You Better You Bet

We took our first excursion to Macau this weekend. It's an hour away by ferry, so we packed a bag, left early Saturday afternoon and arrived at the hotel by check-in time. It rained most of the weekend again so we chose the Venetian resort because we knew it was immense and self-contained as far as food and entertainment.

If you don't know anything about Macau, it was a Portuguese colony until 1999 when they handed it back over to China, so, like Hong Kong, it is also a 'Special Administrative Region.' We only spent one night and even though it's a small place, it's not so small that you can see the different parts all at once. There is old Macau, where the Portuguese influence is most obvious and maintained among a mix of Chinese and Portuguese elements. Then there were two islands called Taipa and Coloane which is essentially one land mass now, joined by the new Cotai Strip, after a massive land reclamation project. Land reclamation here means that they fill in the land where there was water and poof! now there's more land.

You can take a ferry to either the Macau peninsula or a new route to Taipa. We arrived in Taipa where the Venetian has shuttles waiting to comfortably whisk you away to their 3000 room resort containing a reported 30 restaurants and 350 shops, of course surrounded by Venetian themed architecture.

Really, people visit Macau for one reason: gambling. There are a few casinos in the older section, but the Cotai Strip is where a bunch of big casino names have conspired to turn it into "Asia's Las Vegas." The Venetian, MGM Grand, Wynn, and Sands (some downtown and some in the new strip) are the leaders of the pack, but many more are on the way.

P.S. The average gaming table in Macau grosses nine times the average one in Las Vegas. Average bets are in the hundreds per hand. From our observations in the Venetian, the majority of tables are baccarat, with a handful of blackjack and roulette, very few craps tables, though those few were packed, and some other Chinese games. The slots were less sprawling than they are in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

From my Frommer's book, "A sleepy backwater just two decades ago - when the local populace got from place to place unhurriedly by pedicab and the road from the ferry to downtown was a lonely stretch of potholes - Macau is changing so rapidly that old-timers are right when they complain that the place isn't what it used to be - it's more than it used to be, with land reclamation and new construction dramatically altering the city skyline in just 20 short years, and there seems to be no end in sight... It's as though two Macaus exist: the sterile new developments and glitzy casinos on reclaimed land; and the old downtown of candy-colored colonial buildings, banyan trees, narrow hilly streets, and low-key neighborhood restaurants... There's something for everyone here - beaches, churches, museums, attractions, and, yes, casinos - all in a setting found nowhere else in the world."

Hmm, sounds a little like how other familiar gambling meccas got started.

We're not exactly high-rollers (or even low-rollers) but it was interesting to see. It is certainly more conservative than Las Vegas - at least this far in the Macau evolution. There is not a club scene like in Vegas or even in Atlantic City, maybe because it's more catered to hard-core gamblers from China and Taiwan.

We plan to go back some time and see the other areas. I'm sure by the time we do, everything will look different.

View from our window, Asia's Las Vegas on the rise

Take a chance... this was once water

Is it Venice? Nooooo, it is the Venetian! (Pay no attention to the Chinese characters written on the window in the background)

Our suite was way bigger than our apartment

Regal yet comfy

The room was equipped with a Paul