Macau: Home for a holiday

The trip from Hong Kong to Macau is unexpectedly hectic. There's a mad dash to the gate after an absent-mindedly long lunch at the China Ferry Terminal food court, a queue at immigration that takes us all by surprise, an hour aboard a vessel so fast its impressive speed can not only be observed through the sea-splattered windows but felt through its floors, and a queue at the taxi stand that's at least as long as the one at immigration.

My parents' apartment is on Avenida da Praia Grande and from the caged kitchen window it is possible to see the courtyard where the apartment in which my father grew up once stood. Caged balconies and cages around windows are a common sight in Macau, a vestige of darker days that serves a modern-day purpose, sensibly capturing a rectangle of usable airspace in a city where homes are small.

The cage around our kitchen window is used for a steady stream of strung-up laundry, and becomes the final resting place for the potted Christmas tree my mother has bought.

I lie down in one of the bedrooms to recover, the tea-making and television-watching and toy-playing outside registering in my ears as a pleasant but tenuous link to the world. Suddenly my father bursts out of the room across the hall.

"It starts at 6, not 6.30."

"What?" comes my mother's voice from the kitchen.

"Quick, get the kids' coats on..."