Macau part I: Gamblin'

Kathi, Nick & Sands casino on the background

A one-hour ferry trip away from Hong Kong there is a place called Macau. It's a part of China in the same way as Hong Kong is ("One country, two systems"), so we needed no visa during our short visit - and got plenty of new stamps on our passports. It's very easy to go from Hong Kong to Macau, and it costs only around HKD150. The ferries leave from Tsim Sha Tsui twice an hour and from Hong Kong Island there's a new ferry in every 15 minutes. If you're in a hurry and you've got too much money in your pockets, you can also book a private helicopter to get you there.

Macau is a weird place. The main attraction are its casinos which all together make more money than the casinos in Las Vegas. Gambling is illegal in both China and Hong Kong, so there's a huge flow of Chinese tourists coming to Macau, it being the closest place where it's possible to gamble. Since Macau used to be a colonial state of Portugal until 1999, there's plenty of Portuguese architecture and influence left, and all the traffic signs are in both Cantonese and Portuguese. Cafes sell Portuguese pastries and streets have such names as "Rua de Malaga" and "Avenida do Dr. Rodrigo Roriguez". But still Macau is totally Asian, we only had some brief moments when somebody said "Just like in Europe!", and then again the next street already was as Chinese as can be.

On Friday we went to a casino called Sands. Before going to Macau the only proper casino I had ever been to was the one in Helsinki, and well, now I wouldn't call it a proper casino anymore... After seeing Sands and Venetian, I don't think there's any casino in the world that could amaze me as much. Sands had several floors and I guess there were thousands of people playing. There I won HKD890 playing Megastar Roulette (:D) and felt like the richest person on earth. Then on Saturday I lost it all and HKD110 more at Venetian - so all in all, I ended up losing about 11 euros. Seeing the casinos was so worth it. We also played some Black Jack at our hotel casino and it was a lot of fun, even though the dealer seemed to be super bored and not enjoying our amazingly witty jokes at all.

About Venetian... Probably the best words to describe that place are: sick & insane. So it's this huge casino / shopping mall / resort / hotel, with more than 800 tables for gambling. It's open 24 hours a day, all year. From outside it looks a bit like an old Italian building, and when you take the escalators upstairs from the casino, you'll find an indoor-version of Venice!! One room has a lighted ceiling which looks like a sky in the daylight, and another room has a dark night sky built on the ceiling. There's musicians playing violins and a canal with gondolas. There are dozens of shops and you can stroll around, have a coffee or eat a pizza, then go shopping to H&M or Bershka or Gucci or wherever, then sing some 'O Sole Mio' and go back to gambling. All this located INDOORS. Everything is shiny and new and in the lobby you'll see a gigantic fresco when you look up... Fountains, statues, golden paint. It's all so artificial but yet so stunning. Worth a visit for sure, but I would've enjoyed it even more if I had won a Jackpot :P

The Venetian food court around 9PM

Nadine from Italy ordered a pizza :P

These guys played some romantic live music

Sick, insane, crazy.

Pretending to be classy

Michelangelo

Some more casinos

That is just too much for my Finnish brain.