It is a journey into the unknown. I wrestle feelings of dread and fasten the seatbelt with a heavy heart as the steward makes a final check of the aisles to ensure all luggage is stowed.

There is a festive atmosphere among the passengers, but for me this trip marks the end of self-imposed exile stretching back more than a dozen years.

OK, I know. It will only be for a couple of days, and the destination is Macau, not Mosul. Friends urged me to return to the former Portuguese enclave. They had had a great time. I'd love it, they enthused.

But I knew better. They have not experienced the quintessential Macau. That has gone forever.

I decided to turn my back on Macau in the early 1990s. I had been invited to stay at the then newly opened Westin Resort on Coloane island. The hotel seemed a little out of place at the time. It was open for business but work had not yet started on the golf course, and the airport was still in the planning stage.

The management provided me with a suite, but the hotel seemed lifeless. There were few guests, and I sat in an empty lobby listening to a mechanical piano. Play it again, Sam. Hey Sam! Where are you?

So I wandered off along a deserted Hac Sa beach in search of a Texan who had settled among the villagers in Coloane, renovating an old house, from which he was running a riding school with a few nags. We trotted around the beach and along dirt footpaths into the low hills.

In the evening I slipped over to Fernando's restaurant for Portuguese food and wine, and strolled back to the hotel along a deserted street. The villagers retired early on Coloane.

Macau had the casinos and massage parlors; Taipa and Coloane islands offered tranquility, and good Portuguese food. But things were beginning to change rapidly.

Taipa island was losing its character. The old village was still there, but the speculators had moved in, changing the landscape. Blocks of high-rise flats had mushroomed around the island, but no one lived in them. There were an estimated 20,000 empty apartments.

An airport was going to be built. There was money to be made. My Macau was going to disappear under concrete and when I drove back across the narrow old causeway that joined Coloane with Taipa island, I vowed never to return.

A knee-jerk reaction?

Well, I first started visiting Macau in 1982 when it was a laidback weekend escape from the pressures and overcrowding of Hong Kong. Sometimes I'd take the slow boat overnight with a cabin. The vessel would arrive off Macau in the early hours and we'd be allowed to sleep on until the immigration desks opened.

Mostly, I took a jetfoil. Hong Kong Chinese would be queuing to get off even before we had berthed, as if they couldn't wait to lose their money in the casinos. And of course many expats and Chinese would visit just to go window-shopping in seedy hotels, selecting a sexy masseuse from the many who posed in glass-fronted rooms, by the number pinned to her blouse.

But we'd nip over the bridge to Taipa and dine at what I was told was Macau's first Portuguese restaurant, Pinocchio's, tucked away along the narrow streets of the old village. It was in a large roofless yard then, and was always packed. Fresh food, crisp salads with olives, good wine.

Back on Macau, we'd walk the promenade facing Praia Grande Bay, admiring the grand old Portuguese homes, and watch the mudskippers doing just that behind the sea wall.

In the evening we'd head up narrow cobbled streets (ballast from old Portuguese trading vessels, I was told) to a grand old theater to watch the Crazy Paris show, a risque nightly dancing performance by a bevy of beauties brought in on contract from Europe.

And we'd stay up on Penha Hill at the Bela Vista Hotel, known among expats as the Fawlty Towers of the Far East, a former colonial mansion built in 1870 that had fallen on hard times but oozed character.

It was staffed by gruff, sleepy old waiters who lounged around in crumpled black jackets. We would sleep in musty, high-ceilinged rooms under dusty brass propeller fans that creaked and groaned, protesting that they had worked too hard for too long.

In the morning we would have breakfast on the long verandah, overlooking the bay. ``Could I have scrambled eggs, please?''

``No, this is Sunday. Scrambled eggs on Wednesday. Sunday, fried eggs.''

We'd be back out there in the evening with a bottle of Vinho Verde, though, for a sundowner, looking over towards Stanley Ho's Lisboa Hotel and casino, its garish roulette-wheel-shaped structure dominating the skyline in the tourist area.

I first stayed in the Bella Vista in 1982. Today, it is home to the Portuguese Consul, who no doubt can order eggs any style he wants, seven days a week.

The Bela Vista was full of surprises. I remember losing sleep because of a nightlong din in the dining room. In the morning, I went in for breakfast to find the dining room floor covered with camera cables, and a couple of technicians asleep on the floor. Golden Harvest had been shooting a period movie. The film company agreed to pay for my room when I protested. I lost the money later playing blackjack.

During my visit to the Westin in the early 90s, the old Bela Vista was already being refurbished at a cost of more than US$6 million (HK$48 million), to become a luxury hotel for the rich and famous. It would comprise only eight suites, from around HK$2,500 a night. I would not be able to afford to stay there again, and I doubt if I would have wanted to.

And whatever happened to the waiters?

Now, more than a decade later, I am speeding back to a Macau that is no longer a Portuguese enclave, and I know I am in for a shock. The changes are apparent even before I pass through immigration.

Immigration at Macau used to comprise a few old desks and metal barriers to contain the weekend surge of gamblers from Hong Kong. Pushy staff at duty-free shops would solicit for custom, bellowing at passersby. Now it is a little like arriving at Hong Kong International Airport, modern, spacious, efficient, and completely lacking in character.

