In the next four pages we show a collection of photos of the time we lived in Macau (from November 1979 to November 1981).

Life in Macau was a new experience for us. For the first time we lived on a small apartment in a very densely populated, yet very small area (4 sq km the urban area of Macau).

Rita arrived in Macau at the tender age of 2 months old and Erica already a “big girl” of 4 years old.

We built a very nice group of friends, some new some old friends from Angola and we spent a lot of time socialising and enjoying the pleasures of life in South East Asia. Eating out was so cheap that you could see us lots of times eating in little restaurants. We loved eating in the small and even road side restaurants on the old part of the town.

The sea water during the long hot period of the year was warm and we spent most of the weekends soaking at the two beaches of Cheok Van and Hac Sa in the Island of Coloane.

With Hong Kong only one hour away in the jetfoil we frequently spent weekends over there. We travelled up and down the famous Nathan Road in Kowloon so many times that we cannot remember how many. Even Filomena, that never buys anything ended up always with bags full of “baaaargains”.

The girls frequented kindergarten and pre-primary school in Macau and obviously at the end of the two years they could speak Cantonese (especially Erica) like a native.

We experienced the changes in China after the death of Mao Tse-Tung (1976) and we visited Guangzhou province twice as part of the effort China was making to reform their touristic infrastructures to cater for Western visitors.

We created a team of Portuguese and its descendants to participate in the Macau International Dragon Boat Race. The team, called “Tá Ki Tá No Fundo” suffered a humiliating defeat in the first year (actually we sunk mid race), but redeemed ourselves in the second year finishing a very honourable 11th place… and to stop any jokes, yes there were more than 11 teams. The Chinese, being very superstitious, recommended that we change the name of the boat as it would bring bad luck, which it did in the first year. Tà Ki Tá No Fundo means in Portuguese “In a minute we are at the bottom of the sea”.