Deporting from Macau

This morning I took the 6am Ferry to Macau with a colleague of mine. We were going there as I was scheduled to a Keynote at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress. My colleague is Hong Kong origin girl holding a foreign passport. She landed in Macau with only the HK Resident ID card and without her passport. There was a confusion because Macau allows immigration on the basis of HK ID card but you need to be a permanent resident. And my colleague didn’t know that. We pleaded and tried to make a case but the officer was quite rigid. And guess what they deported her back to Hong Kong onto the next Ferry. Imagine getting deported from Macau of all the places. I’m sure that will certainly go down as one of her most memorable stories.