Monday, June 12, 2006
Macau
Seeking yet another stamp in our passport we headed off on the fast ferry to Macau. It's actually not that far away and there are something like 12 ferries an hour. However, this means that it takes less than an hour on the ferry..... followed by about 40 minutes in the zoo (sorry, immigration hall) which is constantly refilled by the next bunch of Hong Kongers pouring off the ferry and eager to get gambling.Yes, that's right, Macau is rapidly turning into Vegas. In my vague memories of my last visit here there was a casino, now there are many casinos with several more under construction (they've even reclaimed land to make more space for them!). Most of the men who 'own' Vegas seem to be moving in here, the Wynn Macau is almost open (and is taking bookings if you're interested!), the Venetian is under construction, and judging by the amount of construction the whole gang will be here soon.
There is more to Macau than losing money though. There are of course a few temples and shrines to be seen, and the old town centre still shows its Portuguese past. We had another great guide book dining tip for the town centre but unfortunately the European influence on the town seems to have extended to the restaurants taking a siesta in the afternoon. This left us with a choice between wandering aimlessly, eating some dangerously unidentifiable dead stuff from market stalls..... or those curiously familiar looking golden arches..... So MacDonalds it was (sorry, we just had to do it!).
After lunch we got brave with the local buses and headed off to the two smallish islands which are linked to the mainland by bridges. The first one is where 'Asian Vegas' is being built, but the second still seems relatively sparsely populated. About as far as you can go on the bus is the small village of Coloane. Besides a couple of temples there were really only two things to do in Coloane. Firstly, you can stand at the waterfront and look across a narrow stretch of water into China. There's not much to see, but that's not the point, it's China! (OK, so Macau technically IS China, maybe we were desperate for excitement!).
Then when you've finished looking across the border you can walk around the corner to the bakery. Huh? Yes that's right, you're in a fairly remote part of a former Portuguese colony that is now Chinese and the place to eat is a bakery run by an Englishman that sells custard tarts. Such tarts seem to be a Macau speciality, but these are apparently the ones to have, so we did.
The return journey seemed very simple, just find the same bus going back in the other direction (on the map it seemed to go towards the ferry port). So we boarded the bus and showed the driver the map and where we were headed. He nodded, but then seemed keen to explain something to us. Being good British tourists we had no idea what he was trying to tell us so we sat down and looked out at the rain. It all started off well, but then we arrived at the airport (where we hadn't been before) and then proceeded to pick up so many construction workers from the new casinos that there was standing room only on the bus and we could barely see the driver, and when we eventually arrived at a fairly large bus stop area we really had no idea where we were. It all worked out OK in the end though as it seemed like the driver had gone out of his way to take us to a stop where he'd find a bus company employee who spoke enough English to explain our mistake and direct us to the correct bus, proving once again that even when you don't speak the language it often seems to be easier to use public transport here than it is back home!
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