A day-trip to Macau from Hong Kong

 


I visited Macau from Guangzhou in 1991 with two friends when it was still Portugese. We spent the whole day exploring, but to be honest, I don't remember much. I recall the fort, the typical Chinese neighbourhoods, the port, and a floating casino where I lost a couple of dollars. (I have never been to a casino since.) Today Macau is a shiny and posh tourist destination, with the old town nicely renovated and many new high rise buildings that didn't exist back then. I only had the old feeling when I was walking in the fishing port area where there are no tourists. The floating casino doesn't exist anymore, but there are many new ones. You can explore whole Macau in half a day, so I thought I still have time to see Taipa island which I didn't visit the last time. But I didn't know how to get there. I didn't have any local currency and public buses wouldn't accept my Octopus card from Hong Kong. Then, although it's not that close, I I wanted to walk over one of the bridges but pedestrian access was restricted. I was about to give up and return to the ferry port when I saw a free shuttle bus in front of one of the casinos. I asked and it was going over to another casino on Taipa so I took it. To be honest, Taipa was a disappointment. There are many new buildings, casinos, hotels and shopping malls, none of which I was interested in. So I headed to Taipa Old Village, supposedly the cool area, but it's just a couple of streets with old buildings turned into shops, restaurants and bars, and it was packed with people. After lingering a little, I decided to leave and headed to the Taipa ferry port to take a ferry back to Hong Kong. I actually wanted to go back by bus over the long bridge but couldn't find another shuttle that would take me to the HZMB (Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge) area from where the buses depart from. It was getting dark anyway, so I wouldn't have seen much from the trip. The ferry, both from and back to Hong Kong, took anly about an hour, this is the fastest option. It was a nice day trip but as far as I'm concerned that's about enough for Macau. 










































































































































































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