Little adventures

There are always little adventures – or mishaps – shall we say on any long trip. So far this year, mine really have been limited to working 70 weeks in Canada, meaning I couldn’t really enjoy Vancouver. That, and getting stuck on the US/Canada border for 4 hours bc they couldn’t be bothered putting on more than one staff member on duty over mothers day. Oh, and our 4 hour delay in Tasmania while accidentally getting stuck in a car rally. Ok – I’m clearly not the brightest of travellers.

Today, things got a little interesting. I decided to go to Macau for the day – which is another of China’s ‘Special Administrative Regions’. Basically, like Hong Kong, you don’t need a visa to enter this part of the country. They’ve got their own currency, and you get a ‘Macau’ stamp as you enter and leave the ‘country’. I now have four Macau stamps in my passport.

After wandering through the old streets of Macau (which, by the way, is one of the more interesting cities in the world – a weird mix of Portuguese and Chinese with a whole heap of tacky/kitschy casinos thrown in for good measure), I jumped on a bus back to the ferry terminal.

Only problem was, I was relying on my broken Spanish to ask questions of people who speak Cantonese and broken Portuguese. Not a great idea. I jumped on a bus to the ferry terminal, lined up with everyone to go through the ‘departures’ immigration desk, got my passport stamped, and was herded through the giant building along with about 10,000 other people. My suspicions were raised when the first non Chinese characters I saw were something along the lines of ‘Bienvenido a China’ (which can’t be right because that’s Spanish and Macau's 2nd language is Portuguese , but I don't know the word for welcome in Portuguese). So I tried to go back through the immigration ‘depart Macau’ gates I’d just passed through – but as I was already in China, I wasn’t allowed.

So there I was. No mans land. Literally. Technically in China, but really, just like that Tom Hanks character in 'The Terminal' (bloody hell that was a bad movie).

Somehow I made my dumb arse mistake understood (I have no idea how, bc really, I have 2 words of Portuguese, and none of Cantonese). So the immigration cop lead me through this dodgy back gate and back into the ‘enter Macau’ immigration area. I had a couple of eyebrows raised as to why I was trying to enter the country after I’d already arrived and left in the same day. I managed to convince him it was an honest mistake (“another stupid tourist”), and jumped in a cab to get to the right ferry terminal, just in time to go through immigration again – and get on my ferry back to Hong Kong.

Am rather glad to be back here now! Despite the fact everywhere is busier than Oxford St on a Saturday afternoon – I still feel a hell of a lot safer knowing I’m not going to be deported and can get on my plane to Melbourne in 36 hours!