Places to avoid: Macau

I hear some people enthuse about Macau. It is a World Heritage Site! I see many comments praising the fine, ancient, colonial buildings. I have heard tell of the wonderful food, and the Portuguese flair that inspires this historic town.


I feel it is time to take your beer goggles off.


The team sent by the World Heritage Outfit to assess this rotting place may indeed have been a single blind man, desperate for intimacy. Pity him. He was probably cruelly taken advantage of by someone who just said they were an indecently-clad busty blond (38-29-36).

In reality they were a conniving resident called Paolo. The deep voice and hairy belly were not the result (as claimed), of emergency medical treatment, but because they were the front end of a part-owner of a Macau casino.

Pity Paolo. He probably has to pay protection money to the Triads, so understandably he is desperate to draw in more gullible punters to this blasted site. He must focus his mind on the sole purpose of removing the last cash from the pockets of people who probably can't afford to give any at all. If the creation, exploitation, and asset-stripping of their dreams can be assisted by a concocted veneer of attractive historic charm, then so be it.

I would like to tell you straight. There is no charm to Macau. None at all. Macau is the world's top gambling centre, outstripping the strip of Las Vegas, and it shows. It is the world's most soulless place, driven by the brutality of gambling, stinking of deceit, throwing up rotten displays of glitz to create dreams of wealth when in reality it is decay, abandon, and I had to suffer it for a full wretched eight hours, the final one of which could not come too soon.

But because I begin everyday with grit in my soul, we embarked on the lovely historic tour of the old town, the pride of which seems to be an old front of St Paul's Cathedral.


Obviously, a bit of old church wall confers history legitimacy on this miserable run-down town, and so it drew thousands of bussed in visitors in the 20 minutes I spent propped up against one of the iron-clad floodlights.

Each one of the visitors who were marched up the steps by sour-faced tour guides to click away on cameras in front of the thing bore an expression of forbearance and sufferance. One looked clinically depressed. I only saw one person smile in all the time I sat there. It was a young man following a blond woman. She looked ruthlessly addicted to old churches, and he looked ruthlessly addicted to the jiggle of her rear.

I would like to say things brightened considerably when Dig found us a place that could serve a vegetarian lunch, but I am sorry to say it was on the main tourist drag in Starbucks. (He could not extract a straightforward lunch from anyone unless it had dead animal or sea slime draped over the top.)

Well, you may say I got my deserves in this corporate chain, because I was abused with appalling service and a cold hot chocolate drink. I declined the cheese sandwich. It had clearly seized up from the strain of trying to look like a sandwich, and had reverted to its original form of two sawn up squares of peeling cardboard propped against a slice of yellow formica.

Then we visited the Museum.

Here the town shows how truly, madly, deeply, it already had given up its soul to absurdly betting on anything, from the Blackjack table to two water drips running down a window. Long before the Portuguese got here probably, and long before the greedy hand-rubbing property developers turned it into a lucrative playground for the gambling-obsessed and money-laundering needy.

Well, what else is there to bet on when you are sat round the bamboo hut, having eaten all the pandas, but crickets, fighting?

I leave only vitriol and take only photos. Of the merciless contest arena for the crickets, the tickling sticks (which drive them to fury, apparently), and the coffin for the loser.



If that alone is not bizarre enough to lure you to squander your meagre income, remember that this place is run by people who think it's a good idea to turn the streets into a race track every November. It makes sense if you consider this is an opportunity to gamble whether you are going to be knocked over and killed by a Formula motor sports team, or not.

I think I should speak bluntly now.

I hated Macau and I never want to step foot in this charmless place ever again. If I must, it will be for the same reason I did this time. The visa run.


Finally - but please do not consider this an addendum - I apologise to all the lovely people who live here, who are perhaps as happy, sad, joy-filled or miserable in life as anywhere else on Planet Earth.

Wiki tells me your literacy rate is 93.5%! Don't let the British government know that. Michael Gove will visit you and before we can say Jack Robinson, he will think it a good idea to make Britain worse than it already is. Poker cards will be delivered along with milk for the children.

And I probably did not do your old colonial buildings justice, this is true. I am sure many are there, valued by the residents, enjoyed and preserved as best as can be. I can detect the mix, elegantly arched, delightfully peeling, and cherished with new paint.


