Three days in Macau: a Portuguese town that pays its bills with baccarat

Two nights on the peninsula: the old squares and the ruined cathedral on arrival, the temple quarter and the Cotai lights the next day, and a village on Coloane before you leave.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Macau
Places
8 across 3 days
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The Portuguese arrived in the 1550s and stayed for four hundred and forty two years, longer than any other European presence in Asia. What they left behind is a small peninsula of pastel churches, mosaic pavements, baroque facades and a cuisine that exists nowhere else on earth.

What arrived after them is a gambling industry that turns over several times what Las Vegas does, built on reclaimed land between two islands. The two Macaus are ten minutes apart by bus and neither makes sense without the other.

Most people come from Hong Kong for the day, see the ruined cathedral in a crowd and go home. Two nights is the difference between that and a place where you can eat a proper Macanese dinner, watch the strip light up, and find the old town empty at eight in the morning.

Highlights

  • The facade of St Paul's, all that survived a fire in 1835, standing at the top of a staircase with nothing behind it
  • A-Ma Temple, older than the Portuguese arrival, and the source of the name Macau
  • Macanese food, a genuine four hundred year hybrid of Portuguese, Chinese, Malay and Indian cooking
  • The Cotai strip after dark, a skyline of Venice, Paris and London built on reclaimed sea
  • Coloane village, pastel houses and a chapel on a channel, with mainland China across the water

Where to stay

Macau, two nights

Stay on the peninsula, near Senado Square, if you want the old town on your doorstep and a normal price. That side has the churches, the temples, the bakeries and the small streets.

Cotai is the other choice, and it is a different holiday: enormous integrated resorts with canals, shopping malls and shows attached. It is comfortable, expensive and about as connected to Macau as an airport is to a country.

Day by day

Day 1 in Macau

Senado Square, a ruined cathedral and the fort above them

Everything on the world heritage list is inside a square kilometre, so the first afternoon walks it. Start at Senado Square, which is a Portuguese town square with a wave-patterned mosaic pavement and pastel arcades, ringed by shops selling almond cake.

From there the pedestrian street climbs north for ten minutes to the ruins of St Paul's, which is what remains of a Jesuit church that burned in 1835: one enormous stone wall standing at the head of a wide stone staircase, with the sky behind it.

The fort is above and behind. It is a five minute climb and it holds the city museum and the best view over the peninsula, with the Grand Lisboa's gold ellipse rising out of the old town.

Stay out for dinner. The old streets are much better at night, once the day trip ferries have gone.

  1. 15:00

    Senate Square

    Architecture

    The traditional centre of Macau, paved in the black and white wave mosaic the Portuguese laid everywhere they went and surrounded by neoclassical buildings in pink, yellow and cream. Busy all day, and worth returning to when it empties in the evening.

  2. 17:00

    Ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral

    Religious

    The facade of the Church of Mater Dei, finished in the 1600s and burned in 1835, standing alone at the top of a broad flight of steps with carvings of ships, saints and a Chinese dragon. Go round the back, where a crypt and a small museum of sacred art are free.

  3. 19:00

    Mount Fortress

    Historic

    A Jesuit fort built between 1617 and 1626, provisioned to survive a two year siege, and the place from which the Dutch invasion of 1622 was famously stopped by a lucky cannon shot. The cannons still point at the casinos, and the museum inside is the best introduction to the city.

With more time: Lilau Square, ten minutes south, is a small tree-shaded plaza in the oldest Portuguese residential quarter, with a spring that is supposed to bring anyone who drinks from it back to Macau.

Day 2 in Macau

The temple that named the city, then the strip after dark

The southern tip of the peninsula is the quiet half and holds the oldest thing in Macau. A-Ma Temple was there before the Portuguese landed, and when they asked what this place was called, the answer they misheard became the name of the territory.

Nearby, the Mandarin House is a walled Chinese courtyard compound from the 1880s that has been beautifully restored, with a reformist thinker's study, oyster shell windows and a lot of quiet rooms nobody else is in.

In the evening go to Cotai. Take a free casino shuttle across the bridge and walk the strip at dusk, when a Venetian campanile, a half scale Eiffel Tower and a version of Big Ben all light up within four hundred metres of each other. It is absurd and it is genuinely worth seeing.

You do not have to gamble, and the walk from one resort to another through the malls, canals and lobbies is free.

  1. 09:30

    A-Ma Temple

    Religious

    A Taoist temple to the sea goddess, built into a rock face on the southern shore and older than the Portuguese settlement. Smoke, coils of incense hanging from the roof, and inscriptions on the boulders. The name of the whole territory came from a misunderstanding at its gate.

