Sincity of Asia-Macau & Kowloon, Hong Kong
On the night before departure, after the night class, all of us are half dead tired, but I think ‘holiday’ or trip really have magical effects. On the night we touched down, we felt replenished again. It’s nice to have a trip together with my classmates, although for certain person, it brought out some undesirable personality we’ve hardly seen before.
Macau might not be in my favorite list of cities, but going there gives me the chance to feel what the casino city is. Honestly, for non gambler, there are many times when I feel bored, really bored, or half bored. Especially when we roamed from casinos to casinos. At first, I planned to give try, to be a millionaire, rich! (That is the idea of all the gamblers!). Yeah, I planned to give table game a try., since jackpot machine is boring and waste of money. Perhaps some blackjack, baccarat or roulette game. I’m quite confident because normally for leisure card gaming, I can say I have above average skills..ho ho… But when I got there, looking at how our 20 bucks (minimal 100 HKD per hand) can vanish within seconds, I have no mood at all…ha…chicken..
Macau in English spelling and Macao in Portuguese. (I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealy hope I don’t mix this one up).
The name is actually a mistake. It used to known as Haojing (Oyster Mirror) or Jinghai (Mirror Sea). The famous temple, A-ma, now still a famous tourist attraction, built in 1448 dedicated to Matsu – the goddess of seafarers and fishermen. When Portuguese land at the coast outside the temple, they asked the native about name of the place and got A-Ma-Gao as reply, means Bay of A-Ma, the Portuguese since calls it Macao, or Macau.
Macau was handed over back to China in 1999, with joint declaration that the systems and structures are to remain unchanged for at least 50 years. So Macau has its own currency, Pataca, immigration and border controls etc.
From casino industry, Macau is actually a very impressive city. It’s the world’s highest biggest volume gambling centre in the world, the revenue per number of casino is at least few fold of Las Vegas. In the world, Macau ranks 21st in terms of tourism arrival. Venetian Macau is one of the impressive casinos, opened in 2007, the third largest building in the world. Sands Macau is the largest casino of the world in term of total number of table games.
For almost all of us, this was our first trip to Macau, and of course, we visited the glorious grand casinos first.
First casino we visited on the first night was Star World. I didn’t really have good impression because by the time we walked in, I could smell the.. let me describe, it should be a fragrance for some, but for me, it’s the smell that I hate…combination of taxi smell, hair tonic and recycled indoor air. Urgh..but of course, this is subjective. I have sensitive nose and I dislike strong smell.
Wynn is impressive casino, it has nice warm interior that I picked it as the one that I like amongst others. We were lucky to get there just before the rotunda show. So around the rotunda, there was a circular railing goes around a golden half of sphere. The half-sphere was half buried inside the floor. People crowed around leaning on the railing. We were wondering why this bunch of idiots were looking at the golden half-ball. Okay, perhaps it’s gold plated. But so? Because the ceiling is more interesting, it’s an impressive circular ceiling with three dimensional features of twelve animals in Chinese horoscope. So we took pictures and intended to go inside casino, then suddenly, kocheng kencheng kencreng… music came out and the lights was changing.
I remember exactly, one of my friends pointed to the ceiling. I thought there was an earthquake or something. Because I saw the ceiling shifted, it opened up from the middle, all the twelve horoscopes shifted and slide to form smaller perimeter, and smaller until all the ceiling areas were open. While it was happening, animations played in the ‘hole’, it’s indeed a gigantic Lcd display. Okay, I didn’t know how the lcd panel disappear, I was more into taking pictures of my friends, because they were running around trying to get good angles. When I looked up again, Lcd disappeared, there was a gargantuan chandeliers coming down from the black hole. It was glorious I must say, then my friend pointed below (hey, this friend is very fast…!) The golden halfball below was opened, then a tree, big tree grew from there and ended up standing majestically before our eyes, changing colors from winter to autumn. Whoaaa…
As grand as it appeared, after a while the tree went down, chandeliers gone and the ceiling closed. Lights up, and it was as if nothing ever happened at all. I must say it’s very impressive, no wonder everyone was gathered around the ‘stupid’ ball…so it’s not because it’s gold-plated at all..
