Honeymoon: More of Macau's Opulence

The Venetian Hotel complex is one of the most famous landmarks in Las Vegas. Its counterpart in Macau is perhaps less well known, but after recent developments is now larger and more impressive. It is now the largest hotel in Asia and the fourth largest building in the world by area, with floor space covering 980 square kilometres.

You don't get a real feeling for its scope until you start walking around inside. Every inch is covered in marble or renaissance artwork, and it's very easy to feel a little disoriented. It's like walking into the enormous palace of a middle-eastern oil baron.

Or so I would imagine.

There are multiple bus stations that serve the complex, and 250 elevators inside. Weaving in and around the hotel is an artificial canal with gondola rides.

Some of the interior seems like it came straight from a story book. What would really be impressive though, is if the Venetian were a public library instead of a casino.

There are 3400 slot machines in the Venetian. In South Australia, the most profitable machines can make AU$100,000 profit per year for the owners. So when you do the math, you get an idea of the kind of money that's going through this place.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that food should be cheaper with so much gambling revenue floating around. But food for the common folk in Macau is around the same price as Hong Kong, but generally not as good. It's all edible, but there just seemed to be a lack of creativity and passion in the dishes. I normally get excited by buffets, but this one was a bit of a non-event. Boiled sausages are not really a dish in their own right.

If anybody can read Chinese, I'd be interested to know what 'staves' are. This sign was near a stairwell.

In between wandering the casino halls, we did try to get out and see more of regular Macau. The suburbs are nice enough and the public buses are fairly easy to use. Interestingly, they use an honour system of payment, where you get on the bus and drop the bus fare into a large box. The bus driver is never watching how much you are paying.

And here's Heather on the brink of devouring 3200 calories. These days we don't really watch what we eat, but I've heard that once you hit middle age, your weight starts catching up with you.

Best to enjoy one's youthful metabolism while it lasts.

These are apartment blocks of workers in Macau. The city employs thousands of migrant workers, normally from South East Asia, to build the casinos and attend to the guests. From what I've heard, the working conditions for many of the workers are not that good. What they need here is some kind of modern day Robin Hood.

It's on my to-do list.

Then, somewhat unbefittingly, we headed back to the City of Dreams. The complex consists of a Hard Rock Casino, a Hyatt, a Crown Casino and a few other thingies.

The large glass ball behind Heather is an advertisement for the 'Bubble Show', which occurs every thirty minutes inside the complex. You need to go to the second floor to get a ticket, but its completely free.

The Bubble Show is in a large indoor dome, similar to a planetarium. It has roof sections that open, and large dangly things can pop in and out. Technically speaking.

In the middle was this huge UFO-like device. The water is sprayed downwards with computer precision to form special patterns in the light.

And the whole dome is one huge projector screen, able to plunge the audience into whatever environment the CG gods deem appropriate.

There was a loose storyline about a jade dragon deep beneath the ocean. And the dragon had a bubble that did something. And a whole bunch of epic things happened right where the casino was later built. So that's why this particular casino is more exciting than the other ones, where no such epic dragon battles occurred.

Parts of Macau are like a fantasy land. It's hard not to be awestruck by the sheer scale of everything, but I did sense undertones of greed and exploitation lurking behind the velvet carpets and marble walls. It's a nice place to visit, but somehow I wish things were a little different here.

Anyway, now we have one more Macau post to go, and then we're off to good old Adelaide!

Honeymoon: The L'Arc New World Hotel

If I had to choose between really hot weather or really cold weather, I'd probably choose the former. The main reason being that it's nice to hang out in the street under the shade of a tree. Luckily for us though, Korea has four seasons, as every Korean will tell you.

Just like everywhere else outside the tropics.

The weather in Macau is pretty warm all year round. There are a lot of gathering places like these, where the locals come to sit and talk to each other. It's funny how a location's weather can influence the demeanour of the people. Most Australians from Darwin that I've met are slow-moving and very relaxed, which I think is in part due to the humid weather all year.

Luckily our hotel had a pool that was completely empty. Most of the patrons were busy gambling.

Then it was time to go back to the L'Arc Hotel, which you may remember was recently opened by Peter Ng from Adelaide. The L'Arc is probably a billion dollar venture, complete with hundreds of rooms and a large casino. Peter had told me he was opening a new place in Macau, but when we found it, we were a little awestruck. Those statues are complemented by giant bronze horses on the outdoor suite level.

In the lobby was this large floral arrangement. All the flowers in the hotel are alive, which I confirmed by curious inspection. There's a lot of money flowing around in Macau, and the L'Arc stands out as one of the more opulent hotels.

We had a free dinner at the L'Arc buffet restaurant. I never like to ask old colleagues for freebies, but I'll take a free dinner anytime. Especially when I have a hungry newly-wed nibbling my sleeve.

And of course the buffet had everything you would imagine at a place like that. The plump chef on the right made an excellent laksa. Better than mine, and I've made hundreds. Laksas are easy to make well, but hard to make perfect.

I have a feeling that they'd be really popular in Korea, if you marketed them to students.

Here's Heather, enjoying some desserts. Peter came and ate with us, but he was a busy man and had to leave quickly. He offered us a free stay at the L'Arc, but we politely declined.

I told him he has a nice hotel.

Then Ron took us around with his magic key and let us look in the presidential suite. Ron is our old friend from Busan and was working with Peter there as well. Now he's the director of rooms at the L'Arc, and always has interesting inside stories about hotels. He's also very good at pointing out minor blemishes on things like marble and carpet, which normal people can only see after staring long and hard.

The presidential suite at the L'Arc has multiple bathrooms, a separate kitchen and entrance for the butler, and flat screen TVs that can be summoned from motorized cabinets. As you can imagine, it costs an arm and a leg to stay here. The price wasn't finalized when we were there, but you're looking at around US$20,000.
Per night.

