A day in Macau...or a city in Europe?
Trip Start
Aug 24, 2010
1
40
49
Trip End
Mar 03, 2011
Macau Peninsula, Macau, China
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Today was spent in the nearby city of Macau on the China mainland around 35miles south west of Hong Kong. It’s currently the world’s most densely populated country but also has the world’s highest life expectancy. We arrived at Hong Kong ferry terminal and bought our tickets for the turbojet boat at 10:05. We quickly passed through immigration and then boarded on time at 10:05 for the hour crossing.
Once we left the ferry terminal in Macau the first thing that we noticed were the large number of casinos, and the large number of coaches to take people to them. Macau has a large gambling industry with a large number of casinos present in the city. Many people from China come here just to go to the many casinos. Another thing that was noticeable almost straight away were the big, expensive cars that many people were driving.
We headed first to the Fisherman’s Wharf….which was pretty 'dead’ as nothing appeared to be open. We then spent the next hour or so just walking around some of the busy roads looking at some quite impressive buildings – particularly the shiny Lisboa hotel/casino and walking past a number of water fountains. As Macau Tower was nearby we quickly proceeded to it and paid to get in. Macau Tower is currently the world’s 10th tallest free standing tower at 338m It also has the world’s highest sky jump and 2nd highest commercial bungee jump. On the ‘outdoor’ deck we waited for a girl to do the sky jump. She was right on the edge ready to jump off, but her nerves got the better of her after about 10minutes of deliberating whether to jump or not. I think that it’s been one of the best towers we’ve been up so far as there were more things to keep you occupied up the tower and the views were amazing.
Part of the day was spent walking along one of the heritage trails with a large area designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We saw many sites including the A-Ma Temple, St. Lawrence’s Church, St. Joseph’s Seminary and Church, St. Dominic’s Church and St. Pauls ruins. It was a good walk, but once you’d seen a couple of the building’s you could say you’ve seen them all as many of them looked pretty similar.
Macau used to be part of the Portuguese colony and it was particularly evident in the way the buildings were built that they were of European origin. In fact, the whole time we were in Macau it felt as though we were in a city in Europe rather than in China (due to the European pastel coloured buildings, signs in Portuguese, cars and fair amount of tourists). It’s much easier to tell from just looking around you that Macau was a European colony rather than Hong Kong.
From St. Pauls ruins we walked to the Guia Fortress which was on top of Guia Hill. Here there was a small light house and a chapel. It took some effort walking up the hill in the heat but once at the top it was worth it for some of the nice views of the city. We spent a little time walking around the park on the hill and then decided to take the cheap cable car back down the hill. The cable car looked fairly worn, and the gondolas were tiny. We got in and it moved along towards the edge of the hill where we suddenly stopped as our gondola hadn’t caught onto the rope. A man came over and pulled us back and pushed us forwards again so that it’d hook onto the rope. Needless to say, when we got to the bottom, we were more than glad to be off it!
As we had planned to get the boat to Hong Kong at around 7pm we decided to take a bus over to the Barrier Gate. This used to mark the border between the Portuguese and the Chinese territory and recently used to be the border crossing between Macau and China.
As it was after 6pm we decided to get a taxi back to the port and had a quick look around Fisherman’s Wharf again where there was some live music and a small market. The boat back to Hong Kong was a little late and the journey back quite boring!
Overall we both enjoyed the day in Macau!