Sands Macau, located by the bay, from the ferry back from Kowloon, Hong Kong, we could see it as the welcome landmark of the city. Ponte 16, if I’m not wrong, is the newest casino in town. The thing I remember about Sands and Ponte 16 is the show. Ears up guys….Sexy ladies, bikini clad or G-string….And you can watch for free anytime…!
We had dinner in Sands, reasonable food and reasonable price, even cheaper than the first road side eatery we visited on the first night. But for a short visit in casino there, we had two not-so-nice experiences. First, they chased us away from glass railing (safety? Security? Or afraid we ‘count’ the cards from tables below? It’s a solid thick glass railing that even elephant can lean and smoke weed..) Second, they chase us when we just touched our butts on jackpot chairs, attempting to rest our feet. The jackpot machines area was empty all the time, so we felt quite ‘hurt’. Huh.
Ponte 16, this was the smokiest casino of all, if I’m not wrong, it’s located in Taipa.
Grand Lisboa, day time, the building looked very ugly, it uses the concept of Lotus flower, but end up looking like pinnacle or fido dido. At night, with all the lighting on, it’s not too bad. It’s built heavily based on Chinese beliefs and feng-shui. Golden, sparkling..red.. the older generation of Hotel Lisboa is connected via a bridge where they still hosted traditional gambling table using buttons. It’s quite interesting to watch. So there was a pile of button on the table, the croupier then ‘shuffled’ them, put some inside inverted cone shape thingy and then divided the buttons into rows; each row consisted of four buttons. The players has to bet whether the last row consisted of 1,2,3 or 4 buttons, or combination of 2 or 3 guesses. Up to 75% probability.
Crown casino, I guess it’s the sister of Melbourne’s Crown. It’s located in Taipa.. We had to travel through the bridge. Although physically disappointing, it’s dim, small, even tiny compared to others, they didn’t have much to offer, like water and soft drinks. But not to be deceived by appearance, Crown is the casino with the highest revenue in the world. It’s so called proven, the higher the level, the more we didn’t belong to. The casino chips are different, from round to square with different nominal value. Stack of 10.000 dollar chips were exchanged between dealers and players in matters of second. We didn’t even dare to get close enough to look at the nominal value of other colored square chips and even, ellipse chips.
Venetian, located in Taipa. I heard it’s modeled like the Venetian of Las Vegas. As mentioned, it’s very impressive in size. Except that, Venetian is the must go. This gargantuan building, completed within three years, has different things to offer. The building has bus parking area, that notably bigger than most bus interchange in Singapore. Huge! It has outdoor canal, with gondolas. It also has 3 long artificial canals inside the building, complete with the gondolas and Italian look-alike boat rowers who can sing very well with the help of interior acoustic and they sing….! The canal areas are call The Grand Canal Shoppes, it is indoor, but made to feel like outdoor with artificial sky, which looks very real and the ambience is there. Paintings decorate the interior everywhere, from walls to ceilings. If you are going to Macau from airport at night time, the Venetian building is the one that welcomes you and it lights up impressively. To bad we didn’t take a shot of it. The other thing that draw me to Venetian two times during my stay was because that was the only place I could find Times, the only bookshop or places that sell books and magazines, in language I can understand. I don’t normally look for bookshop during a trip, but this time I needed it, because I had some hours to kill on the plane and airport, especially on the way back due to unpleasant noisy flying companies..Ha…
The Grand Canal Shoppes
Statue Artist (but they move quite often leh :)
Babylon is small casino near the Fisherman Dwarf. Fisherman Dwarf looked like some interesting place to visit, although we perhaps saw it all from the bus. It’s a miniature of many places., but time was too tight…
MGM…three layer colored building with huge golden lion sitting outside. MGM has a nice bar in the middle of the casino floor. We hung out there one night. The music and band were not bad, actually they had very good vocal, but for performance, they kind of talked too much and spoiled the music by repeating certain part of song hysterically. For example; I am hungry…haayayyayyaa..I’m hungry….how is everybody tonight…bla bla bla…then I’m hungry again x 20 times. The female lead singer went around in seductively kind of way. I guess nothing is innocent in Macau.
