Advertisement
Published: December 5th 2011
Macau at night
Bright lights, big money!Macau is actually not that big, only 29sqkm to be exact. It consists of a small peninsula jutting out from Southern China (60 km from Hong Kong Island) and two bridged islands that have been merged together through modern engineering and a lot of backfill, and it continues to grow more and more with land being reclaimed for new buildings every year. It was colonized by the Portuguese in the 16
th Century and acted as their trading headquarters for China, Japan and South East Asia. The Portuguese brought with them culture, religion, food, wine and architecture that is still present today in a unique mix of European and Chinese sights, sounds and smells. In more recent history Macau became a gangsters paradise with endless opportunities on the black market. Gangs, Chinese Triads, could operate their business in Communist China while living in the poorly governed (corrupt) Portuguese colony. Drug trade, human trafficking, money laundering, stolen goods, if you wanted to move something in and out of China, Macau was your best bet. Then in 1999 everything changed when Portugal handed it’s colony of over 500 years back to the Chinese, in the same way Hong Kong was handed back by the
Me & Dale
At the Coloane fishing village. British. Because Macau operated so differently then the rest of China, both legally and illegally, the Chinese decided to make it a Special Administrative Region (SAR - just like Hong Kong) for the next 50 years. What the Chinese did do however is round up all the head gangsters (some of whose mansions still exist, empty - we saw them) and threw them in jail… in China … game over!
Since the handover and the declared SAR, Macau has boomed. Illegal casinos were replaced with legal ones and the legal ones built bigger ones. Today, not only are there Chinese owned casinos, such as the Grand Lisboa, Star World and Galaxy; there’s all the Vegas big names too: MGM, Sands, Wynn, Hard Rock, and Venetian (with canals and Philippino Gondoliers singing to their passengers as they pole though the facades of Venice) to name a few. And it’s serious business… Macau Big means that these casinos built on reclaimed land (both from the South China Sea and the gangsters), situated between Chinese markets and Jesuit Churches, that really only cater to Chinese gamblers, makes 3-times the amount in gaming revenue (about $30 billion/year) then all of Las Vegas combined
Largo do Senado
Old town square. (about $10 billion). The numbers are mind-blowing and it’s all due to the insane wealth of the mainland China high-rollers that come to play with their money.
Gamble, shop, eat and sleep (in that order) is what they come to do. The gambling is mostly Baccarat and Mahjong only a couple of Black Jack, Craps and Roulette tables on the endless gaming floors. The shops are ridiculous - I’ve never seen so many Louis Vutton, Cartier, Prada, Gucci, and Chanel shops in such close, Starbucks-like, proximity. Did you know that you can buy a US$100,000 cell phone? It makes an iPhone seem pretty cheap! Restaurants of every calibre with Chefs and ingredients from around the world - Australian beef, French oysters, Canadian salmon, Russian caviar are all flown in daily. And then there’s sleeping… Macau proportionately has a small number of Villas or Suites, compared to Vegas because unless Mr. Money-Bags wants to through a party, he’ll probably take a small (but still luxurious) room to catch a few Z’s and then back to the gaming tables… it’s all about the gaming! No Celine Dion, no Blue Men Group, no Chris Angel, no roller coasters, no $100-cover nightclubs, no
trips to the Hoover Damn or the Macau equivalent… just airport to casino, casino to airport. And when you see these guys with their designer man-bags leave the casino, looking a little stuffed, you know that this trip was luckier then others.
