Day 16

Zhongshan - Macau - Hong Kong 

Date - 18 May

Weather - Overcast, hot and humid 

Accommodation - Nina Towers, Kowloon, Hong Kong 


We had a transfer day today from China via Macau to Hong Kong. It involved a lot of passport and visa checking and four changes of buses to clear all the immigration security. 


As we set out in our coach Mike was nostalgic as he reviewed our trip and it's highlights. It made us feel the same. We have covered over 10,000 kms and we have seen so much in such a short time but there is much more to see as the country is vast and varied. Mike encouraged us to visit Tibet as there is no industrial pollution and their customs are quite different. Mike is a Buddhist and wears his prayer beads all the time. He thanked Buddha for "His arrangement" over our past days together. He thought we were "great tourists" compared to some "troublemakers" who have different opinions or different cultures! 


This year, the Canadian-based Sinorama Group which has arranged our trip will have 50,000 tourists visiting China. 


Each of our city guides would sing a local Chinese song and so Mike sang a touching song "Jasmine Flower" which was about spring and wishing good wishes for the rest of our life. He has a very good voice. 



On arrival at Macau at 11.00am and after going through Macau Customs which cleared us from China we drove in a no-mans-land area for five minutes to go the another Macau Customs area to process our arrival! After our immigration process we visited a five hundred year old Taoist and Buddhist Temple which existed before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1553.  It had a lot of incense burning and for all of us with what we now believe have a respiratory infection it was a too much for our lungs so we didn't stay too long inside the temple. 



Before lunch we visited the UNESCO historical site where the Portuguese first settled. They built a high wall around their settlement in the late 1550's and we climbed to the top of it via a number of escalators. There were good views over Macau. The canons now point to the casinos!


Lunch was a Portuguese-based meal at The Sands Casino. It was delicious, especially the pumpkin soup. Lunch was finished with Portuguese Tarts. After lunch we spent some time watching the many different casino games being played including the familiar Black Jack to ones we had not seen before. It was a busy casino filled with Chinese. 


The current, large extravagant casinos have been built since the handover to China.  Although Macau is only a small island of 32kms2 it now has thirty-eight casinos and is marketed as the Las Vegas of the East. 



We left Macau via a ferry at five o'clock and arrived at Kowloon at 6.00pm. It was a free evening for us and we decided an Italian meal would be good after all the Chinese food we had been eating. We were joined by fellow Aussies, Kerry and Andrew, the Dutch, Jan and Nell and US Joan. It was a good evening. 


Tomorrow is a free day in Hong Kong before we fly out on Saturday. 

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