Macao: A little bit of Algarve in the Far East? You bet

If Father Lancelot didn't exist, Graham Greene would have had to invent him. I first encountered him at dinner in 1995. The Clube Militar in Macao offered partridge pie on its menu, but when I asked for a portion the waiter gestured to a far corner of the room and explained that partridge pie was off as it was being scoffed by Father Lancelot and his friends. And there they were, the latest in a line of Catholic missionaries stretching back to the 16th century, eating pie and quaffing inky red wine from the Dao or the Douro.

If Father Lancelot didn't exist, Graham Greene would have had to invent him. I first encountered him at dinner in 1995. The Clube Militar in Macao offered partridge pie on its menu, but when I asked for a portion the waiter gestured to a far corner of the room and explained that partridge pie was off as it was being scoffed by Father Lancelot and his friends. And there they were, the latest in a line of Catholic missionaries stretching back to the 16th century, eating pie and quaffing inky red wine from the Dao or the Douro.

Father Lancelot is known throughout his part of China as a whisky priest and he would not demur. When I called on him at 5pm the other afternoon there was a glass of khaki liquid on his desk and he immediately produced a bottle of Johnny Walker red label for me and my wife. An hour or so into our conversation he realised that I knew Chris Patten, the former Governor of Hong Kong who was instrumental in procuring him an MBE for his extraordinary single-handed resettlement of thousands of Vietnamese boat-people.

"He is a very good chap," said Father Lancelot, whose English is tinctured with flashes of P G Wodehouse. "And you are a friend of his? Why are we drinking Red Label?" And the Red vanished to be replaced by superior. Meanwhile packets of cigarettes seemed to tumble from his cupboard. An hour or so later I left him on his doorstep where he was singing, word perfect and very tunefully, "Lavender blue, dilly dilly" in honour of the last Governor's wife.

Father Lancelot is old Macao. He came from his native Malacca in 1935 to study for the priesthood at just 12 years old, still celebrates the Mass regularly and sometimes in Latin, and is honoured every year with a Christmas party laid on by the Macao police. He is as much a symbol of this ancient former Portuguese colony as the façade of St Paul's Church, overlooking the centre of the old city. St Paul's was built by the Jesuits in 1602 and almost totally destroyed by fire in 1835. The building was described in its hey-day as the greatest church east of Rome. You can still see why.

But modern Macao has a new symbol. This is a priapic concrete tower, 338 metres high, the 10th tallest in the world and generally regarded – often in predictably smutty metaphors – as a final throw of the dice from the octogenarian billionaire and casino king Stanley Ho.

The tower is built, appropriately, on reclaimed land. When Father Lancelot first arrived, Macao and its adjoining islands of Taipa and Coloane amounted to about 15 sq km; now there are more than 23. You get a sense of growth and modernity from the viewing areas at the top of Dr Ho's tower and not just in what since 1999 has been the Special Administrative Region of Macao. Zuhai, the Chinese mainland town that abuts Macao, has ceased being a tiny fishing village and now has sky-scrapers to match those of the former Portuguese colony. Dr Ho, whose extra-mural passions are French ice-cream and ballroom dancing, sometimes seems to own everything here. He founded Air Macau, though after a short-lived experiment with flights from Lisbon the new international airport has no European flights. The European traveller will probably fly, as I did, to Hong Kong and then take one of Dr Ho's fast ferries, which cross the Pearl River Delta in about an hour. Don't be put off by the sign saying "No footwear or luggage when abandoning ship".

But it is for the gambling that Dr Ho is famous. Since the early Sixties, when he erected a garish hotel and casino complex called the Lisboa, he has enjoyed a monopoly on the lucrative local industry. Earlier this year, however, the government decided to split the gambling licence into three parts with the result that two American operations are about to go oriental with investments worth billions of dollars. At present the gambling seems to attract few, if any, Europeans and takes place behind closed doors, impinging little on the daily life of the city. I ventured into the Lisboa one morning, fought my way through the glum scrums around the gaming tables and beat a hasty retreat to the nearby and emphatically non-gambling Clube Militar.

The Chinese are, of course, reputed to bet on anything and I came across surprising evidence of this in the new Museum of Macao, constructed in the old fortifications on the hill above St Paul's. Here an entire display cabinet is dedicated to the ancient Macanese sport of cricket fighting. There is a video of crickets fighting, egged on by their owners; the official 1963 booklet of the Macao Cricket Fighting Association; a cricket diet sheet (riceworms, fish, chestnuts and steamed rice); even a cricket coffin and a cricket tomb containing a champion's remains.

The museums are an impressive fare-well gift from the Portuguese colonialists. There is a maritime museum, a motoring museum celebrating the Macao Formula 3 Grand Prix and a wine museum dedicated to wines from Portugal and China.

In the old colonial days people came to sleepy Macao from bustling Hong Kong in order to savour its raffish Portuguese atmosphere. There are still little restaurants with Portuguese names such as Litoral or A Lorcha or Fernando's on Coloane, where you can eat bacalao and sweet "pudims" and pungent pigs' ears in a dressing of oil, garlic and coriander. The bread is the best in Asia and you can drink vinho verde with your sardines just as if you were in the Algarve.

Despite all the new development and the gambling concessions, there are enough well-preserved historic buildings for Macao to be planning an application for World Heritage Status. My one regret is that the Mandarin Oriental Group no longer manages the incomparable old Bela Vista Hotel. They have done a fine job in making over their other Macao hotel and giving it some of the cane-chaired, shady sense of old Estoril that characterised the colonial Bela Vista, but you can't clone perfection.

Most of the Portuguese have gone home since Macao officially became a Chinese city in 1999. But there is still a Portuguese identity and presence, and the one Portuguese man who has really lucked out is Macao's new Consul-General. He's in the Bela Vista now.

The Facts

Getting there

Tim Heald travelled to Macau with Cathay Pacific (020-8834 8888; www.cathaypacific.com) via Hong Kong. Return flights start from £508. Macau is a 55-minute ferry ride from Hong Kong, price £10 return. Ferries depart every 15 minutes from the terminal in the Shun Tak centre.

Being there

Tim Heald stayed at The Mandarin Oriental, Macau (00 800 28 28 38 38; www.mandarinoriental.com), which offers b&b in a double from HK$999 (£89) per room per night until 30 September.

Further information

Tim Heald's trip was organised by the Macau tourist office (020-7771 7006 www.macautourism.gov.mo).

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