Weather-wise, last Thursday was not the ideal day to visit Macau, but with government offices closed much of this week for Chinese New Year and me in need of a Hong Kong ID number to apply for jobs, I braved the coldness and overcastness of the day and boarded a high-speed jet-powered ferry for Macau, 65 km west of Hong Kong.

Macau retains much more of its colonial charm than does Hong Kong, where tearing down historic buildings is one of the government's favorite pasttimes. The same may be true in Macau, I don't know, but if it is, the tearing down must be at a much slower pace than it is here. There are a number of areas in Macau where you almost feel as though you're in Europe. There are no areas of Hong Kong (that I've found, at least) that give you that feeling. Of course, I would not have had to spend all day in Macau, but it seemed like a waste of money not to play tourist since I have the time to do so.

One of the things I like about Macau is many signs are in both Chinese and Portuguese, adding to the European feeling.




Since I had been to Macau a decade ago, I wanted to see something different than what I had seen last time. The problem is, my memory wasn't as good as I thought it was, and I couldn't remember all that much. Looking at my map, I knew I had not ridden a cable car up to the top of a big hill, so I started at the Flora Garden and rode the Guia Cable Car. It was only 3 patacas round-trip (US$0.37), so I figured I couldn't go wrong.

(One Hong Kong dollar is worth MOP$1.03, and both currencies, along with Chinese RMB, are accepted just about everywhere. Shopkeepers will try to give you change in the currency you use to pay the bill, but I often found myself mixing currencies throughout the day. I only took a couple hundred patacas out of the ATM because while you can spend Hong Kong dollars in Macau, you can't spend patacas in Hong Kong.)

I rode the cable car to the top and headed towards the light house, which I thought I shot photograph for Mom and Jer. Once I made it the rest of the way to the top, I realized I had been to the old fort and lighthouse before with my friend Marilyn. The lighthouse (favol, in Portuguese) is the oldest on the China coast, built in 1865. Unfortunately, you can't climb to the top of the lighthouse, but the fort grounds give you a pretty good view of the city, including this one of a public square and Cemetery of St. Michael the Archangel, which we also visited 10 years ago.


The hill around the fort is full of bunkers from World War II and the Cold War, one of which has been turned into a small museum.


After a ride back down the cable car, I headed to the Kun Iam Temple, a Buddhist temple built in 1627. At this temple, the U.S. and China signed their first treaty of trade and friendship in 1844. I had not been here before, and found it to be more "atmospheric" than most temples I've visited in Hong Kong.



I had been trying to figure out Macau's bus system with little luck. I wanted to get out of the central city and visit an old fishing village on Coloane Island. I decided that it couldn't be that expensive to get there by taxi, so I hailed one and hopped in. In Hong Kong, I've never had much trouble communicating with taxi drivers, but the driver I had in Macau, well, let's say that his English was worse than my Chinese. I think he might have been a recent import from the mainland, as he didn't seem to know his way around and he had a picture of Mao dangling from his rear-view mirror. After an unintended detour and 97 patacas (about US$12), we managed to find Coloane Village. It was worth the trip.

It's not that there's all that much to see there; it's more the uniqueness of the village. It's only 65 km from Hong Kong but may as well have been on the other side of the world, the feeling was so different, with interesting old buildings in narrow winding streets.




The other thing I saw in Coloane was China. Looking across the channel, I realized I had never seen China before, which made it worth taking a not-very-good photo of the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone.


I had lunch at an English cafe that served really tasty Thai food and was staffed by a couple of young Thai guys who told me which bus I could take back to the city center, allowing me to save 93 patacas on the return journey.

The bus dropped me off next to the post office and another public square. The square was jam-packed with tourists and a New Year's market. I wandered into Watson's Drogaria looking for some acetominophen for a budding headache and found huge queues of mainland Chinese buying chocolates for the New Year. I pushed my way back out of the store and tried to ignore my headache. I threaded my way through the crowds and walked to what is possibly Macau's most famous attraction, the ruins of the Church of St. Paul. All that remains of the 400-year-old church is the facade; the rest of the building burned down in 1835, when it was being used as a military barracks.


And that was about it for the day. I was beat at that point as I hadn't slept much the night before and had been awake since 5 a.m. I bought a few postcards, had a beer at a streetside cafe and headed back to the ferry terminal. I got back to Hong Kong, activated my visa and texted Shelly to let her know that I am now legal. I went to Immigration on Friday to apply for my ID card, and am now ready to look for work. Wish me luck!