MGM Internal Courtyard
Corridor Museum with changing colors
GROAWWWWWW
We had some unpleasant experience so we went straight home and didn’t explore the casino. It was quite nice to walk back home, Macau is quite safe, the streets are all brightly lit like daytime. Almost all casinos open 24 hours. We can find food almost 24 hours too, even the pawnshops were still open way after midnight, in case someone need money after gambling…hmm…
We found nice lok-lok as supper. Lok-lok is uh….so you pick whatever food you want, from meat ball to tendon and chicken blood and unrecognizable shapes of food. The rule of eating something is, never look at the kitchen. You know what I mean. And, never offend restaurant staff before your food arrive. You know what I mean.
About the people., we met nice and rude people and many intimidating people. Mostly they came from mainland. They stare at people like nobody business, up and down, left and right in very intimidating way, they speak extremely loud, it’s the culture but to cross-fit with another culture, it came out rude.
Sincity is the same everywhere. People praying and hoping to win. People lost their cool and control upon entering casino floor. It’s reality. I could see someone you never expected go berserk because of gambling, and I could see the real ‘cool’ personality who stood out temptation. It’s kind of personality test there. Weird, but interesting, and horrible.
We visited the tourist area like A-ma temple and ruin of St. Paul. St. Paul church was made of wood, except the front façade. During a fire breakout, it burned down, everything was gone except the front stone façade that stood up alone like a movie set. I’m pretty sure I would enjoy the sight but the numbers of tourists flooding up the place made me want to go as soon as possible. When something is too comercialized, somehow it loses its attractiveness. We also visited Kun Lam statue on the waterfront bay, it’s the Goddess of Mercy in one interpretation to suit Chinese Buddhist and Mother Mary for Portuguese. Along the old Macau area that day we could see old buildings and buildings on the hills. Too bad we didn’t have enough time to explore.
Ruin of St. Paul
Nice rooftop garden...uhm...near St. Paul
See the pinnaeple..?
Kun Lam Statue
Macau
On our last day in Macau, we went to the famous Lord Stow’s café with so called the best Portuguese tart in town. It’s in Coloane Island. The shop keepers are friendly Filipinos.
In Coloane Lord Stow’s, we were like entering a different time frame. It was located in nice, quite area near the bay. There were benches in the park and stone table for us to sit under the big tree, enjoy the silence and clear air, drastically different with all the happening days in Macau. It was very nice and all of us liked the area instantly.
During our 5-day stay, I managed to cross border with my two friends to Hong Kong for a day. We tried the dimsum (excellent!), the infamous steam egg and the instant noodle with luncheon meat (it is nice although our instant noodle are still the best..).
We went to Ladies Market, Temple Street or Man Street. Basically we roamed in Kowloon area. Ladies Market is the “squeezy” road side market where we had to engage in war of bargaining to get things. As what I intend to, I found many Doraemon stuff, he he…although that was not the best place for it.. Man street was more for adult, they sold sex toys just like that, displayed on the table everywhere. It was not opened yet when we reached there. Because of exhaustion and some other reason, we cut short the trip and went back to Macau earlier.
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A glimpse at Mongkok, Kowloon
Macau Bridge
So that’s my impression about Macau. It has different sides of life but mostly, what you see are colors of lights, smokes and rich men going poor or hardly, poor men going rich.
Hong Kong, or actually Kowloon, we saw different type of people. Some rude, some are nice. We met quite a lot of nice people. It’s quite similar to Singaporean and the place are messier version of Singapore. Messier, but it looked more friendly, and the public transportation were much better than here. However, that’s my short one day sight…
posted by aping @ 8:32 PM
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