Tiny nation #2: Macau

When I was a kid, Macau intrigued me because that's where my favourite toys (Matchbox cars) were made. More recently, however, it sparked my interest for better reasons: I love tiny little states (it's basically a city with its own languages, government, currency and borders...how cool is that?!), and the idea of having a little slice of Portugal in the middle of Asia is too amazing to miss out on.

Quick disclaimer: I apologize for the lack of pictures...my hard drive crashed and I lost everything. Thankfully I have all my Hong Kong/Macau pictures backed up on an external in Canada, but it'll be over a year until I get to them...so, I only have one or two pictures to share with you right now.

So...I got to Macau via a cool hydrofoil boat from Hong Kong...they leave every half an hour or so, cost 20 bucks and take an hour...back home, something like this would leave every 6 hours and cost three times as much. Once you get to Macau, you have to check in with immigration (even though technically both HK and Macau are part of China, they're self-governing and thus have their own borders)...I went to Macau twice, which meant a flurry of stamps, filling up a page and a half of my beloved passport.

Once in Macau something profound hit me: It's soooooo much quieter than Hong Kong! It's like a sleepy little town. I definitely wasn't expecting that. My first day there, I got there at around noon and it was all quiet with just a handful of people milling about...I walked the casino district, and set about wandering around. There are some really interesting things there...it looks like Macau's fortunes have declined in the past few decades. A gigantic modern statue (some sort of "Welcome, Outsiders" statement) is slowly decaying in an abandoned part of the harbour not far from a playground even the kids with cans of spraypaint have grown bored of. It's pretty interesting.

It's also immediately obvious that Macau (despite it being a world-class destination for gambling) is much less affluent than Hong Kong. The parade of Ferraris, Rolls Royces and Lamborghinis is replaced by sensible Hondas and Mitsubishis. Designer suits give way to classy, but distinctively more affordable clothing.

And yet...as much as I liked Hong Kong, I loved Macau. HK was great...no complaints. But...it was a bit sterile. It was a place that was modern, fast, busy, flashy, expensive, and it knew it was all of that. Macau, on the other hand, had something HK lacked: Charm. It was a very charming place. From Macau Tower sitting seemingly pointlessly in the middle of nowhere to the Portugese buildings, it was a thoroughly warm and accessible place devoid of any kind of pretentiousness.

Tucked away between the water and a residential area - seemingly completely out of its element - is the Macau Tower:

As with Hong Kong, the smog was a major bummer. It doesn't show so much in this picture, but I have a shot of the tower casting a shadow through the smog...it's crazy! I was going to go up the tower, then I realized it was pointless...I'd just see a washed-out, milky expanse.

Of course the major attraction - for me, anyways - in Macau was the architecture. A Portugese colony for centuries, Macau's official buildings, churches and even a fort and lighthouse were built in the European styles right down to the patterned cobble-stone streets.

The mixing of cultures and influences is even more apparent here than in Hong Kong. Cobble stone streets lead to temples and there are parks where yellow Portugese-style buildings look across ponds to face red, Chinese-style pagodas. It's really cool. What's more is that if you look up, you'll see expensive high-rises to your left and crumbling tenements to your right. I don't think I've ever seen so much diversity so close together in my life!

Another interesting thing about Macau is you can pay with Hong Kong dollars everywhere, but you get change in Macau dollars...it's really interesting at first. (They're roughly on par and the two currencies are tied to each other...the HKD is a bit higher, so it works out a tiny bit better for them).

That's it for now...I'll update this in a while when I get my pictures up! In the meantime...here's a panorama shot from an old nunnery! The crazy building that gets bigger near the top is the Hotel Lisboa....and of course that's Macau Tower off to the right...thanks for reading!

To the colonies!!! Heading to Hong Kong...

Hong Kong and Macau have always intrigued me. Hong Kong because it always seemed like the busiest place on the planet and Macau because Matchbox cars (the treasures of my childhood) were made there. More recently, however, I've become enamoured with tiny countries. There's something cool about a place the size of a city having its own government, currency, borders, etc. So, on my way home (to Canada) this winter, I decided to check out two of Asia's little jewels: Hong Kong and Macau. This entry will be about HK...I'll do a subsequent one about Macau as well. :)

Before I start, I have to apologize for the lack of really good pictures...my hard drive crashed before I could edit the majority of the pictures...I just started doing the panoramas when it crashed. I do have all the files on a backup hard drive in Canada, but I won't get to those for another year and a half or so).

Random picture to get us started:

My first introduction to Hong Kong was the awesomeness of expats...a friend of a few friends, Danielle, whom I've never met prior to this, had offered to let me crash on her couch. Faith in humanity: restored. She was an amazing host, and she lived in an awesome part of town, Wan Chai, which is close to most of the exciting stuff on Hong Kong Island.

For those who have never been, HK consists of two areas, the "mainland," and the island. The mainland is a little rougher, though not downtown Detroit rough. It's also the place where a lot of the foreigners aggressively trying to sell suits hang out...spaced about 10 feet apart. The mainland (Kowloon) side is also where most of the hostels are...according to most reviews I've read, they're a less than stellar experience, I'm glad I got to miss out on them.

