---
type: Place
title: Macau
description: A 33 km² special administrative region with a Portuguese official language almost nobody speaks — 400 years of history, the world's highest bungee jump, and a Vegas strip next to a UNESCO old town.
tags: [macau, china, portugal, history, unesco, casinos, food, bungee]
coordinates: {lat: 22.1758, lng: 113.5514}
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
---

# Macau

A special administrative region of [China](/countries/china.md) on the south
coast, population around 700,000 in about 33 square kilometres — small enough
that locals joke it's the size of a major city's airport. Like
[Hong Kong](/places/hong-kong.md) it runs its own currency, legal system,
immigration and passports.

Harry's framing is that it is a European-Asian hybrid he has seen nowhere else,
and that the casinos are what everyone knows and the least interesting thing
about it.

## How it got Portuguese

- **1557**: the Portuguese are permitted by the Ming dynasty to set up a trading
  post — the gateway for European traders who wanted Chinese tea, porcelain and
  silk. It was hugely profitable and they were confined to this small patch;
  China never gave them more.
- **1800s**: Portugal gains international recognition of the territory, which
  China did not accept.
- **1999**: handed back to China under one country, two systems, keeping its own
  legal system, immigration and currency.
- **The name is a mistake.** The Portuguese landed by a temple and asked locals
  what the place was called; the locals answered about the temple. It stuck.

**Portuguese is an official language and roughly 5% of people speak it.** The
signage is bilingual everywhere and the spoken language is Cantonese.

## Getting there

- **From Hong Kong airport without entering Hong Kong**: the E2 transfer desk,
  then a bus across the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau bridge. Harry rates it as very
  easy and never clears Hong Kong immigration.
- **The bridge is the world's longest bridge-and-tunnel system** — 55 km, and he
  gives the cost as $20 billion.
- **Also by ferry, or by air** — Macau has an airport, just far less
  well-connected than Hong Kong's.
- **Visa-free for UK passports.**
- **Cars carry two or three number plates** — one for Macau, one for the
  mainland, sometimes one for Hong Kong.

## Macau Tower

338 metres, and the site of **the world's highest bungee jump**. 3,000 (Hong
Kong or Macanese dollars) including the video. Harry rated his own reluctance a
ten out of ten and did it anyway.

## The old town

The historic centre has been a **UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2005**.

- **The Ruins of St Paul's** — the façade of a church built over roughly 40
  years, in stone and marble, alongside a university. Harry is careful to correct
  the assumption: it wasn't destroyed in a war between the Portuguese and the
  Chinese, it burned down. Fire safety, he notes, is what has taken most of the
  world's monuments.
- **Senado Square and around**, where the Portuguese met the Qing government to
  make decisions, and where Harry says you could believe you were in Lisbon —
  right up until the Chinese New Year decorations.
- It is extremely crowded. His line: a Guinness record for the most people
  photographing one thing at once.

## Taipa and Coloane

- **Taipa** is where the real Portuguese buildings are — low-rise, no
  skyscrapers, and Harry's favourite part to walk. Café Von K here had a queue
  round the block, for beef stew, which he assumes went viral.
- **Coloane village** is quieter and has fewer tourists, and is where you go for
  **Lord Stow's Bakery**, the original Portuguese egg tart shop. Harry's verdict:
  much less sweet than the Portuguese version and far more eggy. Staff were
  uneasy about filming.

## Everyday Macau

- **A traditional tea house** — *cha* for tea, *casa* for house, which is the
  language fusion in one word. Harry calls it a must-do and a proper heritage
  experience.
- **The wet market**: dried oyster, dried shrimp, dried squid, tofu. Sellers who
  speak no English at all and are delighted anyway.
- **Temple fortune-telling.** Twelve shrines, one per zodiac animal; you worship
  at yours, pay for a blessing, light incense and candles in a prescribed order,
  and hand red envelopes of money to the temple staff. Harry was told his year
  was bad but not the worst.
- **The Cotai Strip** is the Vegas comparison — the Venetian, a scaled-down
  Eiffel Tower, an imitation Trafalgar Square with a British telephone box, and
  an Apple store beside all of it. Harry finds the British nostalgia hardest to
  process: Chinese visitors treat UK culture as cool, and he says he no longer
  does.
- **Alipay may not work** on a foreign account here, unlike the mainland.
- **It is hyper-walkable.**

## A note Harry leaves in

A temple seller hands him something for free, and his host jokes that it's white
privilege. Harry agrees on camera — foreigner privilege, at least — rather than
editing it out.

## Harry's tips

- **Come for the history, not the casinos.** Four hundred years of it, and the
  casinos are what everybody already knows.
- **Transfer straight through from Hong Kong airport** if Macau is your first
  stop — you never enter Hong Kong.
- **Go to Coloane for the egg tarts**, not the crowded old-town branches.
- **Do the tea house.**
- **See a local take you round.** The temple ritual in particular is unusable
  without someone to walk you through the order.

## Source

- [I Went to One of the Wealthiest and Most Advanced Cities](/videos/T263hFcMBoA.md) —
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T263hFcMBoA