Quick Day Trip to Zhongshan via Macau

At the Hengqin border inspection building looking at Zhuhai

After we finished lunch in Macau, we headed to Zhongshan via the Hengqin border check point.

Hengqin is actually an island near Macau's Taipa and Coloane districts, where many of the massive casino resorts are, such as Londoner, The Venetian, City of Dreams, Galaxy, and Studio City.

Hengqin is a special economic zone 

We passed by these expansive properties with dazzling architecture, in particular the Zaha Hadid-designed Morpheus with its exo-skeleton construction so that there are no internal pillars inside the 40-storey building.

What's interesting about Hengqin is that while it is technically Chinese land, the Macau Special Administrative Region has governance over this area, which is a special economic zone, much like what Shenzhen was over 45 years ago. 

After about a 25-minute ride we arrived at the Hengqin Border Inspection Building. Once inside we had to fill out the China arrival form and then the actual passport control process is straight forward: you step up to the first counter and it's a Macau border officer with a perspex gate. 

He had to wait because the counter right after is the China officer, who was still processing the person before us; once that person was completed, the gates opened and we were allowed to move to the China officer who took a while to process our passports.

Zhuhai has some very modern buildings

Those holding wui heung jing, or "return home permits" were very quickly processed, while others with passports take a while as they scan the passport, take pictures and scan fingerprints too. 

Once that we done we were basically in Chinese territory, specifically Zhuhai. A driver picked us up in an electric car called Aion Y Plus by GAC Aion from Guangzhou. I asked the driver about the mileage on electric cars, and he said it was around 400km on a full charge.

He explained there were many places to charge, and even after 20 minutes it's good to go for a couple of hours. While they are efficient, he said the battery will wear out after about five years, much like a smartphone battery, and by that point there is no point in replacing it -- it would be better to buy a new car.

It didn't seem very environmentally friendly... were there solutions in place for recycling and such?

The drive to Zhongshan took about 40 minutes, to a suburb area that has a gated community. 

A quiet gated community with a large garden

A lot of Hongkongers have bought property in Zhongshan for retirement, as real estate is much less expensive than Hong Kong. An unfinished flat around 1,000 sq ft costs around 2 million yuan (US$282,852), and about 60,000 yuan in renovations will make it ready for moving in. 

At one point prices for apartments doubled from speculation, but now the values have fallen back to the original prices, perhaps a reflection of the property sector in the doldrums these last few years.

The gated community we checked out is very quiet, mostly because many of the flats are not inhabited full time. There's a large beautiful garden in the middle, and has a very big swimming pool that is only open in the summer.

After a hearty dinner in a nearby restaurant, we took a car to get back via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge. The 40-minute ride took us to the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge Zhuhai Port, where we bought bus tickets and then again went through passport control to exit China.

At the Zhuhai border to catch the bus back to HK

Then we got on the next bus available which took us about 40 minutes to get to Hong Kong. We went on the bus at night so there wasn't much to see outside, or in the tunnel, which seemed to go on forever. We arrived at the Hong Kong border checkpoint, and individually passed through immigration and then waited for our bus. We were near the airport because we could see planes taking off nearby every other minute.

Of the whole trip, waiting for our bus was the longest holdup -- about 15 minutes -- before it arrived, picked us up and drove to Hong Kong Island, and then to North Point.

What an adventure -- Hong Kong-Macau-Zhuhai-Zhongshan-Zhuhai-Hong Kong in one day!