Another random shot...I'm starting to get into street photography...really enjoying it:

Anyways...Hong Kong. Hong Kong is amazing. It's beautiful, generally clean, warm (in the middle of January I spent my days in a T-shirt all day, and got a sunburn), busy, full of life, classy, etc. It's also incredibly affluent. Short of Dubai, I'm not sure I could think of a place where there are so many Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Rolls Royces per square metre. For a car geek, walking around there after the blandness of Korea (the land of silver Hyundais and white Kias), no walk through the streets was boring. I even saw one of my all-time favourite cars in my favourite colour: a pearl orange Tesla Roadster (the world's first true production electric supercar!).

Unfortunately, HK is also home to some incredible smog. While it didn't bother my breathing, it was apparent in every single picture. This is the clearest picture I took of the HK skyline. On the left is the island, complete with the famous Bank of China building (the building with the 45* lines criss-crossing it)..the middle is the opening to Victoria Harbour, on the right is a little bit of Kowloon, the mainland...the shot was taken from a little harbour boat that's been operating between the island and the mainland for over 100 years. It costs about 35 cents to cross and takes 8-9 minutes. Gotta love Asia):

Other days, you were treated to a monochromatic view of HK's magnificence (if you look closely, you'll notice that the same traditional-style ship is in both pictures!)...by the way, the building in the middle is where HK was handed over to China in 1997.

Okay...since all the days have blurred together, he's a random list of highlights from Hong Kong:

- The world's longest escalators...it's a network of 800m (half a mile) of escalators taking you from one part of the city up the hill to another. It's really cool. They change direction depending on the time of the day to deal with foot traffic. I kept popping off to check out different neighbourhoods, then popping back on to continue my journey.

- Multi ethnicity/multi-religiosity. You can walk from a Buddhist temple to a Muslim mosque and then pop over to a Catholic church (many of which were built by the British long enough ago that they're architecturally interesting!) all within 10 minutes. And guess what...no one firebombs them. Many places in the world could learn a lesson from the way religions and races coexist in HK. I went into multiples of each place of worship and was welcomed with open arms at each and every one. Hong Kong was also the first place in Asia where I didn't feel special or different being a white guy. HK has great racial variety and, happy for me, that meant variety in food, which (unlike in Korea) included a wicked selection of veggie options.

- The people are absolutely amazing in HK. That is, the locals. Interestingly enough, most of the foreigners I bumped into seemed to have an air of self-importance about them. Wearing an expensive suit and rocking an iPhone 5 tends to do that to people sometimes. The locals, however, were very friendly, often stopping or going out of their way to help me when I was looking at my map, etc. Without a doubt, the highlight was when I was trying to figure out which exit I needed to take out of the subway and a boy - about 12 or 13 years old - came up to me and said "Hello. How may I help you?". Out of the blue. My jaw dropped. I told him where I wanted to go, he pointed me to the correct exit and was on his merry way. Well played, Hong Kong...well played. To be fair, though...they're apparently not very tolerant of wheelchair-bound scientists:

Random picture time: Fire hall with a classic red/silver Toyota Crown (every taxi is a Toyota Crown in that paint scheme) taxi:

- Victoria Peak. This peak overlooks the city and is home to a really cool cable-driven tram (that in places goes up an incline I swear is close to 40 degrees) that goes up the hill to a wicked lookout point. I spent a good 4-5 hours at least up there, going in the afternoon and waiting until it was pitch dark. The view of the city is magnificent, day or night. As is standard for Asia, the tram/lookout point admission tickets were very reasonable. None of the rip-off prices we've grown accustomed to paying in North America.

- The public zoo/botanical gardens. Again...North America could take a lesson here. HK has an awesome zoo (full of monkeys, giant turtles, ultra-rare birds, etc)...open to the public. It's just part of a park. The other part is a gorgeous botanical gardens. The sight of a beautiful and expansive garden with stunning modern skyscrapers is a unique and awe-inspiring one.

- Tsim Sha Tsui...TST is a neat place on the southern tip of the mainland, meaning it faces HK's true downtown: the island's north end. There are two ways to get to TST: via the efficient or cheap subway or the efficient or cheap cross-harbour boat. I preferred the boat because the views were beautiful, but the subway - true to every subway I've seen in Asia - was clean, safe, cheap and quick. I'm really going to miss the public transportation in this corner of the world. TST has everything from high-end shops to the Avenue of Stars, where Asian movie stars I've never heard of are immortalized on a beautiful waterfront walkway. The view of downtown from TST...Avenue of Stars on the left...

Every night at 8 p.m., the buildings in downtown HK put on a wicked laser show, best viewed from TST:

Speaking of nights....Hong Kong holds true to what I've seen in most of Asia (Japan, Korea, China, etc)...and you can feel completely safe being a foreigner walking around alone at night...gotta love that!

I was usually walking/shooting until around midnight most days...never an issue!

All right...this is HK in a nutshell...again, I apologize for the lack of pictures, I'll do an update in a year or so when I get to my pictures, I promise! :D In the meantime, I'll leave you with this. Shot in TST in Hong Kong...a tourist demonstrating proper posture during portrait photography: