I’ve got to be honest, my only prior knowledge about Macau was gleaned from James Bond movies, namely it’s appearance in The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) starring Roger Moore, and Skyfall (2012) starring Daniel Craig. In both these films, it’s the casinos which feature front and centre. So, on a recent visit to east Asia, I was keen to learn more and planned to visit Macau from Hong Kong. It turns out that there’s a lot more to Macau than just casinos.
Food features heavily here – Macau pork chop buns, Lord Stowe’s egg tarts and Portuguese food at Fernando’s so go hungry. Then walk it off as you explore beautiful old Macau, and then modern casino hotel world. Visit the traditional fishing village of Coloane, check out the A-Ma Temple, and save the best for last…Giant Pandas!
Macau sits on the banks of the Pearl River Delta on the southern coast of China, connected to the mainland city of Zhuhai. Macau is a Special Administrative Region of China and is the only place in China where gambling is legal. Macau is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The city is made up of the Macau Peninsula, and the areas of Taipa and Coloane which were previously islands but are now connected by the land area of Cotai, after an extensive land reclamation project.
In its position at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta, Macau was a key location on the ancient Silk Road.
The Portuguese arrived in 1517, and established a permanent settlement here by 1577, paying a yearly rent to China for its use. Macau was formally recognised as a Portuguese colony by 1887, albeit under Chinese sovereignty. It then became a major trading port. As with the history of Hong Kong, a strong China negotiated the return of the territory, and Macau was handed back to China in 1999.
It is of no surprise then that Macau is blend of Portuguese and Chinese architecture, customs and culture. Today, Macau receives 40 million visitors per year, with most visitors coming from mainland China to gamble; this probably explains why the James Bond films featured The Macau Palace, an iconic floating casino, and the Floating Dragon Casino. That said, there is plenty of tourist traffic to Macau from Hong Kong.
Macau has its own currency - the Macanese pataca (MOP). However, MOP money is not accepted in Hong Kong, so use it all up in Macau!
Most shops and restaurants accept Hong Kong Dollars (HK$) and Yuan (CNY) at 1:1 parity, despite the different exchange rates. Visa, Mastercard and AMEX are widely accepted at hotels and tourist destinations. Locals use Union pay, Alipay and WeChat.
Cash is preferred in taxis, smaller shops and restaurants, and in the city outside the casino areas where ATMs sparser; so, before you travel to Macau from Hong Kong, make sure you take some cash out.
There are plenty of ways to travel to Macau from Hong Kong, including by bus or taxi, but the high-speed ferry is the most popular way to travel to Macau from Hong Kong.
You’ll need your passport to get to Macau from Hong Kong, although no visa is required for UK, EU, USA and Canada citizens.
The high-speed ferry leaves from the from the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal at the Shun Tai Centre in Sheung Wanon on Hong Kong Island and costs HK$170 (circa £16.50). You can access the ferry terminal from the MTR Sheung Wan Station and ferries run every 30 minutes.
As you leave Hong Kong, you will pass through immigration, before having your ticket inspected. You are then allocated a seat and can board the ferry thereafter.
One hour later, your ferry will arrive in Macau the Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal (near the Macau Peninsula) or at the Taipa Ferry Terminal (near the Coati Strip and big casinos). You must pass through immigration again on arrival.
If you’d prefer someone else to organise the travel to Macau from Hong Kong for you, then consider booking a tour through a provider such as Get Your Guide:
Use the Macau Pass, a pre-paid smart card like the Octopus Card in Hong Kong. It also has a digital alternative called the MPay.
Cash is accepted on buses, but you’ll need the exact amount.
Heading to a casino might be top of your list of things to do in Macau, however, top of our Macau to do list was to sample a famous pork chop bun, Macau’s most iconic dish. They say that the best pork chop buns are from Tai Lei Loi Kei at 35 Rua Correia da Silva in Taipa Village, a 10-minute taxi ride (15 MOP) from the Ferry Terminal. There is a bus and taxi rank as soon as you exit the Ferry Terminal.
