Today was a crazy day of tourism! Kind of! After fourteen months in Hong Kong I still hadn't been to Macau, and today I made it over there. The fact it was public holiday made today's travelling absolutely mental, one of the reasons I'm not such a fan of public holidays out here. There's a ridiculous number of people about at the best of time's, and more so on a Sunday, but when a public holiday comes around even more people come out of the woodwork and the people levels reach insanity.
To which end, Macau happened in a bit of a rush. My esteemed new flatmate had to make the trip regardless, so I tagged along for the ride. Due to the volume of people, boats out of Hong Kong were running late and ours was delayed by half an hour (thank god! We were sent to three different gates before we got the right one for our sailing - everything was different to the screens in the ferry terminal before passport control.) Yes, that's right, passport control ... Macau has given me a new stamp in my passport!
It's not a long boat ride, just over an hour, but getting through passport control upon arrival seemed to take a night and a day! Mental, un-moving queue. All in all the delays and the achingly slow queue left us with little over two hours in Macau before we had to head back. We only saw a little, but it was definitely enough to warrant a trip back!
Macau is an jarring mix of influences! It is unmistakably European, the heavy Portuguese influence is at Macau's core. This European foundation is surrounded by the Las Vegas lights of the casinos and all the trapping of a Chinese community. It's a little unerring at times as one minute you feel like you're meandering down a street in Europe, the next you realise they're driving on the wrong side of the road for that to be true and remember that you are, in fact, in Asia.
There's more to be seen and discovered in Macau and I'm looking forward to going back and giving it a little more of my attention!
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