Macau Attractions

Taipa Island

Once-sleepy Taipa Island has experienced some shockingly brusque changes recently - if you want calm and tranquility you'll have to head to neighbouring Coloane Island, but be quick - plans are in place to connect Taipa with Coloane, courtesy of the huge Cotai City land-reclamation project.

It's envisaged that the self-contained city will sit at the centre of a road, bridge, air and rail network linking Macau with mainland China - the six-lane Lotus Flower Bridge is just the start of this massive development project. But all is not lost - there are still some old-style charm preserved.

Coloane Island

Coloane was still the haunt of pirates as recently as 1910, but these days the foreign visitors are golfers, hikers and beach bunnies. Ramshackle Old Macau can be sensed in the narrow, crumbling shop-lined lanes of Coloane Village and its junk-building sheds and temples.

The Chapel of St Francis Xavier is the former home of the saintly relic now housed in the peninsula's Sao Paulo Museum. Coloane is inordinately proud of its two beaches: Cheoc Van, complete with yacht club; and the grey-sand Hac Sa (much cleaner than it looks). Inland there's a couple of decent hiking trails.