So, what’s so good about Macau’s pork chop buns at Tai Lei Loi Kei, I hear you ask? Here are the highlights:
They have been selling the same dish for over 50 years (always a good sign).
The quality of the ingredients is high - they use a boned-in Brazilian pork tenderloin chop with a perfect fat/meat ratio..
The use a secret Macanese marinade that has been hand-pounded into the chop, so every bite bursts with flavour.
They use fresh buns called Marraquetas which are baked over a wood-fire with premium Japanese flour until they are crusty outside and soft inside.
There is skill in frying the chop perfectly, so it is succulent.
You can order an ice-cold coca cola to accompany this dish - it’s a match made in heaven.
The result?
It’s fast food, but fast food but on another level. In fact, it was so good that we went back the next day. The owner, who was pleased to see us again, recommended trying the pork chop with a pineapple bun. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, they did – there are not sufficient superlatives to describe this salty sweet marriage, I had reached a culinary nirvana. You will have to try one for yourself to understand!
After lunch, head out to explore the pretty Taipa fishing village. It has a central market square with narrow streets running off it, full of beautiful pastel-coloured colonial buildings, shops and restaurants; many of them with rooftop bars. Walking down Cunha Street is a photographer’s dream – murals, bicycles lined up against beautifully coloured historic buildings, locals chatting, modern art, and much more. Visiting Macau from Hong Kong, provided contrasting vistas and vibes.
Our accommodation for the night was the IHG Holiday Inn on the Rua de Pequim, Macau – a perfectly functional business hotel with a nice bar in the lobby. However, there are plenty of other options available on Booking.com
From there, you can walk to the Ruins of Saint Paul’s, an early 16th century Jesuit church; only the frontage remains following a fire in 1835. The Church is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with the entire historic centre of Macau.
From Saint Paul’s, walk through the old city to St. Dominic’s Church, built in the late 16th century with a striking yellow baroque exterior. You could be forgiven for thinking that you were in Lisbon, Portugal, given the style and colour of the churches, European-style administrative buildings, urban squares (such as the Senado Square) and courtyards.
After exploring parts of old Macau from Hong Kong, you can contrast it with a walk around the 20m high bronze Kun Lam Statue on the waterfront. As you turn around 360 degrees, the skyline is incredible, with enormous glimmering casino hotels – Hotel Fortuna, the Wynn Macau, and the famous Grand Hotel Lisboa with its 5 Michelin culinary stars. In fact, Grand Hotel Lisboa (see Cover Photo) is the tallest building in Macau with 47 floors in a very striking shape – is it a lotus flower? or a Brazilian carnival headdress which the architects say they took inspiration from? All I can say is that, particularly at night, this golden tower takes pride of place on the Macau skyline.
Many visitors go directly from the ferry terminal to the casinos on the free shuttle buses, so having dedicated some time to explore the cultural elements of Macau, we decided to see where all the Chinese nationals were going in Cotai.
I was expecting something like Las Vegas, and it was very much like that, living up to its moniker the ‘Las Vegas of the East’. The Venetian Macao Hotel dominates the skyline with 10.5 million square feet of floor space; then there’s the Parisian Macao with a replica Eiffel tower, Wynn Palace, Studio City Macau (Disney themed), The Londoner Macao, MGM Cotai and so it goes on.
We went into the Parisian Macao to go up the Eiffel tower which cost 118 MOP to get to the floor 37 Observation Deck. There are floors upon floors of boutique shopping and restaurants. We then walked through the Venetian Macao and found, yes, more shopping and eateries. We walked across to The Londoner and found yet more shopping. The common theme – full on bright neon lights, gambling tables, fine dining, spas and oodles of retail therapy – why would guests want to leave? You can even go on a gondola ride around ‘Venice’ if the desire takes you.
This is all very reminiscent of a trip to Las Vegas, USA, a couple of years ago to celebrate a key wedding anniversary. I didn’t realise that Macau would have the same hotel brands and set up where you can get lost in these humongous casino hotels.
We didn’t go into the casinos, but if you do want to try your luck, then all you need is a valid passport. Games played include blackjack, baccarat, craps, fan tan, pai gow poker, and roulette. The casinos accept MOP and HK$.
