From One Special Administrative Region to Another

Hong Kong's status as a Special Administrative Region, a condition of the hand back from the UK, is not unique in China. We would be leaving Hong Kong on a Turbo Cat Ferry to the Island of Macau. Macau was formerly owned by Portugal and enjoyed several centuries of colonial rule resulting in a very visible heritage of beautiful buildings and patisseries. Macau only returned to Chinese ownership in 1999. Portugal had actually tried to hand it back to the Chinese in the 1970's but faced with a lot of problems at home at the time, China couldn't afford the resources to rid the island of it's gambling and organised crime. It would have been an embarrassment to the communist state to have let things be so it simply said no and left the problem with Portugal.
Today, the gangs have gone, but the Casinos which are the Lynch-Pin of the island's economy are very much still here and are still getting thrown up in ever bigger and brighter fits of decadence. As such, Macau is another Special Administrative Region so that the Gambling can still be allowed with out embarrassment to the State - it's heritage you see.

We stayed in the old quarter. A maze of back alleys with bakers and butchers and strings of lanterns and flags overhead. While the men throw all their money in the cards, the ladies (those who aren't doing the same) pop down here and buy boxes of cakes and treats to take home as souvenirs. The whole quarter has a sweet smell that permeates across the streets and down the lanes. The problem is, even most of the buns have meat in them.

The architecture is really authentic colonial. Pastel colours of yellow, blue and pink adorn the walls, punctuated with white lined windows and doorways. Cobbled roads and street names beginning 'Rue De...', big arches and staircases and lots and lots of churches. You could walk through here and truly believe you were in Europe if it wasn't for all the massive signs covered in Chinese characters. Much to our delight, they understood how coffee should be served, and though it wasn't particularly cheap, proper fresh coffee flowed in an abundance beaten only by the fountains.

We spent most of our time just soaking up the atmosphere and walking around town and up into the posh residential areas with their big fancy mansions complete with guards standing at attention. They all compete with each other to see who can place the biggest and most obvious cctv camera on the side of their houses too. We stuck our head in a couple of casinos one night too but it seemed unusually quiet, given it was a Saturday night. The tables were probably only 20% full and the little cabaret show on the stage behind the bar looked rather neglected by the punters too. This was the big shiny new Casino, which was in fact only half built, the hotel bit still getting placed on the top of it, in the shape of a giant (and I mean massive) pineapple. We thought that might be the very reason it was so empty but a quick visit to the older more established place next door revealed an even more desperate situation.

In total we had three days in Macau and had a very relaxing time, spending any money we could have gambled on coffee, deciding that was our safest bet we could make. Another hour and a quarter back to Hong Kong, to be processed back through immigration and then make our way to the train station to be processed back out again and we were on our next sleeper train for a 20 hour trip to Shanghai. Then we really would be in China proper.