Ferry was hassle free, customs hassle free, you can use HKD, no exchange needed, awesome; casino girls waiting to pickup the gamblers directly from the arrival desk, check. Welcome to the city of dreams, Macau, or Macao…
This was one place we admittedly added to our plans when we started looking at things to do in China and a friend from work asked if we were going. The pull of bright lights, good shopping and good food was too much for us. We didn’t really know what to see here only what we’d spied on www.tommyooi.com/macau-attractions/. A good few places to visit when not gambling away life savings (we didn’t, just the wording fit the dramatic sentence).
Once we got off the ferry we headed to the local bus stops to find the 3 bus that went past Senado Square, close to our hotel. First issue was that we didn’t realise that you could actually use HKD throughout Macau, meaning that we had spent most of our change on a McFlurry in the ferry terminal expecting to not be able to exchange it! This meant we had no change for the bus, which needed exact fare…! After a mad hunt to find an ATM we then needed to find a place to change it. We needed some water so shoved the notes into a vending machine and got back a mixture of HKD and MOP… The penny dropped. 
Once off the bus, we checked into our hotel, and frantically got ready to go out as we had randomly booked a couple tickets to a show in The Venetian, CotaiArena: Thai Fight, World Battle: ASIA vs EUROPE. Cheap as chips (lowest price tickets ~180MOP = ~£13), it was a good start to our short time in Macau. Heather liked the well toned bodies, and a bit of blood for everyone…! All in all about 9 fights and 6 or 7 knock outs. The actual event lasted a good couple of hours, and had a mixture of Muay Thai fights types using gloves and the traditional style muay khat chueak (มวยคาดเชือก) where the fighters use only lengths of hemp wrapped around their hands and forearms. Good entertainment, but we were wincing in some parts…! But certainly got us in the mood for some glitz, as it was everywhere!
Having fully recovered from watching grown men beating each other, the next day we had a sight seeing tour of Macau, mainly following what we had previously scoped out from www.tommyooi.com/macau-attractions/. It appears we chose our hotel well (Villa Universal, Agoda link), as it was probably one of the cheapest at about £50 per night (this is gambling city…) and in one of the better locations for things on the list to visit. Our quick whistle stop tour of the sights consisted of Senado Square and the ruins of St Pauls.
Senado Square is the shopping district of old Macau, famed for its wave-patterned mosaic coloured stones created by the Portuguese. The streets around the square are filled with a mixture of expensive shops, cookie shops with everything on offer from traditional almond cookies to dried swallows nests and dried spiky sea cucumber (mmmm), also lots, and lots of meat shops selling cured meat (very, very tasty), all of which were more than happy to give you a taste. Bellies full from free samples we headed north to the ruins of St Pauls.
Apparently this was (and I guess still is) the most Christian part of Asia, built in the 17th century and burnt down in 1895. Only the facade of the Church remains today. After wandering round these two sights and the Macau museum (very close to St Pauls) it pretty much filled our day. I think the highlight for me however was a visit to Dairy Queen (DQ) for a Blizzard, see the picture below, yes thats ice-cream in a tub he’s holding upside down.
For the evening, and our last night (we only had two) we decided to do what Macau is famous for, attend a casino! Donning our best travelling gear (shirt and flip flops), we headed to the Venetian in style (on the bus). We chucked our bus tickets to the valet boy and strutted in. We had arrived.
First we had a ‘reccommended by everyone and his dog’, Lord Stows Bakery egg tart. Now I’ve tried one before, and didn’t like it, but this was AMAZING! I wanted more but they’d ran out… Shame but probably for the best.
At this point we had a dilemma, we didn’t want to take out any more money as we were leaving the next day, but then again there was gambling to be had. We decided to play it safe so we headed to one of the virtual roulette tables to see what we could work out (neither of us were very versed with casino games). We put 10HK$ (~75p) in and after a few rounds had built it up to 100HK$! We then proceeded to loose 50HK$ so we put the remaining 50HK$ into a game of Blackjack. Now, at 50HK$ minimum bet, it was pushing our luck, and this turned out true when the first hand we were dealt ended with the dealer getting a BlackJack and ending our run and loosing what we had earned up until that point… That was however, very very bad luck, and up until this point we had been betting safe and raising our pot. So after a bit of deliberating we decided to have one more shot, so we put in a crisp 50 note and played… The first bet was again, safe, so we had a chance of building a pot, and that we did. A series of good plays, a couple of hints from the guy next to us and a bit of luck, we were on our way but we were due to leave as the last bus was coming up. Our last bet basically ended up being the flukiest of all, generously putting in our first 100HK$ bet down, I passed the game to Heather. At this point we hadn’t seen our cards, but we ended up doubling our money in that one bet as we got a BlackJack (the best hand), paying out 250HK$. Total winnings: 425HK$, a small win, but big enough for us and good end to our small travellers style casino night out, and a great end to our time in Macau.
Cheers!
NB 1: Currency. Macau, has its own currency but many places accept Chinese Yuan, and everywhere accepts HK$. The exchange rates are the same, so don’t bother (like we did) looking to exchange your HK$ for MOP, you’ll just get a strange look. Note, it doesn’t work the other way round, i.e. Hong Kong doesn’t accept MOP. Another thing to remember when looking to make a visit to one of the many casinos is that you gamble in HK$, none of the machines accept MOP so you need to go to the cashier to get it exchanged.
NB 2: Buses. They get CRAZY busy! There are many, many buses but there are a lot more people! We didn’t ever get a seat on any of the buses we tried to get on, plus there were quite a few we had to let go past because they were full! The airport bus was the same, only this time we had backpacks but we managed it, just about! On a slightly different note it’s worth knowing that there are lots of free shuttle buses running between the casino’s, also to and from ferry terminals and airport. It might be worth it to cut down cost if you can get at least halfway to your hotel on the bus and then take a taxi from there.
NB 3: Taxi’s. Always confirm before you set off that you are using the meter. All taxi’s have them. Yes, we made that mistake, once.