And look, it's me and Heather in there. If I taught English at CDI again for a year and didn't spend anything, I could pay for one night.

And here's our good friend Ron. He's a fun person to know in this part of the world.

Peter gave us a nice bottle of wine that night. If you're heading to Macau and you have money to spend, try heading for the L'Arc hotel. There's good hospitality there.

Then we went out to the MGM Grand. The L'Arc is the biggest hotel in Macau with around 2000 staff, but there are still places with bigger casinos, like the MGM Grand, Wynn's and The Venetian.

This is the back entrance to the MGM Grand. It's like they've created a fantasy Disneyland in most of these places. The reason they do this is for psychological purposes, it helps to get people spending more money. But don't let that stop you admiring the pretty lights.

It's pretty hard to remain unfazed by all of the extravagance in Macau, but Heather did a pretty good job. That's why she's the right one for me.

This is the reception desk. I guess they ran out of money and got kindergarten kids to put the finishing touches on the wallpaper.

Hey look, they even made a statue of my wife.

And if you arrive by car, this is what the valet reception looks like. More like a spaceport than a hotel. If you're tempted to gamble a lot in a nice place like this, just remember why they can afford to build at such epic proportions in the first place.

But I did 'accidentally' end up gambling a little. You only live once.

And this is what the Sands Casino looks like. Hundreds of tables, operating continuously throughout the year, with smoking patrons rolling dice and flipping cards. The free entertainment was nice, but they make terrible cocktails here.

And here's Heather observing the commotion below. She doesn't think much of table games, but took a liking to the slot machines. She likes the pictures that flash up, and her favourite one is called Geisha. My favourite machine is called Double Dolphins, because I like marine biology, and it's remotely educational. Well, not really.

Anyway, more of Macau coming soon...

Honeymoon: The Casinos of Macau

A couple of hundred years before the British colonised Hong Kong, the Portugese were already in Macau under a slightly more amicable agreement. Macau was once a major trading portal for South East Asia, but declined in that role and has since become more famous for its casinos.

The best way to get from Hong Kong to Macau is by ferry. There are a few different services, but they're all around the same price. The trip takes about an hour and if you have a Hong Kong tourist visa, it's very simple to go to Macau.

You don't need to reserve tickets beforehand, because there are ferries departing every 30 minutes. You just pay for the ticket (around US$50) and an hour later you can board with your luggage.

Macau does have an international airport, but it's only popular with the richer crowd. Departing by ferry also gives you some better sights of both harbours.

As soon as we got on the ferry, Heather spotted a packet of dried squid for sale behind a counter. But they wouldn't let us buy it until the ferry left the port, so Heather sat down and did a good job pretending that she was thinking about other things, beside the squid. But I know Heather pretty well. Some people get dollar signs in their eyes when they think of money, but Heather gets little squid silhouettes when she wants to eat dried squid.

As soon as the ferry left port, she had the squid in her hands and was munching gleefully. Late at night, squid parents tell their squid children about the Heather Monster.

The first thing I noticed about Macau was the blueness of the twilight sky. I was so used to the grey skies of Seoul that I had forgotten about its usual pleasant tones.

Hotels and casinos are big business in Macau and shuttle buses constantly arrive at the ferry terminal to transport new guests to their destinations. At the bus station you can roughly gauge how popular your hotel is, just by seeing how frequently the shuttle buses arrive. For the Venetian Hotel, buses come every couple of minutes. We had to wait around 45 minutes for ours.

We stayed at the Casa Real Hotel, which was pretty good in the end. A nice room with breakfast will put you back around US$130 per night.

I usually don't like to spend a lot on hotels, because we're normally out for most of the day anyway. But I spent a little more on the honeymoon just because.

As soon as we dropped off our luggage, we went out to have a look around. Macau itself is smaller than Hong Kong, and it similarly has both a peninsula and an island.

The first thing you notice about the city is an abundance of neon that one may previously have believed could only be found in Seoul.

What do we think of Macau? Small and dazzling.

Macau has historically been a gambling destination, as the Portugese government introduced relaxed gaming laws centuries ago. There are about 11 major casinos in the city and probably around 40 other smaller ones.

This hotel is called the L'Arc New World. It opened on the week we arrived and is currently the tallest hotel in Macau.

Coincidentally, the general manager of the L'Arc is my old Casuarina boss from Adelaide, Peter Ng. If you look back through the archives of this blog to 2007, you can see his old hotel where I used to teach, which was at The Seacloud in Busan. If we had come on any other week except opening week, we probably would have stayed here.

This is the lobby of the hotel. We'll come back here in a later blog post.

All the big name hotels from Las Vegas are now in Macau, including the MGM Grand. In terms of gambling quantity and number of tables, Macau has already overtaken Vegas and continues to grow. I would attribute that to a more ingrained gambling culture in the Chinese tourists who make up the majority of visitors. Luck is a prominent part of Chinese culture, with all sorts of symbolic things considered lucky. And when you have enough people believing in luck, there's money to be made.

But one good thing about lots of people spending money is that the casinos have reinvested a small portion of that into free attractions. In the lobby of the MGM Grand is this display on the ceiling, representing the heavens. It's much larger than it looks in the photo.

Directly underneath it is the Earth. The whole display starts moving at 9pm every night and people crowd around to watch the show.

The ceiling opens up to reveal an enormous LED display, and from the ground emerges the Money Tree. On some nights, the tree comes out, and on other nights a large golden dragon comes out instead.

It rotates slowly in its dazzling glory and people throw coins at it for good luck.

Here's a slightly long video of part of the show. Love them or hate them, the casinos of Macau know how to impress people with a good show.

More of that coming later. See you soon!