Overshadowed by bustling Hong Kong, East Asia’s oldest colony has long been a well-kept secret, fascinating in itself. But there are also good practical reasons for making Macau a handy base for witnessing the changes that the next few years must bring to all of Asia. With wages only half those of Hong Kong’s, everything is correspondingly cheaper. Like its neighbor, Macau is a free port, with Hong Kong, one of the great bazaars of the East, less than an hour away. Attracted by lower prices and a less tense lifestyle, many Hong Kong people have begun to commute from Macau; visitors are now doing the same.
Hong Kong is heavily booked until July 1997 and will be chock-full at the time of the great changeover (4,000 journalists are reportedly flocking in), when no one knows exactly what will happen; but nothing is planned for Macau, which will still have more than two years of its four and a half centuries of calm to go. China is as easy to visit from Macau as from its apprehensive neighbor: Visas can be had without hassle, except for anyone admitting to being a spy, a counter-revolutionary, or a journalist-particularly the latter.
Macau has its own Chinese industrial city, Zhuhai, nearby; Guangzhou is an easy day-trip by bus. Much of China can now be reached by air from Macau less expensively than from Hong Kong: An open-return economy round-trip from Macau to Beijing, for example, is $500, as opposed to $590 from its bigger neighbor.
Visits: 156
