Beyond Kowloon and Hong Kong Island lie other islands that also make up the Hong Kong SAR. It would take quite a while to see these in any detail, so we decided to opt for a day-trip to Macau instead.
Macau is less well known than Hong Kong, but bears quite a few similarities. It was colonised by the Portuguese some 300 years before the Brits wrested Hong Kong from the Chinese, but unlike Hong Kong, Macau was never formally ceded to Portugal. Rather, its colonisation was peaceful and the consequence of an agreement made with the Chinese in 1557. The Chinese government of the day allowed the Portuguese to settle and trade from here in return for rent and customs dues.
The Portuguese handed Macau back to the Chinese on 20th December 1999 and now it, too, has become a SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China, guaranteeing it notably different treatment from the rest of the country for a period of at least 50 years.
We had tickets for the 08:30 Turbojet ferry crossing, a high speed catamaran that makes the 65 km crossing in around an hour. Our being mistakenly categorised as ‘turbo class’ passengers and led to an extremely comfortable upper deck (with a toilet sink whose tap was cast as a fish head) with reclining seats pretty much made Sarah’s day before we’d even left port!
Most of the public information in Macau is bilingual in Cantonese and Portuguese. Although the Portuguese is fairly easy to decipher if you know any Spanish, this doesn’t seem to help much when questioning the locals, as there are very few Portuguese speakers remaining in the territory. We did overhear a few in a cafe, however.
After a bus ride into the centre of the peninsula, we marvelled at the facades of old Portuguese colonial buildings on Largo do Senado (Senate Square) and the bizarre sight of road signs containing both Portuguese text and Cantonese characters.
We then visited the ruins of an old church before paying a visit to the Museum of Macau for a couple of hours.
In the afternoon, we took a taxi down to the southernmost tip of the peninsula, where Macau Tower soars 339 metres into the sky. For a ghastly high price, we rode the lift to the top of the tower and were treated to some fantastic views of the surrounding area. Even the mist, that we’d hoped to leave behind in Hong Kong, could not obscure the great views here.
The inner observation area of the tower has a glass floor for its outer ring, meaning that you can walk in a circle around the tower, all the while observing the 339 metre drop below your feet. Creaking sounds under my feet did not exactly inspire my confidence and I was surprised to find the experience unnerving.
The views from here once again offer a tantalising hint of a new frontier, this time mainland China in the form of Zhuhai SEZ (Special Economic Zone). A SEZ is basically an area of China that has been designated a capitalist zone, to cash in on its close proximity to the sea (and thus trade with other countries) and the SARs in the area. Chinese people require an internal passport just to visit Zhuhai and the other SEZs.
Sadly, we had no time to visit, so we had to make do with the panoramic views.
In the failing light, there was just enough time for a quick visit to the A-Ma Temple, before settling down to dinner in a close-by Macanese restaurant.
We’ve used many currencies on this trip: Thai Baht, Lao Kip, Vietnamese Dong, Hong Kong Dollars, and now also Macanese Patacas (and the Avos, 100 of which make for 1 Pataca). Not wanting to get stuck with Patacas (you can spend HKD in Macau, but Patacas are unloved in Hong Kong), we used up our last banknotes on a taxi to the ferry port (where you can even buy Lucozade, Ribena and Fruit Pastilles!) and then took the catamaran back to Hong Kong Island, where we made the quick ferry crossing back to Kowloon.
The last full day of our honeymoon had drawn to a close 🙁