Sunday – 18-Feb-01

Got up early and made my way to the Macau Ferry. From Star Ferry HK central to the Macau Ferry is 10 or 15 mins walk completely on an elevated sidewalk above the streets.

I noticed numerous groups of what appeared to be Filipina women setting up makeshift picnic blankets of plastic or cardboard. They were still there when I returned in the evening! And the street below is so noisy with traffic noise, I don’t know how they talk to each other, but that’s the day off for a HK domestic. (Just days earlier, the news contained reports of abuse and labor-law violations against SE asian domestics in HK.)

The Ferry to Macau was a Tri-cat Jet boat thing. You could smell the jet fuel and hear the turbine engines spooling up as you boarded, the thing has a water jet propulsion system, no exposed propeller. It was JUST like an airplane on the inside, only wider, maybe 20 seats wide and 40 long in economy deck. It took an hour to goto Macau. 

Had to clear immigration and customs at both ends. I thought HK and Macau had been returned to the Mother country.

Macau is like an older, not quite as built up, HK, with bilingual signs in Chinese and Portuguese!

At the terminal I changed some US dollars into Patacas (its 1:1 with HKD and hence about 7.2 per USD) got a map and beat my way past the “guides” offering their service,  found a bus to the SW corner of the island and went to the Museu Maritimo. That is small, but VERY well done!!! I did not take the junk ride in the harbor. I went to A-Ma temple across the street. There musta been hundreds of pounds of incense sticks on fire in there. I noticed some folks covering their ears and looked around, seconds later, the firecrackers went off, they had a string 20 feet long that sounded like rapid fire or IT at Camp Perry for 2 or 3 minutes.

Went to the ruins of St Pauls cathedral, built in the 1600’s burned in the 1800’s, a fort and Museu de Macau above it. Also very good. These two museums were better than the 2 in HK.

Walked down and past the Casino Lisboa, taxi to the terminal on time for my 7:15 boat and back to HK.
 
 

   
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hk040 Back side of Lantau (?) from boat to Macau.
hk042 Display in Macau Maritime Museum of Tanagashima Musketeer
hk043 Me & some little boat at Macau Maritime Museum
hk044 Rock above A-Ma temple in Macau
hk045 I guess the person holding the camera pressed the button twice
hk046 Temple building and incense burners at A-Ma
hk047 Firecrackers, about 20' long string of them!
hk048 Ruins of Saint Paul's Cathedral in Macau
hk049 Ruins of Saint Paul's Cathedral in Macau
hk050 Looking outwards from Ruins of Saint Paul's Cathedral in Macau
hk051 Little old lady selling pidgeon feed and trinkets at Ruins of Saint Paul's Cathedral in Macau
hk051a Little old lady selling pidgeon feed and trinkets at Ruins of Saint Paul's Cathedral in Macau
hk052 view of Macau from the fort above Ruins of St P
hk053 guy doing Tai chi and a little dog doing.... from the fort above Ruins of St P
hk055 Narrow street in Macau
hk056 Big tree and pink official looking building in Macau

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