It’s The Machine That Goes BLING!!!!!!

Macau is a strangle place. At the risk of rolling out all the old tropes it is one the first places on earth where East really did meet West. First leased as a trading outpost in 1557. Walking down the streets of old Macau, cobblestoned, framed with elegant street lights, European style buildings everywhere, the charm is still very much evident. That being said the signs are mostly bilingual, Portuguese and Mandarin, when they are trilingual English comes a distant third. Yes it was handed back to China in 1999, two years after Hong Kong. Portugal actually tried to return it as early as 1974. It is clearly part of China now even though it is considered a special administrative region. A glance at the airport’s departure board shows 90% of the planes are going to destinations in mainland China, with Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia getting minor mentions. Stand at the Border Gate and you will see how many people are crossing into Macau over land. That being said it works. The people are friendly, they know enough English that we can communicate and lets be honest they don’t have to. Macau is part of China, us white guys are the minority, the days of colonial rule are long gone. It’s the Chinese century and it’s their rules and I’m just pleased I can be a small part of it.

It didn’t take much incentive to leave the soulless casinos. They are impressive in their over the top kind of way. It’s kind of like what you’d expect if you let Donald Trump decorate your house and he didn’t have to foot the bill. It’s all about scale. Everything is huge, 1000’s of hotels rooms, extravagant fittings and fixtures, over the top shopping options, amazing live shows, once in a lifetime experiences with more gaming tables and poker machines than this small stretch of land could reasonably be expected to contain. 

They call it the Cotai strip however walking between even adjoining casinos means you will clock up close to a kilometre on the old nikes. There are 41 casinos to choose from with more on the way. In 2014, the peak year for betting, a staggering $45,000,000,000US was gambled. Once you get in the casino they make it extremely hard to leave but once you’re out there are shuttle buses to pick you up and drop you off at all the major venues.

I’ll try and give some insight into how they look. Picture an empty airline hangar, one that could hold a few of those massive Airbus A 380’s. Then imagine you asked a group of North Korean generals for their decorating tips, you know the ones they have awarded themselves so many medals they not only fill their dress jackets but also go down their trouser legs as well. There is more bling in these places than you’d find at a dodgy discount jewellery store. After a very short period they all start looking the same and the people who frequent them take on an all too familiar hue. There is that quiet look of half expectation and half dread. These people have saved up money for this trip, in some cases hundreds of thousands. They all expect they will go home millionaires, but as we all know the house always wins.

I had a small flutter in each of them, looked at their loyalty programs, saw how they set up and laid out their machines, evaluated the incentives they were offering to see what I could see. A guy sat down next to me and put $30,000 Hong Kong dollars into a machine (that’s about $6,000 Australian), placed about five $200 HKD bets, won about $5,000 HKD and moved on to the next machine.

Anyway, it didn’t take much to make me want to leave. This time we hoped on to the correct shuttle and took ourselves into old Macau. The traffic here is horrendous by the way, not only are there vast throngs of people but the main strip is just one massive construction site. The six kilometre journey took 25 minutes. We wandered up and down, took a ride on a tricyclos, saw the waterfront and visited some of the main sites and prayed at another famous Buddhist temple, the A-Ma. We ended up in the traditional part of the city and ascended the steps to see the ruins of St Paul’s, we then pushed on further up the hill to see the view from the fort. The Grand Lisboa, a garish hotel that channels all the worst instincts of Las Vegas, dominates the skyline. From the fort you can also see across the Pearl River into mainland China. It’s so close you can almost touch it.

We spent about 4 hours channeling all the best that old Macau had to offer and headed back to our overblown digs for some well earned rest.

There is an old village that is “almost” walking distance from the hotel that still to hold much of the old charm, that is our next target. The Asian Odyssey continues.

Macau

The hydrofoil to Macau was fun, just a few minutes shy of an hour and you’re in Macau and just kilometres to the border with mainland China. I mention the border because I did something ridiculously stupid. I put us on the bus to that border. I thought we had got on the bus to do the run around the main casinos instead we joined the bus to get back to the mainland. Lucky Macau is so small, the entire round trip even waiting for the bus and the return bus took a little over an hour. It turns out that there are plenty of day trippers from the mainland, enough to warrant a 100 plus bus trips a day going in both directions to all the casinos.

Before we had jumped on the wrong bus we had grabbed dinner in the Casino. We white guys are thin on the ground here so European/American style food is a bit hard to come by. We ate at this spectacular restaurant The Northern Noodle House in the City of Dreams Casino and I had this amazing chicken and turtle Szechuan dish that just blew me out of the water. At least we were well fed before our little sojourn to the border.

