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!

The Non-Casino Macau Tour

Even the stairs are painted with cats in Macau!

After lunch at Miramar in Macau, my relatives took me on a stroll in Coloane Village. First stop was to get half a dozen egg tarts from Lord Stow's. As you approach the unassuming shop, you can smell the butter baking in the oven. 

Lord Stow's famous egg tarts

The staff have boxes of freshly-baked egg tarts ready to go and were doing a brisk business when we arrived. It wasn't busy, but a small steady stream of customers.

Then we walked along the waterfront, and in the distance you could see Zhuhai, like the distance between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. 

As we walked along the side streets, we spotted many colourful murals, many painted by art students. It's a great and inexpensive way to bring some vibrancy and character in the neighbourhood, and many visitors take pictures too. 

There are also many green thumbs in the area because in front of people's homes they had small gardens and made the most of the space they had with lots of potted plants and flowers that beautified the streets.

At one small shop selling souvenirs and coffee was a sign that said "Macau Cultural and Creative Ice Cream". We were curious to find out what this meant and asked the two staff there. One came over to where we were and pulled out the freezer to show us Macau buildings in different colours on a popsicle stick. So that's what they meant by cultural ice cream! Clever! They were 25MOP each so we didn't get one...

This pond will be filled with water lilies later

Then we walked down a mosaic staircase to Wetland in Avenida da Praia, which has a view of the giant casinos in the area: Galaxy, Morpheus, City of Dreams, Venetian and Paris to name a few. There's a giant shallow pond where later in the summer it will be filled with water lilies and lily pads. A few fish were swimming in the muddy water, but it was extremely shallow for them. 

At the other end of the pond were restored homes of Macanese officials. We were able to visit one of them that was furnished with antiques to give visitors an idea of what life was like in the 19th century.

For example the families were so religious that they had prayer benches in their bedrooms, and had religious effigies of Christ, or paintings of Christ around the home.

Nearby was also the former IEC Long Firecracker Factory. The complex is made up of several old and abandoned buildings, though no one is allowed inside them. They are one or two storey concrete huts and in between them are barriers built to hopefully prevent the spread of explosions in case any of the firecrackers were set off accidentally. 

Fireworks were manufactured in these buildings

Apparently at one point Taipa was home to five fireworks factories, but by the 1980s production slowed down. This village was set up in 1925 and closed down in 1984.

While it was a hot and humid walk, it was a great way to see the other side of Macau (the non-casino version)!