macau started with a game, but not a game in the casino, which you might expect if you are not familiar with my totally gamble free disposition. yet the game that hakim and i had to play to enter macau was the good old “good cop – bad cop” and we had to pay it in all earnest to win hakim's entry into the country.

as hakim holds a bangladeshi passport he needs a visa for pretty much any country he wants to travel to. macau seemed an easy option with both the immigration webpage and the chinese embassy in singapore assuring us that he can get a visa on arrival. yet on approaching the visa booth at the immigration checkpoint we found a young cantonese woman who looked as if she had gone through hard core communist training camp in a far corner of the mother country china. she refused to say any unnecessary word, especially not anything that could be classified as a polite greeting or a simple please or thanks, and she was certainly not going to be fooled into smiling at anybody, especially not a person that her culture would condemn as a black devil and whom she treated accordingly. hakim was, as usual, all politeness and handed over every document after it was demanded for in a sharp bark until she asked for cash money. we both asked in bewilderment what money she was referring to and she barked 5000 mop, an equivalent of 1000 sgd to which i naturally replied that this is the 21st century and that we are naturally travelling with a lovely little plastic card known by the name of master. the lady simply barked no good. i asked her why we need to show 5000 mop cash and her reply was “the rules” while handing hakim the document that indicated visa refused.

at this point i turned into bad cop and hissed at her that she can forget us signing this document and that she ought to show me the rule that she so happily quotes in writing, as it is neither on their official webpage nor was it mentioned by the chinese embassy. her english seemed inefficient to cope with such an array of vocabulary so i simply said i wanted to see her boss. her call to someone in which she yabbered on in cantonese about kuay po to someone produced two young officers who were certainly not the boss. they equally did not seem to deem it necessary to address the black devil and kuay po in any form and listened instead to the insistent yabbering of the hard core communist training camp girl blatantly ignoring my repetitive suggestions that if they want to go back to medieval ages i would be quite happy to produce the cash required as soon as they point me into the direction of any atm machine. instead the officers said that my money is irrelevant as hakim needs the money, i pointed out to them that we happened to be married and that my money therefore is everything to hakim. when they still referred to their unwritten rule i demanded in furious terms to see their real boss, nothing else would do.

finally the gate opened and we were asked to follow the two male officers - not that the used any words to communicate that information, they simply opened the gate, grunted and pointed along the corridor. when we finally reached the immigration office at the other end of the terminal the boss came out of the office to tell us that according to their rules hakim needs to show 5000 mop in cash and as he does not have them he is refused entry. his exact words were the money that your friend has does not count. then pointing at me he said “you can stay” and pointing at hakim he said “you go back to singpore”. at this moment i exploded, and had the so called officer in charge understood more english i am sure i would have been arrested for calling him a frontal lobotomised racist, but he did not, so i told him in no uncertain terms that i will not go anywhere without hakim who happens to be my husband, and that therefore my money is his money, and that unless he can show me a written copy of his so called rules that are neither stated on their very own immigration webpage, nor specified by the chinese embassy in singapore he can quite frankly stick them where the sun does not shine, as rules that are not put on paper do not exist. after this outburst the officer appeared a little less cocky saying that nobody had told him that we were married to which i replied that this is because he is too racist to listen to what people have to say, as we had highlighted the fact to every single officer, including himself, a million times. hakim, in his good cop role walked up to the officer in charge and asked him quietly “sir, just tell me how i can get the visa” to which he replied “there is one way, but please ask your wife to stop shouting at me”. hakim explained to the officer that i was very angry because i had gone through great length to get all the information on the visa requirements only to encounter trouble when arriving and that i would never enter macau without him, but that i could go to an atm to draw the missing money as i had offered to do a million times before. this time the officer in charge seemed a little more inclined to listen and eventually told hakim that he ought to hold on to my passport while i should follow his officer to the atm in the arrival hall. now can anybody explain to me why this ha not possible when i first suggested it half an hour earlier? so off we went, i drew the money from the atm, returned, showed it to the officer, the hardcore communist training girl got a bit of a talking to, hakim got his 10 day visa, and we all moved to to small talk pretending to be the best of friends while the minions stamped our passports. so much stress, just because some people cannot see beyond someone's skin colour and refuse to engage their brain. anyway at least, based on our characters, hakim and i fall naturally into our respective good cop bad cop roles, which helped to jostle the far to rigid immigration brains. maybe someone might even bother to including the so called important rules online after this.

