Day 5

We got up early to do and headed straight Victoria Harbour as we had booked a ferry across to Macau. We picked up a quick bite to eat for breakfast on route. The ferry ride across was about an hour with some nice views of Hong Kong waterfront. Once it got going it was quite fast. Everything in Macau was in Portuguese which I hadn’t realised before hand was an old Portuguese colony for close to 500 years!

Was interesting seeing the influence Portugal still had there as all signs were in Portuguese and some of the casinos were Portuguese like the Grand Lisboa. I also noticed they seem to love “egg tarts” here which may also be a Portuguese influence. Was another sunny and very humid day and as we wanted to go visit some of the casinos we weren’t sure about it the dress code so dressed smart casual (I carried some jeans in my rucksack in case I needed to change).

Once we arrived on Macau we had to go through passport control as its mainland China and technically a municipality. We got the free shuttle bus to the Venetian Casino to start. There are buses going to 20+ casinos dotted around Macau. The Venetian is the world’s biggest casino at 550,000 square feet! It’s hard to get across the scale of it with huge rooms with polished marble floors and giant chandeliers. Designer shops left and right but it does feel a bit weird that the whole place has been funded from gambling. The majority of the gamblers (99%) were Chinese and I’d say more than 60% were female! I had to be careful about taking photos inside as they are big on privacy!

We were a bit overwhelmed as there were thousands of Chinese and noise and lights everywhere! I wanted to play blackjack and had budgeted myself about £200 or 2000 Hong Kong Dollars. Sinéad and me found an empty table to play with the dealer and thankfully I went on a hot run (three blackjacks in a row) and quickly turned my 2000 into 4600, so roughly profit of £250! Sinéad got me to cash in thankfully so we left the Venetian on a high!

After the Venetian we wandered over to the Parisian (a lot of the huge casinos are connected) and had a walk around the casino floor there. We walked through the shopping mall (all the expensive shops were deserted) and then got some food in one of the Japanese udon restaurants there with some of the winnings (rest went on dinner and towards the new suit). We tried the macau beer which was actually really nice. Macau has its own currency but Hong Kong Dollars are still accepted thankfully

After lunch we took the free bus over to the Grand Lisboa. This was more traditional casino and less extravagant but was still mobbed. Was interesting for me to see in all the casinos by far the most popular game was Baccarat (I think an Italian game). 80% of the tables were Baccarat so the Chinese must go nuts for it. Sinéad had a go on virtual roulette and won a few bets. I was happy with my winnings so stayed clear the rest of the day. .There isn’t much to do in Macau besides gamble and it’s too hot to walk outside so we called it a day as were worn out from the hustle and bustle and bussed it back to the port for our night ferry (7pm one).

We got back about 8pm and took the metro to our hotel. On route we stopped for dinner and I had some sweet and sour pork that was delicious and Sinéad had a Malaysian curry.Читать далее