The Portuguese arrived in Macau in 1557 and stayed until 1999, which makes it the longest European presence anywhere in Asia by a wide margin. What that left is a small place where the street names are in Portuguese and Chinese, the pavements are laid in the black and white calcada wave patterns of Lisbon, the churches are baroque, and almost everyone speaks Cantonese. The historic centre is UNESCO listed as a single ensemble of twenty two buildings and eight squares.
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The other Macau is the Cotai Strip, built on reclaimed land between two islands, where the casinos take several times the gaming revenue of Las Vegas and the hotels are reproductions of Venice and Paris. About 700,000 people live in roughly 33 square kilometres, which makes Macau the most densely populated territory on earth. It is a Special Administrative Region of China with its own currency, its own immigration, and no internet firewall, and those differences from the mainland are practical rather than academic.
What Makes Macau Different to Pack For
Subtropical, humid, and typhoon prone
Summers run 28°C to 33°C with humidity above 80 percent and heavy rain from May to September. Winters are mild at 14°C to 20°C but damp and windier than the numbers suggest. Spring is foggy and October to December is the good window.
A merino wool base layer for women is here for the fiercely air conditioned casinos, malls and buses, which are genuinely cold, and for the damp winter, which gets into you at 15°C in a way that 15°C elsewhere does not.
Typhoons close the territory
Macau uses a signal system: at Signal 8 the ferries stop, the bridges to Taipa close, shops shut and you stay indoors. The season runs roughly May to October with the peak in September, and a Signal 8 will cost you a day. It is announced hours ahead.
Its own entry rules, separate from mainland China
Many nationalities enter Macau visa free for 30 days or more, and a mainland Chinese visa does not cover Macau, nor does a Macau entry cover the mainland. Crossing to Zhuhai or Hong Kong means a full immigration control each way.
Hills, steps and calcada paving
The old town is built on slopes and the wave patterned stone is beautiful, uneven and lethally slippery in rain.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
The Macau Packing List
Footwear
Comfortable flat shoes with real grip, and this matters more here than the flatness of the map suggests: the calcada paving is polished stone laid in patterns, it is on slopes, and in rain it is as slippery as wet tile. Locals fall on it.
For Coloane's Trilho de Coloane walking trails and the Guia hill circuit, waterproof hiking shoes are useful, though nothing here is remote. Sandals for the humidity.
Clothing
Light, loose and quick drying for summer, with a warm layer for the air conditioning and for damp winter evenings. A packable rain jacket, which you will use from May to September.
Covered shoulders and knees for St Joseph's Seminary, the A-Ma Temple and the churches, all of which are working religious buildings. Macau is a dressy place in the evening: the casino floors have no formal code but the better restaurants do, and the city generally dresses up more than Hong Kong.
For sun
A wide brim sun hat, sunscreen and sunglasses. The Ruins of St Paul's staircase and the Monte Fort above it are open stone with no shade, and the humidity hides how much sun you are taking.
Practical
An umbrella, which unusually is useful here because the rain is often vertical and the streets are sheltered. Cash in patacas, though Hong Kong dollars are accepted everywhere at par and cards work in hotels and casinos. A refillable bottle; tap water is technically potable and most people drink bottled. A Macau Pass for the buses, which are cheap and the practical way to move. And your passport, which is checked at every border crossing.
What to Wear at Key Sites
The Ruins of St Paul's and Monte Fort
The carved granite facade of the Jesuit Mater Dei church, which burned in 1835 leaving only the front wall standing at the top of a wide staircase, with the seventeenth century Monte Fort on the hill behind it.
Practically: the facade is the only thing left, so the crypt and the museum of sacred art behind it are the substance of the visit and both are free. The staircase is steep and crowded; go at opening or after five. The fort above is a short climb with the best view over the old town.
Senado Square and the old town
The main square in pastel Portuguese buildings with wave patterned paving, running up to St Dominic's church and the Leal Senado building, and linked by lanes to A-Ma Temple and the Mandarin's House.
Practically: flat grippy shoes on the calcada. The whole UNESCO ensemble is walkable in an afternoon and is free apart from a couple of houses. It is extremely crowded at weekends and on mainland public holidays.
Taipa Village and Coloane
Taipa Village keeps a row of colonial houses and a street of Macanese restaurants; Coloane, further south, is the quiet end with a black sand beach at Hac Sa, a small chapel and hill trails.
Practically: bus 15 or 21A. Coloane is where Macau stops feeling dense. Hac Sa's sand is genuinely dark and the swimming is unremarkable, with jellyfish in summer. The Trilho de Coloane trails are humid and steep.
The Cotai Strip
Reclaimed land between Taipa and Coloane holding the largest casino resorts in the world, with canals, gondolas and an Eiffel Tower.
Practically: free shuttle buses run from the ferry terminals and around the resorts, and you can use them without gambling, which is how most visitors get around cheaply. Air conditioning is severe, so carry a layer. Photography is prohibited on casino gaming floors. The gondola rides and shows are separate tickets.
Macanese food
Macanese cooking is a genuine creole, the oldest fusion cuisine in Asia: minchi, African chicken, bacalhau, tacho, and Portuguese egg tarts that are better here than in Lisbon.
Practically: Taipa Village and the lanes off Senado are where to eat. Lord Stow's at Coloane is the original egg tart. Do not confuse Macanese with Portuguese restaurants, which also exist and are a different thing.
