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Las Vegas of the East
Entry 19 of 47 | show all | print this entry |
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So, following a few days in Hong Kong, I thought I'd take a quick day-trip over the Pearl River Delta and see what Macau's all about.
For year's it was the equivalent of Hong Kong's ugly step-sister. It was there but no-one wanted it. Portugal tried to give it back to China in the 70's, but they actually refused to take it, such were the problems associated with it.
Ironically Macau was the first European foothold in China, having a head start of nearly 250 years over Hong Kong. But as soon as HK started to develop in a big way, Macau lost its gloss and by the 1920's it had become nothing more than a centre for drugs, prostitution and, the key thing here - gambling (actually sounds like quite a cool place!). In an attempt to breathe life into the colony at the turn of the century, Macau had become the first and, to date, only place in China to have legalised gambling. For those of you who've never been to a London casino, gambling is to Chinese what breathing is to the rest of the world. They're obsessed by it - you can't walk down a street in any city or town without seeing a card game or the Chinese version of domino's taking place on an upturned crate. So, somewhere with real live, legal casino's was bound to attract some interest. Legend has it that the Triad gangs actually started in Macau, not HK, as gangs formed to control the lucrative trade. But in the end, it went downhill rapidly. No Chinese from the mainland could get in and the place became so rough that even the HK residents decided it wasn't worth the trouble for a quick flutter. Portugal washed its hands of the place and it went to complete seed.
Until 1999, when the Chinese decided that as they'd got Hong Kong, they might as well go for the full house (nice gambling reference there) and they agreed to take back Macau. And since then, it's become a major success story. The powers that be realised they could stop all the locals flying off to different parts of the world to part with their hard-earned cash and could get them to lose it in their own town - so in came the Chinese police, out went the triads, in came the American chains and lo and behold you have present day Macau, an oriental version of Las Vegas.
Now that's not to say that Macau is as brash and gaudy as Vegas, indeed some of it's original architecture is beautiful. The Portuguese left their mark in a number of ways. The old cathedral
, fort and Government offices are classic examples of colonial style, whilst the food (yup, he was eating again) is a great fusion of med / Chinese cooking. There are also at least three Portuguese schools, so it looks as though, although the Portuguese wanted shot of the place, the locals aren't so keen to forget their roots!
But the heart of Macau today lies in its casino's - there are 14 major hotel casino's on the island with another 4 currently under construction. To give you an idea of the attraction of the place, I took a ferry from Kowloon, one of three direct routes from HK to Macau. There are sailings every half an hour with each ferry holding around 400 people. I took one at 11am, having not been able to get on the ones at 10 or 10.30. Mine was packed as well. So assuming the other two routes are the same and that the earlier ferry's are also packed, there's got to be at least 10,000 people making the trip every day - and this was a Monday! This, of course, excludes those coming in from the mainland. Inevitably I popped into one of these places before I left and it was heaving - but getting onto a table wasn't too tough, as long as you were prepared to go to the smallest bet tables - about £5 minimum. The real crowds were around the big bet tables - one Baccarat table had a minimum bet of around £1000 and there was a queue of about 20 people to get onto it - those on it were laying bets of at least £10k a time!
So, here you have the final proof that Communism is no longer Marxism, but pure capitalism. You want loud and brash, come to Macau - the Chinese have learnt the art pretty bloody quickly!
Mao must be spinning in his mausoleum!
Rob
PS for those of you curious as to how I did, my trip to Macau was self-funding - my massive winnings paid for my lunch and ferry ticket - £25
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| 19. | Las Vegas of the East - Macau, Macau Dec 04, 2006 (  4 ) |
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