Blogs from Macau, Macau, Asia - page 7

Day 429: Tuesday 1st September - Leaving China but not leaving China I have a two hour bus journey from Guangzhou to Zhuhai which is the city on the border with Macau. Macau, like Hong Kong, is classed as a special administrative region, so whilst it is part of China it is administered almost like its own country. Therefore, there are immigration controls whereupon I get stamped out of China, walk through the building and get stamped into Macau, without technically leaving China!! Macau is its own separate state in all matters apart from foreign policy and defence and like Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese by the Portuguese in the late nineties. Nothing much is meant to have changed except there is a different country overseeing matters, and its relative independence to govern ... read more

The Kitschiest Place on Earth If Walt Disney is the happiest place on earth, then Macau is the kitschiest place on earth. We took the one hour Turbo Jet ferry to Macau, the east’s version of Las Vegas. It was a Portuguese settlement, and it apparently is a unique intersection of European and Chinese culture - hopefully more so that Malaca in Malaysia. I heard we could get Sangria, so that was enough for me. When we arrived at the ferry terminal, many of the casinos offered a free shuttle directly to their door, so we picked one on the map that was close to where we wanted to go and hopped on board. We were dropped at Star World, where we entered the lobby but went no further. In order to hit any of ... read more

My stay in Macau was quite pleasant. I wandered the streets for a few hours during the day—wandered till I was properly drenched in sweat and would then return to the homestead and watch dvds till I couldn’t see straight. I managed to get through seasons 1-4 of Entourage and got to see a little of season 4 of Prison Break before I departed. Macau has a lot of Portuguese influence, which was a beautiful sight for me. I have gotten rather bored with refurbished Chinese architecture. The city was easy to maneuver, once I embrace the alleyways I could get just about anywhere. Each alleyway has hundreds of windows over looking the dingy street; most have makeshift ‘balconies’ where they keep their green leafy plants. After bobbing and weaving through alleyways for a bit, I ... read more

Travel days for me are never dull. I don’t know if it is because I’m blessed with “good luck” or if it is because I’m my father’s daughter and particular people and situations gravitate to me like flies to shit. Maybe it’s my uncontrollable urge to smile and laugh when I have no other response or my awkward way of not quite saying no, more or less a “we’ll see, maybe, perhaps” stumbles out of my mouth… I finished my packing this morning, horrified at the monster my backpack became. I swung it onto my back, did a few lunges—the only true test as to whether I’ll be able to withstand its weight over the next few weeks. Sure enough, I was able to lunge across my bedroom, so I kept going. Closing the door ... read more

Ola readers. Todays adventures took me to the Special Administration Region (SAR) of Macau. It was an early start. The pick up time for this tour was 7:30am. Another day without a sleep-in. Ah well could be worse. I could be getting up early to go to work. I was up around 6:30am to get ready. The bus arrived around 7:40am. We had a few hotels to do pick ups along the way. By the end of the pick-ups we had around 24 on the tour. The mix was American, Australian (the largest representation), Malaysian, Chinese, Portuguese (I think. They could have been Brazilian, else I'm way off the mark), Welsh and yours truly, the lone Kiwi. As per usual the age bracket was considerably older than myself, bar the couple of young (and attractive) Chinese ... read more