The Guia lighthouse and the fortress
The oldest western style lighthouse on the Chinese coast, on the highest hill in the peninsula, with a small chapel holding rare frescoes that blend Chinese and western motifs.
Practically: a cable car or a steep walk up through the Guia municipal park, which is where the city exercises at dawn. The chapel is tiny and opening hours are short.
What Not to Bring
Leave smooth soled shoes for calcada paving in rain. Leave the assumption that a Chinese visa covers Macau, because it does not.
Leave a camera out on a casino floor. Leave a September trip unbooked around a typhoon. Leave the expectation that Macau is cheap, because the hotels are not. And leave a heavy coat, since winter here is damp rather than cold.
Essential Resources for Women in Macau
Emergency numbers in Macau: 999 is the emergency number, and 112 and 110 also work. These are Macau's own numbers and are not the mainland Chinese ones. English and Portuguese are both official alongside Chinese, and operators generally speak English.
Tourist police: Macau operates a dedicated Tourism Police with officers who wear a blue armband marked with the languages they speak, stationed around Senado Square, the Ruins of St Paul's and the ferry terminals. There is also a tourist hotline run by the Macao Government Tourism Office. This is one of the better tourist policing setups anywhere in Asia.
US Consulate: the US Consulate General in Hong Kong covers both Hong Kong and Macau, an hour away by ferry, with the embassy in Beijing at china.usembassy-china.org.cn. There is no US post in Macau itself. Enrol in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program at step.state.gov before you travel.
Main hospital or clinic: Centro Hospitalar Conde de Sao Januario is the public hospital with a 24 hour emergency department, and Kiang Wu Hospital and the University Hospital are the main alternatives. Standards are good and English is usually available. Serious or specialist cases are sometimes transferred to Hong Kong. Travel insurance is needed; Macau does not provide free care to visitors.
Official health authority: the Macao Health Bureau, Servicos de Saude, publishes health advisories and the dengue situation, which matters because dengue occurs here in the wet season. For typhoons, the Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau at smg.gov.mo issues the signal numbers and the storm surge warnings, and it is the only source worth watching in the season.
US State Department travel advisory: the China advisory covers Macau in a separate section, and the Macau portion is usually a lower level than the mainland. Read the Macau section specifically rather than the overall China rating.
UK FCDO travel advice: the FCDO publishes separate advice for Macao, distinct from its China and Hong Kong pages, covering the visa-free entry rules, the typhoon season and the note that Macau has its own immigration regime.
Official tourism authority: the Macao Government Tourism Office at macaotourism.gov.mo, with China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism at mct.gov.cn as the national body. The MGTO publishes the walking routes for the UNESCO ensemble and the free shuttle bus maps.
Solo women safety assessment: Macau is one of the safest places in Asia for a woman travelling alone, and in some respects safer than anywhere else in this library. Violent crime is very low, the territory is small and densely populated so you are never far from people, policing is visible and includes a dedicated multilingual tourism unit, and the casino economy means the central areas are lit, camera covered and staffed around the clock. English and Portuguese are official languages, so communication is easy in a way it is not on the mainland. A woman walking alone at midnight around Senado Square, the Cotai resorts or Taipa Village is entirely unremarkable. Crime against visitors is opportunistic and modest: pickpocketing in the Senado Square and St Paul's crowds and at the ferry terminals, particularly during mainland holidays when the old town is shoulder to shoulder, plus the occasional bag lifted in a casino. Keep a bag zipped and in front of you. Loan sharking and its associated intimidation exist around the gaming industry and are strictly an internal matter that does not touch visitors; the practical version of that advice is to decline anyone offering credit or currency exchange on the street. Prostitution is visible in some hotel lobbies and the approaches are to men rather than women. Street harassment is rare. The real hazards are environmental and structural. Wet calcada paving is the leading cause of visitor injury: polished patterned stone on slopes in tropical rain is genuinely treacherous and grippy shoes are the fix. Typhoons are the other: a Signal 8 stops the ferries, closes the bridges and shuts the territory, and the correct response is to stay indoors and lose the day rather than travel through it. Traffic is dense, the streets are narrow, and drivers give pedestrians less room than in Hong Kong, so use the crossings. Air conditioning is severe enough to make people ill on a long day in and out of it, and dengue is present in the wet season, so repellent is worth carrying for the Coloane trails.
Reading On
Macau is an hour from Hong Kong by ferry, has its own international airport and is joined to Zhuhai by one of the longest sea bridges in the world. The China travel guide for women is the parent for the region and the China packing list for women covers a trip across the mainland, with the important caveat that Macau has its own entry rules and no firewall. Next door, the Hong Kong packing list for women is the other Special Administrative Region and the usual pairing. On the mainland, the Guilin packing list for women covers the Guangxi karst a few hours north, the Shanghai packing list for women and the Beijing packing list for women cover the big cities, the Xian packing list for women the Terracotta Army, the Chengdu packing list for women Sichuan, and the Zhangjiajie packing list for women the sandstone pillars of Hunan. The travel packing guide for women is the parent for all destinations. For why a thin wool layer belongs in a subtropical bag, the best merino wool base layers for women explains the fibre, and the Roman Trail collection is where the tops themselves live.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