For us, Macau was a bit of a different trip then the regular gambling tourist; like in Shanghai, we had friends to visit. The story between Trevor & Dale Martin and myself is longer then my brief history of Macau (above), so the short version is: in 2000 while I was travelling through Australia, Trevor and Dale took me and my travelling partner into their house in Melbourne and adopted us for as long as we needed a place to stay. They were amazing hosts, looking after us in every way and we formed a great relationship (Trevor still jokes that my ass is still imprinted on his couch!). Then in 2006 when Kelsey and I were living in Melbourne, going to University, we toured the island of Tasmania and visited and stayed with them while they lived in Hobart. Then 4-years ago Trevor was offered an Executive HR position with a Chinese company that already owned
Facade of Church of St Paul
Built in 1602, but a fire in 1835 left only the facade. one casino in Macau and wanted to open a new one called Galaxy - his job was to hire the 8,000 operational staff required to open the property when construction of the first phase was due to be done in Spring 2011. Having kept in touch with Trevor and Dale over the years, we took this opportunity to visit them again and to hopefully see more of Macau then just the gaming floors… although big casinos are always interesting to me!
Once again, Trevor and Dale were great hosts and we stayed with them in their 22nd-floor apartment with a view off their balcony towards the Macau casinos, mainland China and a recently uprooted banana plantation that was getting prepped for development. In true Dale style, she popped a bottle of Moet once we dropped our bags in our room and we got a chance to catch up on the last 5 years and make a plan for the next 5 days.
Although Dale wouldn’t admit it, she was becoming quite the Macanese tour guide, as she’s had a number of friends and family from Australia visit them over the last 4 years. In her mind she had
a checklist of where we needed to go and what we needed to see and she accompanied us all over that unique “SAR”. She showed us her favourite markets, churches, clothing shops (both knock-offs and real), antique shops (again both knock-off and real), perfume shops(again both knock-off and real), and to her favourite spaces in the casinos whether it be the lobby, an art collection, an atrium, or shopping area and also to her favourite restaurants, both grand and well-known and small little gems.
Because we arrived on a Sunday and left on a Saturday, we didn’t get to see Trevor during the day, however we met up every night with him at another one of their favourite restaurants, ranging from Portuguese, Korean, Italian, and Macanese. One night Kelsey and I went out on a little dinner date to the Wynn casino, where we had a fantastic Italian meal with a great bottle of Amarone and felt like big-shots for a couple hours as the meal progressed. So much so, that we even tried our luck on tables, but like most of the “big-shots“, that night the casino won.
On the last day we were there, Trevor arranged
Portuguese House
In the old town. a back-of-house tour of his newly opened Galaxy Casino Resort where we got to see the sandy beach and wave pool on the roof, three floors above the casino floor; we saw the beautiful Banyan Tree Villas; one of the VIP rooms, where I glanced at a Baccarat table with a $100,000 minimum bet; then we were greeted by the Executive Chef of the resort (50 food and beverage outlets, 550 cooks & 250 stewards!) who took us on a very comprehensive tour starting at the staff cafeteria (12,000 meals a day!) and then to the loading docks and the various production kitchens - butchery, fish, dumpling, sashimi, bakery, garde manger, pastries and desserts. Needless to say he had a lot going on, but gave us an amazing tour and some real insight in operating at such high capacity and in a foreign country.
On our last night we were joined by another Australian couple for a delicious Tepanaki dinner that finished with a Champagne toast on the roof-top bar some 35-stories up overlooking the flashing lights of the city. Trevor and Dale had pulled out all the stops for us on that 5-day visit and we were so
Old meets new
A cannon from the old fort points towards the new casinos. happy we made the trip to see a place as unique as Macau. Nowhere else have we been where you can walk though a Chinese market in the morning, where chickens are decapitated and plucked in front of you and unknown veggies, fruits and smells abound; then have a Portuguese egg tart (a Macanese speciality) in a cobblestone square in the shadow of a 400-year old church; then finish your day drinking tea and betting the farm at the tables of a 5-star casino… quite the place!
Thanks again to our surrogate Australian/Macanese parents for such an amazing time!
Until Next Time…
(Scroll down to the very bottom of the page for more pics…)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.324s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0624s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Tracy Eeftink
non-member comment
Great stuff
Hello Dan and Kelsey: Thanks so much for the photos. I wanted to tell you that I stayed in the Lisboa Hotel for a week during the Marlboro Formula 1 Races. I stayed in Hong Kong for a month. Love that place! Great to hear from you.