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Published: February 9th 2008
Golden Dragon hotel
It's got a casino over 2 floors, what else to expect from your Macau Hotel?An old Chinese proverb says : For Chinese New Year you should head off to Macau for a Police concert.
Well who am I to resist the tradition?
I thus spent a couple of days in Macau, which is a small group of islands an hour away from HK, by ferry ride. If you are super posh you can also go there by helicopter, which is super fast and glamourous (given my already glamourous life in HK I felt it was time to do things a bit more normally).
Macau used to be a Portuguese colony and you can still see some remnants of this. Street names are in Portuguese, sometimes bearing names of Portuguese big shots. The architecture is most fascinating, with many streets of multicoloured low rise colonial houses. Walking through the old colonial streets is a real pleasure, even though this week it was COLD! Luckily there are many culinary delights on offer in the street stalls to help you get warm - I especially enjoyed eating a soup with lots of balls-of-things that I chose myself among a huge selection (see picture).
Macau is also known for being a casino heaven. They are everywhere,
they are huge, they are tentacular and I guess once you get inside one and start gambling it's easy to get gobbled up and emerge several hours/days later having no idea who you are, what is your name, what is the date and time, and where all your money has gone. I did not have the chance to indulge in gambling because 1. I had more important things to do (see next paragraph) and 2. I was a bit intimitated by these tables where people were playing card or dice games that I did not understand. I do intend to come back in the summer when it will be warmer to walk around the streets again and also have a week end of gambling, good food and rock'nRoll..
The main event during this trip was The Police on concert. I can sum it up in one word: Wow. Yes very elaborate literary expressions on this site.. But seriously it was quite breath taking. What energy, what power. And also how on earth does Sting manage to look so good at his age? When I grow up I definitely want to become Sting.
Logistics info: Macau is a
1hr boat ride away from Macau. Tickets can be purchased in advance on turbojet.com.hk. For some busy week ends it's advised to buy them in advance. The Ferry leaves from the Shun Tak building in Hong Kong central, and there are maybe 5-10 ferries per hour. I stayed in the Golden Dragon Hotel which was ok - it's slap bang next to the Ferry terminal, very convenient. It has a casino and looks a bit seedy (there were some adverts in Chinese in my room for the nightclub, with ladies with very little clothes on!) but overall very comfy and luxurious for the price.. If you really want to go mad stay at the Venitian.. HK residents don't need visas to enter Macau.
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