How safe is Macao for travelers?

Street crime is genuinely low

• Macao is one of the safest cities in the world to walk at night, and it is watched by more cameras per square metre than almost anywhere.
• Pickpocketing happens where crowds do: Senado Square, the ferry terminals, packed casino floors.
• The exception is money. Large amounts of cash move through this city and people carrying it are targeted. Do not walk out of a cage with a visible bundle.

The casino economy

• You must be 21 to enter a casino floor, and identity is checked.
• Photography on the gaming floor is prohibited. This is enforced firmly and immediately.
• Do not accept a loan from anyone inside a casino. Loan-sharking around the gaming floors is a real and violent business, and the debt does not stay in Macao.
• Currency exchange offered on the floor by an individual is not a service; it is the front end of that same business.

The law

• The Safeguarding National Security Law covers treason, secession and subversion, is drawn broadly, and is asserted to apply to conduct outside Macao. Authorities can access social media and private messages in enforcing it.
• Drug possession means imprisonment. There is no visitor's allowance and no discretion.
• Uber and unlicensed cars are illegal and the police act against passengers as well as drivers.
• Do not photograph military installations.

Typhoons

• The season runs May to November and peaks July to September.
• The signals are 1, 3, 8, 9 and 10. Signal 1 means a cyclone within 800 km. Signal 3 means sustained winds of 41 to 62 km/h. Signal 8 means 63 to 117 km/h with gusts over 180, and at that point the city stops.
• The cross-sea bridges close at Signal 8, which strands people on the wrong island - and the airport is on Taipa, across a bridge from the peninsula. If a Signal 8 is coming and your flight is not cancelled yet, get to the airport side early.
• Ferries to Hong Kong stop well before the airport does.
• A storm surge warning is separate and matters in the low-lying Inner Harbour, which has flooded to first-floor height in living memory.