Joanna's Singapore adventures

I decided that since it was only an hour away by ferry, Macau would be an interesting day trip. Macau is a tiny former Portuguese territory that is now a special administrative region of China (Hong Kong is a former British territory which holds the same status). Special administrative region status means the area is part of China, but maintains its own currency, immigration controls, many of its own laws and some freedoms not available in mainland China.

I decided to not take a guided tour and instead catch public buses to the attractions like the tourist books said was possible. Looking back, this was not such a wise choice. It was not very obvious where to get off the bus, almost all the signs were in Cantonese and Portuguese (nether of which i speak at all) and the bus drivers don't speak English. I missed where i was meant to get off and ended up at a bus depot somewhere deep in urban Macau. Thankfully some other foreign tourists who spoke both Cantonese and English and were trying to get to the same place as me had made the same mistake so they were able to seek assistance from some locals to get us back to the right place. When i tried to get back to the ferry terminal later in the day I managed to get the right bus route but heading in the wrong direction so had to get off and double back. Macau isn't really an English speaking tourist friendly place. McDonald's gets a bad rap in regards to their globalising of generic restaurants but I was very glad for the familiar food, English language menus and clean, free, western style toilets they provide!

Macau has lots of beautiful architecture inspired by both its Portuguese and Chinese backgrounds (photos of that coming). Unfortunately the buildings that are becoming the most dominant in Macau are the many casinos. The casinos are huge! Casino gambling is illegal in mainland China and Hong Kong so many gamblers flock to Macau from across China and the Asian region. Macau takes in higher gaming revenues than even Vegas!

Due to the insanity of the few weeks prior to coming to Hong Kong (exams, camp in Malaysia, moving out of where I'd been staying....) I hadn't got to do much planning beyond booking my airfare and hotel room. One of the things I didn't get to plan for is the change of climate out of the tropics back to winter. Singapore doesn't really have a winter- it never gets below 20 degrees C. Because Singapore does not get cold, I wasn't in possession of any winter clothes. Getting off the plane in my summer clothing was quite a shock. Finding suitable clothing in Hong Kong was quite a challenge. I am certainly not Asian sized and the language barrier was a bit of a problem in asking about my size because I speak no Cantonese and most of the sales attendants spoke limited English. I've ended up wearing the same things a lot.

Its been quite weird to be seeing all the Christmas decorations while cold, since Christmas back home is usually accompanied by very warm weather. Its like being in those Christmas movies set in New York where people are seen walking past lavish shop windows and huge Christmas trees while all rugged up in big coats. Christmas trees and decorations are everywhere here and the Christmas music is almost inescapable.