as the airport bus only takes exact change we opted for a taxi who took us into town, but did not know the san va hotel that we had booked. he dropped us inn the correct road and after much walking around we found the place only to be totally disappointed; when the hotel webpage said historic building do not compare they meant more like run down but do not judge. the run down aspect of the place was bearable, the fact that the historic substance of the hotel meant that the rooms were only separated from each other by a 2.5m high wooden partition, which grated zero privacy was bad, and the numerous bedbug bites i sported the next morning were unsupportable. hence our first act was to search for a new abode, which proved harder than expected; macau thrives largely on weekend tourists from hong kong and mainland china, thus lots of the hotels where still occupied when we visited them on sunday morning. the other problem was that the places were often either far too expensive for our liking or far too shabby. after checking virtually any pensoa, vila, and hotel in the area we finally settled for the vila universal in the same road. the place tastelessly decorated in glitzy china kitsch tiles, plastic ceiling boards and deco, but they gave us a fantastic deal by offering us a double room for less than the price of the single because we were staying for more than a week. in the end we agreed on a room rate of 200 mop for the week and 250 for the weekend, which was much more than we had intended to pay, but which gave us a big room with two windows and en suit bathroom. compared to the shared facility singe bedbug infested bed in san va for 120 this was heaven. sadly enough we had missed our check out time and thus had to spend a second night in bedbug hell which left me with 25 bedbug bites in total before we shifted first thing on monday morning!

the best thing about the extensive hotel hunt was our discovery of the lok kuan cafe in rua de ponte e horta, at the place with the same name, right next to the london hotel. this friendly little corner cafe that serves coffee, breads, cakes, and noodle soup till noon became our daily breakfast haunt. and for most of our stay we set off after breakfast to explore the numerous historic sites of macau. starting with the nearest we visited the ones immediately south of the rua da felicidade first; st joseph church, st augustine's square and my name sake st lourenco church. the next day saw us crossing the main road to explore the northern half of the centre around sendado square, cathedral place, st paul's ruins, mount fortress and na tcha temple where we witnessed the na tcha festival.

in the following days we ventured further afield to guia fort, the protestant cemetery, kun iam temple, lou lim ieoc garden, and mong ha fortress in the north and the moorish barracks, a-ma temple, and barra hill in the south. despite the frequent rain we had seen pretty much all of macau's historic sites and parks by the following friday as the island is small enough for per pedes exploration. my favourites were quite probably the a-ma temple for its setting and atmosphere, the mount fortress and guia fort for their views and lou lim ieoc gardens for its serenity. yet what really makes macau special is its european flair coupled with the many little alleys, the chance old building and fabulous mosaic paving, not to forget the nicest and cleanest free public toilets i have ever come across- for humans and for dogs (who happen to have to only dry water closets, aka wc, in the world).

with the majority of macau island visited and the sun showing itself at her best we ventured to new grounds on saturday and decided to explore the other half of macau, aka its little sister islands taipa and coloane. passing taipa on the bus to hac sa bay in the south-east of coloane we decided that the former is hardy worth a visit, as it is nothing more than an extension to macau's modern residential areas. the beach at hac sa is nicely situated, but the dirty waters failed to entice us to venture for a swim. but the 1.2km long coastal walk from hac sa to cheoc van beach is fantastic; an easy path that meanders through the rocks and boulders that form the coastline. from cheoc van we walked along the coastal road to coloane village which proved to be a further pleasant walk. the village itself is quaint, there is simply no better word for it, and it sports a lovely nata (portugese egg tart) bakery which offered a most welcome snack after our coastal walk.

the last day we spent more or less in kee whee's company. our flight was not until late at night and we had to check out at 12. from there we brought our belongings to his apartment, looked at macau from the 17th floor and finally walked through a yet unexplored part of the town via a fantastic dessert stall to the fortress where kee whee wanted to play with his new toy, which proved to be less sturdy than claimed on the packaging, resulting in the quality toy made in china to break seconds after its first take off.

and that was pretty much macau, a little spot of europe with a cantonese heart in which finding food - other than breakfast - presented us with a fair bit of a challenge,not because there was non to be had, but because most of it is full of meat and my cantonese is non existent. macau being a tourist centric country i expected a decent level of english spoken by its inhabitants, but little did i know that most only spoke cantonese, and to complicate things many coffeeshops do not have an english menu, or if they do have are unable to modify a dish by leaving the meat out when cooking vegetables. the bakeries with their mix of portugese and chinese fair are fantastic, the desert places – especially the ones offering warm ginger milk pudding are phenomenal, but when it comes to real cooked food it is best to come prepared with a decent vocabulary of cantonese, at least if you are vegetarian. the easiest option was hanging out with kee whee, who now living here, can at least speak some cantonese, or failing this can communicate in chinese if the other half is indeed able to understand this or if both fall through he is at least able to read a chinese menu. but looking for food also made us venture into many parts of the town that we might have otherwise have missed, finding architectural treasures, hidden temples, and nameless shrines. so much good came from that part. and of course the beer is so cheap here that a long evening traipsing around the area in the search of meatless food can always be concluded by sipping a bottle of tsing tao or san miguel while sitting on the stone benches of senado square watching the world go by.