Day trip to Macau today, which was quite a long day, but worth it. Up for breakfast and a 7.30 pick up at the hotel, which turned into 7.50am - apparently Hong Kong time runs along the same lines as african or caribbean time......

Anyway, down to the ferry terminal for a seacat trip of 60km to Macau, the old Portuguese colony, which is now a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, like Hong Kong is. There were about 20 of us on the tour, so it wasn't too unmanageable. Our guide was portuguese, so spoke pretty good english and had been resident in Macau for 33 years, so was very knowlegeable. First stop was a statue on the harbour of the chinese goddess of mercy, which was okay, but fairly pointless - could have easily taken the picture from the bus. What was interesting was that it was the narrowest strip of water between Macau and China, so in previous years that was where the chinese refugees would swim across to Macau to escape China. Our guide told us a nice story how Macau had an agreement with China to return all captured refugees to China, but what they would do is load them on a junk, out of sight of the Chinese side, then escort the junk to very near Hong Kong & throw them over the Hong Kong side & tell them to swim to shore - as Hong Kong didn't have an agreement to return refugees.

Then we drove along the new harbour, which is all reclaimed land, where there is an entertainment complex and it wraps around the old harbour area, which is all subject to preservation orders and saw some beautiful old colonial buildings with an old catholic church atop the hill overlooking the residential area. Then we stopped at the Chinese temple that mistakenly gave Macau it's name.

When the Portuguese landed there was no real settlement there, just a temple to the sea goddess A Ma Kook, and when the portuguese asked the name of the island, they were mistakenly told the name of the temple, so they thought the island was named A Ma Kook, which they mispronounced A Ma Kao. Eventually the leading A was dropped leading to Macao. The temple was incredibly busy, so difficult to get in and see any of it, but there is a great custom where the sailors, who would be at sea for weeks on end, have developed these long spiral incense sticks (which look like big spiral coolie hats) that burn for weeks, thus enabling them to still achieve their devotional duties to the sea goddess even when away from home. And obviously the sea goddess is very important to fishermen and sailors!

We then went off to the Holiday Inn for lunch, which seemed a bit of a strange choice, but was actually really nice. Then back to the waterfront to go up the Macau Tower - you know those really tall sky towers with the revolving restaurants you get in most major tourist cities. Anyway, this was a great way to get a really good view of Macau, which is actually a tiny island, but hugely prosperous. Our guide told us, no one pays income tax, or VAT or Sales Tax, education is free, healthcare is free (the list goes on, but it gets depressing after a while) - someone please remind again why it is I live in England & not Macau????? The reason they can do this - CASINO'S. There are masses of them on the island and not many anywhere else in this part of Asia. They got 28 mn visitors last year in Macau, predominantly people going there to gamble. The casino's pay 50% tax over to the Macau government and that pays for everything, absolutely everything. All the development, housing, infrastructure, services - the works.

The view from the Tower was awesome, and it has glass plates in some bits of the floor on the observation deck - it's amazing how many people refuse to step on those plates, really! It is also home to the worlds' highest bungee jump, where about 50 people a day jump. We saw a couple during the progress of our tour. I still cannot see the appeal.

From there we went to the ruins of St Pauls Church, which is a splendid stone facade, which had a wooden church and Jesuit college attached to it at one point and inevitably, the usual happened and someone got careless and the whole lot burnt down in about 3 seconds flat. The facade is pretty interesting, as although it was built by the japanese christians, they still put quite a lot of eastern religious symbology on it - like the pair of dragon guardians and the number of steps leading up to it.

From there we walked down through the old portuguese town, which has all been preserved and looks really nice. Everywhere was really clean and tidy and not spacious exactly (hard to get spacious on such a tiny island) but open somehow. I guess old western colonies don't like to feel too hemmed in and have tight cramped streets.

Last stop was Jackie Chan's casino which has the most amazing lobby - embedded under (I assume bulletproof) glass there are 88 1kg gold bars in the floor. I actually stood on a bar of gold - lord above knows what that is worth nowadays. Didn't get a chance to gamble in the casino - which given my luck at gambling is probably a good thing - as we had to get the 5.30 seacat back to Hong Kong. The weather had turned slightly and so the journey back got a little bouncy about half way or so there, which meant there was copious amounts of throwing up going on around me. Apparently lots of weak stomachs - either that or they indulged too much at the casino's. Honestly, I've had worse turbulence on a plane, couldn't see what all the fuss was about!!

Back quite late to the hotel, as I was the last drop off on the bus and foolishly decided to try the hotel buffet dinner... when will I learn??? No, I wasn't sick from the food this time, just the cost. It was over HK$500 for a fairly substandard buffet and a sprite. Think I will either eat in the attached mall in future or the bar out the back, maybe satisfy my yearning for a burger.....

Up earlyish again tomorrow, as I have my half day tour of Hong Kong island proper, which I am hoping will be much nicer than Kowloon.