Fogged in on the Pearl River EstuaryIt's Monday morning in Hong Kong and I will be headed to the airport shortly. But first I must tell you about what I did on Sunday -- I took the ferry across the Pearl River Estuary to Macau, the former Portuguese colony to the east of Guangdong, and spent the day wandering around the tiny peninsula.
I did this because we lived in Portugal on two separate occasions when I was growing up (1977-1979 and then 1987-1990) and because we also lived in a former Portuguese colony in West Africa called Guinea-Bissau (1981-1983). You could get pretty decent Chinese food in Lisbon and one of the reasons was because Macau was still a Portuguese colony at the time. So it wouldn't have been right to come all the way here and not take the one hour ferry from Hong Kong to Macau to check it out. Most of the people who heard about my plans thought I was nuts.
Of course, the day of my Macau trip was the one day when Hong Kong and it seemed the entire Pearl River Delta were socked in with thick fog. The tops of all the skyscrapers in Hong Kong disappeared in the fog. One could barely make out Kowloon across the harbor. It was not a cheery morning. The Macau Ferry boat itself was a large, modern jetfoil catamaran. You have to go through immigration to take this ferry and then the ferry operators give you assigned seating on your catamaran. Very civilized. They assigned me a seat all by myself by the window. I was the only Caucasian on the boat. During the ride, the ferry people come through and offered hot noodles. I noticed signs everywhere that said "sterilized after every journey." I took a picture of a sign that said "Sterilized Carpet."
I did this because we lived in Portugal on two separate occasions when I was growing up (1977-1979 and then 1987-1990) and because we also lived in a former Portuguese colony in West Africa called Guinea-Bissau (1981-1983). You could get pretty decent Chinese food in Lisbon and one of the reasons was because Macau was still a Portuguese colony at the time. So it wouldn't have been right to come all the way here and not take the one hour ferry from Hong Kong to Macau to check it out. Most of the people who heard about my plans thought I was nuts.
Of course, the day of my Macau trip was the one day when Hong Kong and it seemed the entire Pearl River Delta were socked in with thick fog. The tops of all the skyscrapers in Hong Kong disappeared in the fog. One could barely make out Kowloon across the harbor. It was not a cheery morning. The Macau Ferry boat itself was a large, modern jetfoil catamaran. You have to go through immigration to take this ferry and then the ferry operators give you assigned seating on your catamaran. Very civilized. They assigned me a seat all by myself by the window. I was the only Caucasian on the boat. During the ride, the ferry people come through and offered hot noodles. I noticed signs everywhere that said "sterilized after every journey." I took a picture of a sign that said "Sterilized Carpet."
The ride across the estuary was fascinating. Huge freighters appeared out of the fog while we were still on the Hong Kong side; we got pretty close to some of them. Then the route threaded between the many hundreds of "outlying islands" that surround Hong Kong. Most of these islands are uninhabited and rise steeply out of the water -- pine trees and windswept bamboo on the tops and steep slopes of quartz straight down into the water. Occasionally an island had a lighthouse. Because of the fog, we could only see the islands closest to us. The more distant islands were little more than gray smudges. About halfway across the estuary I got a text message that said Welcome to China! It was from China Unicom which must be the cell phone carrier in Guangdong. It explained to me how to make a long distance call from China and then said Enjoy Your Journey in China! Then, as we got closer to Macau, I got a text message that said Welcome to Macau! This one was from SmartPhone Macau, and it also told me how to make a long distance call.
I got to Macau and immediately took a taxi up to the Fort (Fortaleza). Macau is a series of little hills on a tiny peninsula and at the top of one is the old Portuguese fort with cannons and battlements. I could see absolutely nothing because of the fog but that actually made it seem rather Portuguese. I spent a lot of my childhood climbing around on Portuguese forts in the fog and the rain so this seemed appropriate. The fort was absolutely mobbed with Chinese. And it was beautiful. Bougainvillea and jacaranda trees and fig trees and rubber trees and lots of hanging flower pots and cobblestones and cannons. I took approximately twenty-seven thousand photographs. In the middle of the fort is the Museu de Macau which I also visited. They insisted on taking my temperature before they'd let me in -- swine flu prevention. They have a great machine that takes your temperature without touching you. Amazing. The museum was amusing. It starts with a comparison of Eastern and Western civilization which is clearly designed to demonstrate the superiority of Eastern civilization. E.g., Picts running around in bear skins scratching runes on stones compared to Chinese wrapped in red silk robes, writing poetry and inventing the astrolabe. This exhibit also described Christianity as a "Palestinian religion" which I thought was wonderful. Later on there are fabulous photographs of old Macau and fascinating maps of the South China Sea in Portuguese. Macau was clearly a beautiful place -- once. Now, not so much.
The Portuguese gave Macau back to China in 1999. Since then, Macau has become the gambling center of Asia and in 2006 Macau surpassed Las Vegas in gambling revenue. There is a Sands and a Wynn and an MGM Grand and also some homegrown casinos. That part of town is built on land fill and is frankly, hideously depressingly ugly. The fog and rain didn't help. So I tried to avoid it and instead walked the cobblestone streets down from the Fort, past the ruins of Sao Paulo church of which nothing but the facade remains, and down past the old Senate buildings. The facade of Sao Paolo's has the normal Christian images but also two massive palm trees, a fabulous dragon, and some other tropical tree. The steps down from there to the Senate plaza are reminiscent of the Spanish Steps in Rome -- hundreds of steps covered with Chinese tourists leading to black and white tiled sidewalks just like in Portugal. The old Senate buildings are painted in pastels -- yellow, green, pink and blue. The square still had Christmas decorations up and Chinese New Year decorations were on the way up so it was all very festive and gay. The black and white tiled sidewalks were wonderfully Portuguese with emblems of sea creatures. Crabs and starfish and sea urchins. I tried to take pictures of them but they were always covered with people.
Then I started trudging back to the ferry. All the restaurants were closed because it was Sunday so I couldn't get the Portuguese food I was looking for. I thought I'd find the Mandarin Oriental instead and have tea before going back to Hong Kong. I walked and walked and walked. Then I consulted my map. I walked some more. I passed every hideous casino. More walking. More map looking. No Mandarin. I walked so far I gave myself shin splints and wore off all the cartilage in my hip joints, I'm sure of it. I managed to twist both my ankles and I even fell down once (which is embarrassing when you're all alone and the only non-Chinese person around to boot; people think you're drunk or something). Still, endless walking and no Mandarin anywhere.
It turns out the Mandarin in Macau has closed and no-one, not even the Mandarin in Hong Kong where I am staying, bothered to tell me that the guide book is wrong. AAAARGH. So I continued shuffling with my cartilage-free hip joints and ruined shins to the ferry. I slept all the way back to Hong Kong.
My final act yesterday was to eat a bowl of wonton soup at the hotel. I am proud to say I can now eat a bowl of slippery noodle soup with chopsticks and not get too much of it on my clothes. This is a vast improvement from dinner at the China Club the other night when I kept shooting peanuts and things accidentally at Patti Walsh, sitting next to me. I think I may even have gotten a baby bok choy in her hand bag by mistake. She was very nice about it -- she said in fact the silver chopsticks at The China Club are the hardest ones to eat with in all of Hong Kong because they are so slippery. This is such a well-known fact that mean-spirited executives will take job candidates on interview lunches there just to see how they manage. The Mandarin chopsticks are pretty slippery too -- made of mahogany or something -- but I did okay!
And that concludes my first trip to Asia.
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