Later in the evening we tried our luck in a very small manner here at the City of Dreams, then the Wynn Palace where we arrived by cable car gondola and finally we hit the famed Venetian with its over the top decorations and many thousand slot machines. From a professional view point it is an interesting exercise. There is basisically no low denomination stuff (1c and 2c) and even 5 cent machines are hard to find. The ATMs dispense $1,000 notes (equivalent to about $200 Australian) and if you split them and you get two $500 notes, which you then have to split to $100 so you can play with $20. Plus there is no $10 cap on the bets. It is possible to bet very large amounts here so you must be very careful, or very rich.

Tomorrow we will head to old Macau to see the sights and no doubt explore some more over the top casinos.

Stormy Weather

The weather has turned a little foul on us here is not so sunny Honkers. The wind is whipping down the streets of the city with over 9,000 high rise buildings, 1,500+ plus of which are considered skyscrapers (greater than 100 meters). In fact Hong Kong has the largest number of skyscrapers of any city in the world. Despite the weather we still hit Victoria Harbour but did not want to spend too much time out in the open so the planned dinner cruise tonight is off. 

Sleeping in seems to be our new thing here in Hong Kong. Again we struggled to get out of bed before 9.00am. There must be something in the water. We ended up in some canteen frequented by workers for our late breakfast where I indulged in some dim sum and Oui enjoyed a noodle soup. All for the grand price of less than $20. 

Suitably refreshed we headed down to the harbour using the ever trusty Octopus Card and the MTR. After a little fluffing about we boarded a Star Ferry, dressed in it’s traditional green and white livery, to tool around for an hour or so. We braved the front deck for the first ten minutes but the wind just became oppressive. Poor Oui has not had the best of it when it comes to our choice of transport and was feeling quite unwell after about 40 minutes (there is nothing worse than feeling seasick). Even though it was cloudy the city was impressive to look at from the water and while we will miss the light show it is still hard not to be impressed. Clearly Hong Kong has a rich marine heritage so it was nice to be on water, we even got to see a junk.

We rounded off our day by hitting the markets again. I thought I should pick up some t-shirts as gifts and grab a souvenir. We finally found a place we both liked for dinner just around the corner from our hotel. I have really enjoyed the food but I think Oui feels let down by the rest of Asia as she can’t find food spicy enough for her taste.

We travel to Macau by hydrofoil tomorrow. I hope Oui can manage the crossing, it’s only an hour but when the sea makes you sick all you want to do is crawl up in a corner and die. I will let you know soon.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a crazy town, about 7.4 million people squeezed into about 1,000 square kilometres. I think I ran into all of them, literally. When you are my size, and space is a premium everything is small. Chairs I can’t sit at, tables I can’t put my legs under, even the MTR has a low ceiling and I can rest my head on the upper grab rail. 

We emerged from our hotel on Sunday morning after another long sleep to find ourselves in what seemed like Malaysia. 1,000’s of women’s all wearing head scarves had camped in the area and I thought we were back in a Muslim country. Not so it seems. The local labour laws prevent your live in help from leaving the house so if you are a servant your one day off in Sunday and you meet up with your friends and share food, dance, sing, swap gossip and whatever else may take your fancy with your little down time. It’s hard to believe but it makes Hong Kong even busier.

Lantau Island and the famed cable cars were calling so we fought our way through the throngs to get to the MTR and set off on our adventure. Oui had quite a scare as she missed the train and all I could do was hold up three fingers as she disappeared from view hoping she would understand I meant get the next train and go three stops. Three minutes later it was crisis averted and we were reunited. It have us both a bit of a scare.

Like everything in Hong Kong you line up for hours and the cable cars were no different. You line up to buy your ticket then you line up to ride it. The entire thing is 5.7 kilometres long and takes about 25 minutes. You are rewarded with the most stunning vistas.

They have recreated a traditional Chinese village at the top full of ordinary restaurants and over priced souvenirs, however there is one thing of note a giant Buddha that sits atop a hill and is 34 meters high, it’s made of bronze and weighs 240 tonnes. After you have walked up the 268 steps to his feet you are treated to a magnificent outlook.

After joining the line for the downward cable car we ascended through the clouds which is a little spooky yet quite peaceful then headed for the Temple Street Markets and the Ladies Night Markets where we totally failed to get a shirt in my size.

Tomorrow we take to the Harbour to see what we can see.