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More Tourists Are Trying Portuguese Macao

"Pacific Islands Monthly" is a member of the Australian National Travel Association and the Pacific Area Travel Association.

Travel

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Macao, the small Portuguese enclave on the South China Coast, has become more and more popular with tourists recently since the problem of how to get there quickly and easily from Hong Kong has been solved.

THE solution is the use of three new hydrofoil ships which skim the 40 miles from Hong Kong across the Pearl River Estuary in 75 minutes flat.

Each ship, with crew of five, can carry up to 72 passengers who pay a one-way fare of 15/7 Australian on week days and £AI/11/3 on holidays and weekends.

Besides the hydrofoils, a luxury ship, the SS Macao, capable of ac commodating 1,000 passengers, will make the trip in two hours this summer.

All this speed and comfort is a far cry from the vintage ferries which used to take nearly four hours to cross the island-dotted sea.

Travellers in a hurry can make the hop in 15 minutes in a four seater seaplane, operated by Macao Air Transport, the world’s smallest round trips airline. There are three roundtrips a day at a fare of less than £A4.

More Hotels Hand in hand with the stepped up transportation to Macao go other efforts to tempt the tourist. The colony, once short on hotel space, has just opened the Estoril, an inn atop a casino with a fine view of the peninsula and harbour. Rates begin at £A3/11/6 double—with a 20 per cent, discount for weekday guests.

Another modern inn is the Vila Tai Yip with spacious rooms, garden and pool.

Aside from new hotels and new casinos, Macao boasts a handsome greyhound racing stadium. Up on a hillside is a modern hospital, and along the waterfront is a new school.

Streets are tidy and patrolled by officers in white armbands and puttees. Gambling, a way of life in Macao, is now regulated, and gambling tables operate under the eye of the law.

Aside from games of chance, Macao has a good deal to offer the tourist in search of adventure.

There is Barrier Gate, the so-called '‘hole in the bamboo curtain” at the neck of the peninsula, where Portuguese troops face Chinese sentries. Through the Gate roll the products of Red China on rickshaws, bicycles and bamboo poles. Now and then, the border opens for a funeral procession, but the guards are ever alert for trickery.

Although the influence of Portugal is strong on the surface—witness the typical banyan-shaded mansions and such items as the bust of Vasco da Gama, the Barracks of Sao Francisco, and the portrait of Prince Henry— a deeper look reveals that Macao is 99 per cent. Oriental.

It is filled with the sights, sounds and smells of China.

Narrow streets are festooned with laundry and Buddhist prayer flags.

Pedicabs jingle, wooden clogs clop, noodle and lotus root vendors shout their wares. Shops display such medicinal items as dried snakeskins and powdered tusks.

Always Portuguese

Macao’s strategic harbour has long made Macao a favourite “plum in the Asiatic pudding”, and it has been coveted, from time to time, by the Dutch, British and Japanese.

But no flag other than the Portuguese has waved over it.

Macao is the oldest European settlement in the Far East and was a base for the spread of Christianity.

Not surprisingly, it still has its share of Christian churches and chapels, monasteries and convents, and ruins of such buildings.

One such ruin, the baroque facade of St. Paul’s Church, was built by Japanese Christians in 1602. When

the church was burned in 1835, no one bothered to rebuild it, and today legend has it that Macao will remain Portuguese as long as the charred facade stands.

Sacred to the Chinese is the Temple of Kum Yam, dedicated to the goddess of mercy during the Ming Dynasty. Chinese gamblers stop here to pray for luck before going to the casino. Out in the courtyard is the stone table where Caleb Cushing of the United States and Viceroy Yi of China signed the first commercial treaty between their two nations in 1844. Macao at that time was a thriving hub for the China trade.

The fortunes of Macao are on the

e for the first time since the unmunists came to power in Red lina. As a duty-free port, Macao ers the visitors many bargains in :h items as ivory, silk, teakwood, rcelain, jade and jewellery.

Lhe big local industry is fire ickers, with a factory, located for isons of safety, on the island of ipa off the coast.

Tourists from Hong Kong can ;e advantage of low transportation i hotel rates during the week, res rise on weekends, when re ents of Hong Kong head across i estuary to play roulette and i-tan.