When I visited Macau in 1997, before the handover to the Chinese, the islands were far quieter and more traditional in style. After crossing over to Taipa on one of the three huge metal bridges which connect it to the Macau peninsula, an experience probably quite similar to crossing the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, my Taxi drove for what seemed like an age through small towns and villages which didn't seem to be able to make up their mind whether they wer...

Note: This entry was originally written during the Chinese New Year celebrations. Chinese New Year is a ten day festival in Macau, and things didn't get start to let up until long after I'd left. Most of the big name shops were shut for the length of my stay, but every square and every cobbled side street was packed throughout the weekend with people of all ages, celebrating and having a good time - and all of the small vendors and market salesmen were taking fu...

Note: The following entry was originally written over Chinese New Year. One of the must-see attractions of any visit to Hong Kong isn't part of Hong Kong at all, but a small island thirty-five miles off the coast called Macau. Although close enough for visitors to just nip across for a day trip, Macau is a world apart from anything the rest of China has to offer and is quite spread out - so plan for a long weekend if you really want to see much of it. Previously...

When I look back on it, our visit to the New Territories was filled with non-visits - places that we would like to have seen but couldn't. Besides not being allowed to visit Sha Tau Kok, we were also denied the chance to explore the small town of Tai Mo Shan. At a hight of over 900 metres above sea level, Tai Mo Shan is the main community centred on the mountain of the same name, which is the highest in Hong Kong. The name Tai Mo Shan translates into English as "...

When you watch television travel shows about Hong Kong, have you noticed how they always make the place out to be nothing more than a huge metropolis full of tiny side streets, neon lights and about six kajillion people? Have you ever stopped to wonder if there could possibly be anything else to Hong Kong? Well, assuming that you haven't just skipped over the rest of this book and started reading here, you might have realised by now that the region is actually pr...