Days 95 & 96: Macau

Facade of St Paul's
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Macau is rightly described as Asia’s Vegas, and with a recent influx of over-sized casino resorts including many US based companies such as Wynn, Sands and MGM its a pretty fair description. Additionally though, Macau has numerous historic sights, mostly churches, having been a Portuguese colony for the 400 years until 1999 when, like Hong Kong, it was handed back to China.

Arriving off the jet boat from Hong Kong we grabbed a cab to the Holiday Inn to see if we could get a room at a decent rate. We’d initially decided to stay at the Venetian resort but at over double the price decided the difference could be put to better use on the casino floors. Took a long cab ride out to the northern island (Macau actually being 3 islands joined by many bridges and ever increasing strips of reclaimed land) where we were caught up with ‘the grown ups’ at a really good Macanese / Portuguese restaurant (more of an upmarket shack by the beach really) and said cheerio before going our separate ways.

Macau-a-bunga

Colonial streets of Macau
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Spent our first evening playing the slots (with some success) and the tables (mainly blackjack, also with some success) at the Venetian. After some ups and downs called it quits at around $2,500 up, unfortunately that’s HK$ so only about £200, but certainly better than losing. The Venetian resort is effectively a big brother to the Las Vegas casino & hotel, with the recreations of Venice streets complete with facades, light changing sky and gondolas floating down the canals. Really quite incredible, and the casino floor is huge, way way bigger than anything we saw in America a couple of years ago.

Old Town
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Daytime of our second day was spent sightseeing, taking in the many churches (notably the facade of St Pauls), ruins and A-Ma Temple; as well as spending a couple of hours at the Macau Museum learning about the merger of Chinese and colonial influences over the past centuries – really much better than that probably sounds!

Back to gaming in the evening, this time touring round some of the larger resorts in the centre, the Venetian being a couple of kms of out the city centre on the reclaimed Cotai Strip. After nearly blowing all yesterday’s winnings (and more) three of a kind at Poker gets us marginally ahead for the night – called it quits and wandered back. The walk around town is pretty cool at the moment as the Macau Grand Prix is scheduled for Thurs – Sun, so many of the streets are blocked off with barriers and / or stands erected round them.