Macau Madness!

One reason, why I look forward to family trips is that there is no budget as such. And you are allowed to go bonkers without any limit. And that’s what we did on our trip to Macau & HK. Macau is known for casino’s and naturally, gambling is in their blood. Macau thrives on gambling and tourism. The prospect of this city excited me as I had never set foot inside a casino before, let alone gamble.

The moment we entered HK airport we boarded a Turbojet to Macau. The turbojet is a ferry service from HK airport itself which saves you from repeating the immigration process. It was 1-hour pleasant ferry ride to the destination.

On clearing customs and immigration we entered into a scene where we were encompassed by a sea of people. Most of them with their business stalls for tourists. Hiring one such car service we first asked them if there was an Indian restaurant nearby. And as it is a popular vacation spot for Indian tourists one is bound to find everything Indian, you name it.

Travelling in Macau in an air-conditioned SUV is like heaven due to the sultry climate outside. As I had my own list of places to visit in Macau I directed the Guide to them. Starting with Fisherman’s Wharf which is a waterfront with accommodation and amenities, but what caught our eye was the old structure of an amphitheater which resembled the Colosseum in Rome. Its columns were half broken on one side giving it an ancient look.

Next up was the most picturesque place called the Senado Square. It looked right out of a European movie, what with its mosaic patterned road lined with small designer boutiques, ice cream parlors, cafes, fast food joints and colorful people. It was flanked by houses with a touch of Portuguese architecture. The most famous local semi-sweet dish to have over there is an egg tart. It is basically a tart with a gooey egg filling sweet in taste. However sweet made out of pork meat was the most famous.

In that labyrinth of connecting roads, there were signboards put up for easy accessibility.And with the help of these directions, we visited the Ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral- of which I learned later on in my travel and tourism course. It was when our professor was teaching us about Macau that I got to know about the history of this place that this was a fully built church which got burned down in 1835 leaving only the facade and the wall intact. This made it look as if it was just one upright monument which had nothing behind it for support.And frankly speaking, I didn’t climb up the stairs to the ruins as I thought the view from the first step was better than that at the last step (basically that is me being lazy).

When we were done with our share of sightseeing we went to our hotel and checked in, getting ready for the night that we had ahead of us. Dressed up in my black, low back one piece and 4.5 inches black heels (my love for black never ends!), walking on the streets of Macau I felt as if I was overdressed. Everyone on the street started staring at me. And I started to notice that none of the girls in Macau wore heels, which was weird. But I wasn’t the one to care as walking on these streets took my imagination to places unknown. It was pleasant to the core.

Hunger brought us to Pizza Hut and in the well-spread menu, we could search for only 1 veg pizza (but look at disclaimer!). But anyway we filled our tummies and got ready for the BIG moment.

Enter the Grand Lisboa casino. This was the most anticipated part of our stay in Macau. And thankfully they didn’t ask for my younger brother’s Id for entry and all 4 of us went in. Inside there were thousands of people playing card games which I had no clue of. It wasn’t poker and apart from poker, I had no knowledge of gambling with cards. We just watched others and searched for an easier game to play, preferably roulette or slot machine or wheel of fortune. And we found all of them in one shed. We tried our luck at Roulette and it got quite addictive. We could have easily sat there for hours but time was up and we needed to conserve our sleep and energy for the next day. At the end, we were disappointed because apparently, beginners luck didn’t work for us.

The next morning peeping out of our window we saw that most of the citizens of Macau had come to the park to exercise just like the last night. And as I surfed the net I came to know that Macau has the 4th highest life expectancy rate. And this was due to their dedication towards a healthy lifestyle at all stages of life. And in contrast to them, we started our day by playing Fussball!

Then as instructed by the receptionist we hopped onto a bus to head towards The Venetian. It is a 39-storey casino hotel with duty-free shopping, varied entertainment, restaurants and much more. It even had inbuilt water canals like the ones in Venice and even a dramatic ceiling with clouds painted on it making us feel as if we were shopping out in the open.

We had a ball of our time in The Venetian shopping at different luxurious designer outlets (one of them being Victoria’s Secret)! And then it was all dampened when the casino in Venetian didn’t allow my younger brother as he was underaged. So we decided to revisit the Grand Lisboa because we weren’t done gambling yet. And we planned to use this opportunity to win back some money.

As we positioned ourselves at the roulette table with the other regulars from the night before we started playing like pros. As we started winning we couldn’t contain our victory. But we knew that to remain victorious you need to know when to stop. And we stopped after earning ourselves an approximate of 500 HK$. We went to the port with a sense of achievement to board our ferry back to Hong Kong.

Life is a gamble. You lose some, you win some. But if you know how to play and when to stop, life rewards.