Macau! (and the end of HK)

It was awesome - I went to a whole other country! Well, not really, I mean technically Hong Kong and Macau are both parts of China, just special administrative regions, and you have to fill in exit and entry forms and stuff, but I think it's a bit like the border into Canada - easy to cross. Anyhow, I still had to carry around my passport all day which was a little worrying, but I just held it in my hand the whole time.

Now, I didn't really know anything about Macau before, and I have to say that I don't really know much more than before I left. I was totally baffled by the museum and the whole fact that I was entirely lost and had no grip on either of the two official languages (Cantonese and Portugese) meant that I pretty much spent the time following other tourists around so that I sort of looked like I knew what I was doing.

Frst of all, what I think Macau is about for Hong Kong residents is gambling. There are lots of huge glitzy casinos and waterfront properties and the big neon signs and the lot. But also, there's a bunch of history around. Basically, the Portuguese settled in Macau like ages ago, 1500s when they were still the kings of the water. So Macau is this weird mixture of Chinese traditions (Buddhist temples, modern Asian architecture with skyscrapers and air conditioning) and old-time European traditions (um, Portuguese architecture? Wide open plazas and Christian churches everywhere). It's pretty awesome, in that "what is going on here??" kind of way. You turn one way and there's a little pokey alley way that looks like it belongs in Beijing, and you turn another and there's another little alley that looks straight out of France or Italy! (I'm guessing it's probably pretty Portuguese as well...)

So anyway, you get to Macau via ferry. It's a wobbly ferry that takes an hour to get from Hong Kong, but I slept all the way through it both times. What I did see of it on the way in was nice: there are lots of little islands and sometimes, you see some that you think are untouched, perfectly clean of human touch or interference, and then around the corner is a ten-story slab of a resort along the beach front. But that's really all I saw of it because next thing I knew, I was out like a light. I turned up in Macau, following signs and still feeling rather lost, and picked up a few dozen leaflets at the tourist info booth.

Then into the arrivals hall at the wharf, and there were people offering taxi tours, pedicab tours, anything and everything and I actually went back inside so I could figure out which bus I wanted to take so I could just walk right past them. Which I did, and after much fiddling around I got on a bus into the city. It was actually quite difficult. Most things were in Chinese in big letters and then Portuguese in little ones, and of course all the script was traditional. On the bus they read out the stop name in Cantonese and Mandarin, and then English floated by on a sign unread. So, I got out when I thought I should, into this great big piazza with white painted buildings surrounding it. This was about when things started feeling bizarre: like parts of Europe had just been supplanted in Asia.

I walked around, there were a few tourist signs (but not quite so extensive as in Hong Kong), and the first thing I stumbled across was a church. It was quite pretty, the sort of thing you'd visit in Europe or maybe South America (I say this because of the climate, only it was in the middle of China. Then there were some more signs to the Ruins of St. Paul's Church, which is apparently one of the great symbols of Macau. It was the doorway to what I'm sure was once an incredible church. The plaques were all in Portuguese, though, so I didn't really understand. Then I followed some other tourists up to the museum but it seemed they didn't want to visit the museum so instead I took a turn around the gardens at the top, which looked to be an old fortress of some kind.

Let me just say here that it was HOT. Hot as hell, and no clouds or anything to cover it so it was just horrendeously hot and gross and I think I probably got a little bit of a sunburn in the process. So by the time I wandered down from the garden and tried to find (unsuccessfully) a cathedral that there were signs to, it was definitely time to cool off and have something to eat. It took me a while of walking up and down this one strip of a side-street to decide where to eat, and I'd walked back to the main piazza area before I realised that no, I was getting a headache and definitely needed to eat. I finally setlled on a set lunch menu at a french restaurant. Which wasn't anything really special, some soup and three meatballs (which doesn't sound like enough but was actually fine), and two glasses of Coke for like $18, which is all good by me really.

During lunch I decided that I should find something else to do, something else to find in Macau because it was silly to come all the way here and not see anything but the ruins and a garden. So I decided to find this Fora Garden place, because it had a cable car that shows off a view, and the buses ran straight from where I was and I could catch one in its loop all the way back to the ferry afterwards. It should not have been as much of an adventure as it ended up being.

I got on the #6 bus, and about two stops later, I realized that I was going the wrong way. But I didn't really know what to do about it! I didn't know where I was, and the bus was bleating at me in foreign languages, and I didn't really want to get off because it didn't look like tourist area anymore, so I decided to go to the end of the line. Surely there I could catch the same or a similar bus back to where I wanted to go originally! So after a forty-minute bus ride - which I have to admit was rather nice, driving through the side-streets of Macau that most tourists probably don't see because they take the right buses - I got off at the end of the line and there is nothing there, seriously. I was so frustrated by this point I thought it might be best just to turn around and go back to the ferry, but the bus that goes to the ferry left before I could wave it down. The next one that left went to Fora Park (finally!), but I couldn't fight my way through the bus to get off at the actual stop, so I had to backtrack from the stop after.

It was all right in the end, Fora Park. Not really something I'd have done every day in the middle of summer when all I want is a cool drink and no more walking thank you, but it was all right. I caught the cable car up to the top and wandered behind some other tourists, following a sign to the lighthouse. The park was rather nice, very shady and lots of trees, nice paths (though they were up hill to the lighthouse) and rather picturesque, as it was on top of the highest point in Macau. I followed the other tourists some more, through an old disused air raid shelter, because, well, why not! It was a little bizarre, a random air raid shelter on top of a mountain, and I couldn't find out why because it was all in Chinese and Portuguese. Thwarted again! However, it was very small, and a lovely shade of yellow. The lighthouse was also nice, and very picturesque on top of the mountain. There was a little church next to the lighthouse keeper's house, and it was all very nautical and had a spectacular view, but here I have to pause and tell another story.

Just before lunch, between coming down from the park at the top of the museum and failing to find the cathedeal, I'd gone into this little silkscreen painting exhibit, which was housed in an old 19th-century house that was influenced by both Chinese and Portuguese architecture. It was nice, but for some reason, the guard kept following me around. There were other people in the place, but he kept his eye on me, while I was taking photos and things. For a while I thought, maybe it was just this guard, he was just being weird and following me around, so I gave him a funny look and walked out pretty pointedly after that. However, it was not just this guard! There was another one at the lighthouse, in the church. There was some other random guy wandering around the place by himself, and a family, but the guard followed me wherever I went, just a few steps behind. I had no idea what was going on. What did they think I was going to do? I was just taking pictures, like everyone else!

Anyhow, I caught the bus back to the ferry after that, and that was kind of the end of my day. I got back to the hostel at about seven, took the MTR back, and ate my leftover California Pizza Kitchen pizza from the night before - yum!

The day I left for Xi'an was mostly spent online doing not much of anything, organizing photos and writing an email to the parents, and by the time all that was over it was time to go. I made a good trade, though! Me and this other guy from Melbourne were talking to this new British kid who had just arrived in Hong Kong, about all the things you can do in Hong Kong and our plans and, you know, general hostel talk. But since it was my last day, and I knew I wasn't coming back for a long time, I figured, why don't I give him my Octopus card (which you can use for MTR transit and also buying things at 7/11 and the supermarket)? It still had $50KHD on it, but I didn't need that much to get to the airport. And he was interested in Macau, so I also palmed off a few Macau patacas (just $8 in coins) and he was just so grateful! He'd noticed the Nick Hornby book on my bed and he handed over 31 Songs! So now, all I'm missing is Fever Pitch.

So that, my friends, was Hong Kong and Macau!