SARs

Not Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, but Special Administrative Region. That is the term for Hong Kong (the former British colony). It is also the term for Macau -a former Portugese colony that was returned to the Chinese at about the same time. It is 30km west of hong kong, and is mostly based on a peninsular attached to mainland china along with a couple of islands (Hong Kong is split between 1 island and a different peninsula. Though Hong Kong is much bigger than Macau, and has millions more people and hundreds of other (mostly empty) islands. Macau was given to Portugal in somewhat of a friendly way -Hong Kong was taken by the british as reward for beating the chinese in a couple of wars (along with bits of tens of other cities (similar to Berlin after WW2) that were forced to give a few miles of their land to the Brits, French, Americans, Germans etc during various other wars/activities).

This weekend I went to both. I've been to Hong Kong twice before and love the city. It is totally unique: romantic, buzzing, beautiful, crazy, noisy... a very emotional place. This time I went to one of the tiny islands that you would think is more like a piece of vietnam than hong kong (not a single car on the island and only a 20,000+ people living in 1-3 story houses or shacks. I also went to the northern part of hong kong, towards the Chinese border where the remains of many old villages and temples still exist surrounded by lush forest (and of course english speakers, english roads and english efficiency).

Yes, I did say English efficiency -you see you have to compare Hong Kong to China, where everything is a mess! Hong Kong has a great subway, great footpaths, great cultural heritage protection projects, great architecture.. Modern China had pretty much none of that until 5 years ago (now its building subways, restoring its heritage and thinking a bit about its new buildings -sometimes thinking too much!).

Macau is a strange place. Physically it looks quite mediterranean with many bright yellow churches or majestic mansions and road signs in portugese and chinese (and often in english too!); but under the surface no-one speaks portugese, you can use the hong kong dollar interchangably with the Macca Pataca, they drive on the left (like hong kong), there are very few europeans and most of the population is poor. Macau used to be more successful than Hong Kong 100 yrs ago.. but until 5 years ago was very poor.. most of its industries lost out to China (Macau is tiny with not much of anything!). It used to be a port city trading with Asia, but when I was there the only ports were for the ferries to China and HK, and for fishing boats. Aah, fishing, hardly the most profitable of industries :-)

But now Macau is changing..supper fast, at something like 20% GDP a year since the end of the Asia Financial crisis and its all because of gambling (which is illegal in China proper and many other chinese or muslim asian countries). But Macau is full of rubbishy housing intermingled with fancy european mansions; so they filled in land to build casinos and hotels.. lots of land. So much in fact that one of the bits of sea between 2 of the islands has pretty much disappeared under cranes and hotels. Now you can find fake volcanoes, impressive fountains, neon and Bentleys. Of course, you'll only find them in the new Macau.. the rest of the citizens survive on tourism and employment in the casinos or hotels.

Anyway, interesting place. Hong Kong though is awesome, especially since i went to one of their beaches and on some great hikes. Macau is ok for a day or two, but be warned -the only cheap hotels there are in the red-light district (don't ask....)