  2. 12:00

    Mandarin House

    Visit

    A courtyard mansion of about four thousand square metres built around 1881 for the reformist writer Zheng Guanying, restored after decades as a slum tenement. Chinese layout with Indian and Portuguese details, and almost always empty.

  3. 18:00

    casino buildings along Cotai Strip

    Visit

    The reclaimed strip between Taipa and Coloane, where a Venetian canal, a Parisian tower and a London skyline stand in a row. Go at dusk when the screens come on. Free shuttle buses run from the ferry terminals and the peninsula.

With more time: Clube Militar, the old Portuguese officers' club near Senado Square, is where to eat the proper Macanese version of this food, in a pink colonial building with a good wine list.

Day 3 in Macau

Coloane, and an egg tart at the source

Coloane is the southern island and the part of Macau that has not been rebuilt. A bus takes half an hour from the peninsula and drops you in a village of pastel houses on a channel, with mainland China visible across a few hundred metres of water.

There is a small yellow chapel, a shipyard, a couple of temples and a bakery with a permanent queue, and that is the whole village. It takes an hour and a half to see and most people stay longer.

The airport and the Taipa ferry terminal are both fifteen minutes away, so this works cleanly before an afternoon departure. Taipa village, on the way back, is where the old colonial houses and the good restaurants are.

  1. 09:00

    Coloane Village

    Other

    A fishing village on the southern island, unrestored and quiet, with a waterfront esplanade looking across at the mainland. The chapel, the lanes and the bakery are the whole attraction, and that is enough.

  2. 12:30

    Taipa Houses Museum

    Visit

    Five green colonial houses from the early twentieth century on a former waterfront in Taipa, restored and furnished as a Macanese family would have had them. Fifteen minutes from Coloane on the way back to the airport.

With more time: The lanes behind Taipa village hold most of Macau's best value restaurants, which is a better lunch than anything on the strip five minutes away.

Before you go

Getting there and around

Ferries from Hong Kong take about an hour and run from Sheung Wan and from Kowloon to the Outer Harbour terminal, with a second route to the Taipa terminal near the airport. Book ahead at weekends.

Macau has its own immigration, so you clear passport control both ways. Most Western passports enter without a visa for thirty days or more.

The peninsula's old town is walkable and hilly. For everything else, take the casino shuttle buses, which are free, frequent and run to Cotai and the ferry terminals whether or not you are staying there. Nobody checks.

Money

The local currency is the pataca, but Hong Kong dollars are accepted everywhere at roughly par, and change often comes back mixed. Spend the patacas before you leave, since they are hard to change elsewhere.

Cards work in hotels and restaurants and not at street stalls or the older bakeries. Keep some cash.

The casinos are free to walk into and photography inside is not allowed. You need a passport to enter the gaming floors and you must be twenty one.

What to eat

Macanese cooking is the oldest fusion cuisine in the world and it is not Chinese food with Portuguese names. Minchi, minced meat with potato and a fried egg, African chicken in a coconut and chilli sauce, and bacalhau in half a dozen forms.

The Portuguese egg tart is the thing to eat, and the version with the scorched top came from an Englishman who set up in Coloane in the 1980s. There is a queue and it moves.

Almond biscuits and pork chop buns are sold along the streets around Senado Square, and the samples handed out are generous enough to count as lunch.

Macau is small enough to feel like an anomaly and old enough to have earned it. A Chinese fishing settlement, then four centuries of Portuguese administration, then a handover in 1999 and a gambling boom that made it briefly the richest place in the world by some measures.

The remarkable part is that none of the layers erased the previous one. You can stand in a baroque square, walk five minutes to a Taoist temple that predates it, and see a casino tower over both.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is Macau worth staying overnight?
Yes. The day trip crowd arrives around eleven and leaves by six, and the old town in the morning and the evening is a different and much better place. Staying also means you can eat properly, which is the strongest argument for Macau over Hong Kong on any given night.
Do I need a visa?
Macau runs its own immigration, separate from both mainland China and Hong Kong. Most Western passports enter without a visa for thirty days or more. You will clear passport control on the way in and on the way out, including if you arrive from Hong Kong.
How do I get there from Hong Kong?
Ferries take about an hour from Sheung Wan or Kowloon and run frequently, and there is also a bus across the sea bridge from the airport, which is cheaper and slower. Book the ferry ahead at weekends and in the evening, when they fill.
Do I have to go to the casinos?
No, and the buildings are more interesting than the gaming floors anyway. Walking through the resorts is free, the shuttle buses are free, and there is no obligation to place a bet. If you do want to gamble, bring your passport and expect baccarat rather than slots; it is the overwhelming favourite here.
Can I change this plan?
Yes. Copy it into the planner, add a night on Cotai if you want a resort stay, or cut the last morning if you are catching a ferry back.