I fear for those that are evocatively non-restored, waiting for death. Or conversion into a new themed casino. It amounts to the same thing.

Hong Kong tourism!

Visit Lamma Island!

Fancy a natural haven with no roads and no cars? Where you can hike between ancient fishing villages, over green mountains, through lush groves of banana trees, to reach quiet swimming coves and golden beaches?

Place your footsteps in Lamma Island - a South China idyll - and you could truly believe here is one sanctuary of Hong Kong uniquely dedicated to conservation of our natural and beautiful habitat.

We're soon to change all that!

In only a few short years, as one of the privileged few, you can visit our new Hong Kong tourist attraction - the BAROQUE!

Reserved for the seriously wealthy - the BAROQUE development on Lamma will boast 500-berth marina to moor your yacht, superior concrete harbour facilities, state-of-the-art shopping mall, exclusive hotel, yet more upmarket seafood restaurants, and loads, loads more concrete.

This superior development project will go beyond any point of logic you've ever known before!

Designed to position Lamma Island as a rich man's paradise, you'll be able to use our seriously smart facilities to demonstrate how you have cash to burn.

Imagine, at what ridiculous expense, you could be that exceptional person able to take advantage of our planned redesignation of the island's Site of Special Scientific Interest into Only-for-the-Rich Concrete Deployment Zone.

Consider the possibilities! On this tiny getaway island with no roads, we have plans to build a modern, fully-functioning, and superbly designed car park.

Helicopter in your Porsche, and proudly park it in the space we'll reserve for only 135 private cars. Remember, you won't be able to drive anywhere! This unique and protected island has no roads!

See how you can boast to the world what Hong Kong can do!

Yet not only are we dedicated to development which is wasteful, destructive, and bizarre, you can trust us to truly fulfil the yearnings of your romantic soul.

You can find your satisfaction here, on Sham Wan Beach.

You know that lady of your dreams? The special someone who wears those shoes made for lying down about the town?

Dream yourself, showing her your gift of a lifetime - the pleasure of lying flat with her shoes on the exclusive Sham Wan Beach - a site the World Wildlife Fund for Nature once identified as a special world breeding ground for the endangered green turtle.

Imagine how these rare and beautiful creatures once paddled thousands of miles here, to this spot, and sought to nest.

Rest here to listen as the waters lap against the concrete harbour, and recall how sweet, fresh, and delicious they were cooked to your taste.

Come experience the world of the future. The BAROQUE on Lamma Island.

Showing completely how truly Hong Kong is dedicated to economic gain for a privileged few, combined with the best in environmental destruction.








Living Lamma.
WWF.
Photos show demonstration in Central.
Strangely apt.
Popular opinion says NO to the Baroque.
The petition.

Farne Islands

Obligatory. My mini twitchers have high-maintenance puffin needs.

I find it absorbing, looking at the different photographs taken by the different members of the family. Evidence: the children's camera. I can guarantee, 800 pictures of puffins, shags and the other ones.



This year, seals, too!


Clearly, my construct and search for memory of these events is very different from everyone else's. They snap away with puffinspuffinspuffins and I am all Keep still I want to remember your shoes.


And rock. Yes, I like to photograph the lovely Farne rocks, too.



Then I take a few more hundred pictures of the children in bird-watching and bird-photographing poses.




Bizarrely, I am still in love with them. Even though some moments I would like to throw them out of a top floor window of a castle or push them off a boat into the North Sea, then laugh at the splash.


But I think I should acquire a better camera. I'm still using my old phone one and it is barely surviving. The battery drops out in awkward places.


I also discover I have photographed the extending telephoto lens of the man standing next to me. I have no idea why. At this point in life, wishful thinking, probably.

Who owns Hong Kong?

This is a question we amuse ourselves with, when we are not boiling geckos, or peering down the bathroom plughole wondering about the maintenance of the island sewer system.

My best guess is that the entire kit and caboodle is managed by a quiet consortium of powerful interests and family dynasties, and that this management of competition filters right down to the choice we happy shoppers make between Wellcome and City Super.