Outside, my heart sinks. I don't recognize anything. Not surprising, though, as the whole new terminal has been built on reclaimed land.

The 15-minute drive to my hotel, The Ritz, on Penha Hill, only five minutes' walk from the former Bela Vista Hotel, unveils underpasses, overpasses, and a new mini-city mushrooming on even more reclaimed land, that dwarfs Stanley Ho's Lisboa Hotel. A business district is under construction, too - Downtown Macau - of course, on reclaimed land.

The pleasant promenade overlooking the mudflats with its mudskippers near the Lisboa Hotel is now a new road and the view from Penha Hill is dominated by the Macau Tower Convention and Entertainment Center, one of the world's tallest buildings.

Take a lift to the observation deck 223 meters up, and you'll get a birds-eye view of the pollution from nearby Zhuhai, which at times partly obliterates Macau. But I don't have to look out on the Tower from the room in my five-star hotel. My view is exclusively the concrete wall of an adjacent building.

Thoroughly depressed, I set off with my wife to see if anything is left of the old Inner Port area, on the other side of Macau, and wow, it is still intact!

We wander aimlessly through a maze of twisting, cobbled back streets with tiny bakeries and mom and pop candy stores where naughty schoolchildren are spending their lunchbox money. Here are real people getting on with their day-to-day life, friendly and helpful too, and totally unconcerned about what the tycoons are up to over on the other side of the island. No tourists here. No casinos, either.

But we do find a charming little Portuguese restaurant, O Porto Interior, where photographs of celebrities adorn the walls, including an autographed picture of a young-looking Audrey Hepburn. The waitress, a woman in her 40s whose name is Rosalina, joins us. ``Yes, she really came here, but she was old already,'' Rosalina says. ``She had the photograph with her, and signed it for my boss.''

After a delightful meal, we set off exploring again. The Inner Port area is packed with living history. This used to be the hub for sea trade in Macau, and Chinese shophouses offer a mind-boggling array of goods, from ships chains with links as thick as a man's neck, to dried meat and traditional Chinese medicines.

I squeeze past a bunch of children buying waffles that sizzle on a street-vendor's hot plate, and come across a back alley with a hole-in-the-wall barber's shop. No perms or Canto-pop dyes offered here. But if you want short back and sides, Mr Ho's the man. ``The shop has been here for 50 years, and I've been cutting hair here for 35 years,'' he says proudly. The heavy, swiveling barber's chairs have been in use since the shop opened. Does Mr Ho realise his customers are sitting on antiques?

Further down the main street, we find the 118-year-old Sailor's Palace, a two-story hostel that is still open for business. Washing is strung up above the entrance, and inside, the elderly owner is assisted by an unsmiling couple. He needs assistance. He has obviously had a stroke, which has left him paralyzed.

He can only move his left arm, which arcs slowly back and forth, feeding his mouth a cigarette. When we enquire if we can take photographs, an almost imperceptible movement of the head is a signal we can.

The shroffs counter, encased in iron bars for security, is just as it was when the establishment first opened. Battered flasks for hot water line the walls and a passage has cubicles on either side. Tariff for one night: HK$30.

We wander the Inner Port maze for hours, and nearly every street has something special to offer. Turn a corner and you might find an historic Portuguese house or office under renovation. One old house is so narrow there wouldn't be room to swing a cat.

The Macau SAR government is spending tens of millions of dollars renovating many of the former enclave's heritage sites. Ironically, heritage buildings neglected by the Portuguese are being restored by Chinese who recognize their potential for tourism.

What a shame that Hong Kong lacks this vision.

Many restored buildings are on and around the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, a major old shopping artery that connects both sides of Macau.

Here, for example, one of the city's last old pawn shops on the ground floor of a three-story building closed recently. But the pawnshop has been left exactly as it was, and the building has been carefully restored. The upper floors, where pawned goods were stored, have become an arts and crafts shop. Climb the steep wooden steps with care!

Macau is also promoting other attractions, even as it gears up to become a Las Vegas-style gaming metropolis. Tourists are offered leaflets with information on fortresses, walking tours, temples, churches and museums.

As domestic tourists pour in, the government realizes that only a minority are high rollers. Down in the Inner Port area, for example, busloads of mainlanders visit the Temple of A Ma, which pre-dates the arrival of the first Portuguese sailing ships in the 16th century.

Rosalina welcomes us back like long lost friends on our return to the O Porto Interior restaurant the following evening, and clucks over us like a mother hen. It is a hurried meal, as we have to catch our jetfoil back to Hong Kong. She dashes off to the roadside as we are finishing the meal to wave down a taxi. She doesn't expect or want a tip.

I don't have time to get back to Taipa or Coloane islands. I know now that it is possible to drive to the mainland from the narrow causeway I crossed all those years ago. Of course, the sea around it has been reclaimed. And a second bridge now leads to Taipa from Macau.

Speculation in property is at last being rewarded in Taipa. A Chinese friend tells me prices are rising rapidly. Over in the Inner Port area the highest block is still six stories, and a flat there with a roof is difficult to sell because there are no lifts.

Taipa will keep growing, and no doubt the pollution from Zhuhai will worsen. But a lot of Macau's charm is intact. So I'll be back. OK, I admit it. I just can't wait.