Our goal for the evening was to eat at Ferando’s Restaurant on the southern side of Coloane Island, near Hac Sa beach. We caught the 26A bus from outside the Parisian Macau. It cost 11 MOP (exact change required) for a 45-minute journey to Praia de Hac Sa which is the end of the line. Conveniently, the restaurant is then directly in front of you.
Fernando’s offers classic Portuguese food with an emphasis on seafood. We started with a cold beer outside in a pretty garden, before moving into the restaurant for Fernando style clams, favas (bean stew), sea bream, grilled pork ribs (with chips), and suckling pig. It wasn’t the cheapest meal that we had on our trip to Macau from Hong Kong, but it was very tasty and I would recommend it. As would Anthony Bourdain who also visited on his No Reservations episode in Macau (2011).
The 26A Bus back to Macau stops outside the Old Hotel Lisboa, giving you the opportunity to pop in for a nightcap if you wish. The hotel feels like something out of the 1970s (so Roger Moore era James Bond); an excellent way to end a day in Macau from Hong Kong.
As a complete contrast to Portuguese and Chinese architecture, gambling and pork chop buns, you can head to The Macau Giant Panda Pavillion in Seac Paid Van Park on Coloane Island. It opens at 10,00am and it’s free entry.
There are 4 giant pandas who are the stars of the show, plus red panadas, lemurs, monkeys, and parrots. I had never seen a panda in real life, and Tom at Smyto Creative, our other writer, had beaten me to it earlier this year with Australia’s only two giant pandas in Adelaide. So I was very excited.
Once, on a trip to Edinburgh, when Edinburgh Zoo had two giant pandas on loan from China (between 2011 to 2023), we took the kids there to see them; we queued for hours in the rain but sadly the pandas stayed hidden away, so this was unfinished business.
Here, the two pandas we saw were not camera shy at all and looked to be having a great time – eating bamboo, getting up, falling over, swaggering over to the water bath, gulping water, getting up, falling over again, heading back to bamboo, and repeat. Not much happened but it was strangely captivating.
Flash photography, chatting or distracting the pandas will get you a firm tap on the shoulder and a guard holding a ping pong bat in your face telling you to be quiet!
It was refreshing to be seeing old Macau again after the casinos of Cotai, and we headed by taxi (as we were short on time) to Coloane fishing village on the far southern tip of the island.
Coloane is off the beaten track with a waterfront square and fisherman homes on stilts selling dried fish. It is also the birthplace of Lord Stow’s Portuguese egg tart. You’ll see Lord Stow’s shops throughout Macau, and this take on a Portuguese Pasteis de nata is more egg than custard, and as shop slogan declares these tarts are a “little piece of heaven”. We brought a half dozen fresh out the oven with remarkably good coffees to accompany them and sat on the waterfront overlooking the South China Sea.
Wait for some time before biting into the egg tarts, if they are fresh out of the oven as they are hotter than the sun.
If you can fit one final stop in before heading back to Hong Kong, stop at the A-Ma Temple at Sao Lourenco which was built in 1488 by Ming dynasty fisherman and pre-dates the Portuguese settlers to Macau.
The temple is built into the Barra hillside and has a gate pavilion, memorial arch, prayer hall, hall of benevolence, hall of Guanyin and a Buddhist pavilion allowing the worship of different deities within one temple. When we got to the temple, they were lighting up the sandalwood coil incense, so the scent and smoke were wafting down the hill which was lovely.
Worshippers were making offerings of fruit and prayers, children were lighting incense and bowing respectfully. It was a serene experience after yesterday’s visit to the Cotai casinos.
In closing
Visiting Macau from Hong Kong was a definite hit. I would thoroughly recommend it – whether you want the James Bond casino experience or something altogether different.
I wish we’d had more time in Macau, to dive deeper into the history, perhaps with a guide for this fascinating place. In addition, the food options were amazing, so if you’re a foodie, Macau is worth a trip.
True confession time: we may have revisited Tai Lei Loi Kei for one more pork chop bun before heading back to the ferry terminal, and it did not disappoint!
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