At the top, I bet there's a Mr Big who sits plotting his portfolio behind a desk atop the IFC shopping mall. I bet another Mr Big overlooks the Jockey Club, stroking a horse head. And don't forget the Mr Big selecting the construction companies best suited to harbour infill.

Of course we're told that Hong Kong is not actually governed by the Bigs families with all their shared interests spread between malls, construction and luxury brands; we're told that the government of this very special region is in the care of the Legislative Council.

I'd like to have a naive faith that it was true. Then again, all land in Hong Kong is owned by the government. So really, that looks to me like another set of Mr Bigs, who administer an extensive range of property portfolios for investment and return, and whose actions might sometimes be thought of as indistinguishable from those of unscrupulous property developers and speculators.

Anyway, this is all very miserable and humourless and bleak, isn't it? I bet you're thinking, thank goodness this isn't a Hong Kong politics blog.

Maybe it's a long way round of saying that I am very glad to be in no danger of desiring permanent Hong Kong residency. As I stare down the bleak shopping malls listening to the tinkly music of non-offensive death, I think, being a resident here probably means having very little opportunity to impact on anything, or even being able to take part in any action likely to lead to a breach of the peace. Disappointing and unsatisfactory.

Which leaves the only option for a temporary visitor: don't think too much, wait till you get home to pick a fight and, meanwhile, slap down some legal tender to choose between ice creams. Egg nog or Christmas pudding?

Maybe we should have dressed up

It's Mardi Gras in Hong Kong!

To my foreigner consciousness, those words, Mardi Gras, roll around my head, bursting with imperative to be mad, bad and dangerous.

Am I alone on that one? Doesn't a carnival mean a little feeling that you turn the world upside down and experience the excess, disorder and abandon your body can visit on earth before you must become penitent and chaste and starve yourself into divine submission?

Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm mixing it up with bulimia. Maybe I'm just being miscued by those inviting, come hither words, Mardi Gras, hoping for naughtiness. In any case, today I find out, at the corporate sponsored event in Victoria Park, that whatever those words Mardi Gras mean over there, they don't mean the same over here, in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, those words might mean a corporate responsibility to reinforce community values; a duty to bring harmony and well-being to the general public through good works.

Which means we do indeed enjoy the sight of giant puppets, rod puppets, dramatic costumes, headdresses and hand-dyed silk flags.







We also are permitted blue face paint, kid arts in the park, craft stalls and many congratulatory speeches from the organisers, participants and CEO, relayed to you via a giant TV screen.

We also enjoy a highly controlled and organised queuing system with the maintenance you can expect from an army of old ladies who sweep the grass to remove the item dropped from your pocket in your thoughtless anti-community moment. Feel reprimanded and humbled, you miserable selfish individual.


And because the event involves children, do not, for one moment, hint at disorder, lack of control, undignified behaviour, wild abandon or danger. Not at any point. Nope. Unless you count the mud patch, which is cordoned off by security tape.


Someone might slip.


Everyone knows mud is dangerous.


I really, really, would like to think they are being ironic.

But of course they are not. This is corporate Mardi Gras, controlled China style. It is corporate China with social conscience: one country, two systems. Making money involves public works, charity, children, working with artists in schools and demonstrating all in public spaces, so it is for the community good. And it provides a useful front for the fact that there are some very wealthy people here, making a lot of money.

Down on the ground, in amongst the crowd, the day whispers of what I miss. Unpredictability, danger, foolhardy unwisdom, the possibility of doing everything your mother said, don't do that.

Anyway, in the interests of our cultural education, we stay for the day. Shark puts up her own display of anti authority behaviour when told to watch the very interesting and lovely dancers.


And for the rest of the time, we just look a bit like this.

Welcome to Holy Island, Lindisfarne

The road disappears, the tarmac's under the tide.

The Priory ruin is roofless, the wall's fallen down.

The cafe is closed, the van's shuttered up.

The shop empties at noon, the door sends you away.

The tourists have departed, the shuttle bus stopped.

The castle toilets are locked, the key back in the drawer.

The flowers aren't in bloom, the gardeners have left.

The lime kilns discarded, the gate stays shut, bolted.

The island's cut off.

The gospels are gone.