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My main reason for heading to Philippines was to do some diving and I was especially interested in the wreck diving since I had heard that many Japanese ships were sunk there towards the end of WWII. Although it had been 3+ years since my last dives in French Polynesia, I was fired up for some sweet wreck diving on the sunken Japanese fleet from WWII (reported to be the best wreck dives in the world).

After 2 interesting days in Macau, basking in the taste of *relative* freedom, I decided to head to Hong Kong for a few days before continuing on to the Philippines for some wreck diving (12 ships of the Japanese fleet were sunk there towards the end of WWII).

Just as I was leaving on the ferry from Macau for the short (1 hour) trip, it started to rain and got pretty stormy. By the time I arrived in HK, it had settled a bit but was still raining. I took a cab to a guest house and got stuck with a huge cab fare for rush hour that could have been saved had I known I was on Hong Kong Island and not in Kowloon across the water (I could have taken a $0.25 ferry across that would have also saved almost an hour).

I spent 2 nice day in Macau, which I found refreshingly free and peaceful (unlike the rest of China, Macau and Hong Kong are categorized as Special Administrative Regions and enjoy most of the freedoms as prior to their return to China).

Macau is a very quint island that has a very European in feel (it was originally a Portugese colony and the first immigrant settlement near China. The architecture is very impressive and there are the ruins of some anceint churches in the older section, plus a very wild casino-based nightlight (they are undergoing a transformation from small casinos, to mega-casinos and currently there are a few casinos under construction by the mega casino companies of Vegas.

I flew to Guangzhou from Tibet. The Pearl River area was fairly nice and peaceful, as it empties into the South China Sea (where it meets with Macau on the South side and Hong Kong on the North). My time there was fairly uneventful (not so amazing as Lhasa, Xi’an or Beijing) and I was starting to crave further comforts so ready to exit the mainland of China when I left on the 22nd for Macau.