Macau

Macau is an odd place, the first reaction would be to say what everyone says and that it's the Vegas of the east, but it's not...it's the Blackpool of the China!! OK, it's got the grand casinos of Vegas but it also has the regular tourist attractions like old buildings from it's colonial past, you can go to the top of the tower to see the view from too. Also, just like Blackpool, finding anyone who speaks English is quite a novelty. They really don't speak a word of it here in Macau, Andrea opted for the 'shouting the question in English even louder whilst I just got better at pointing.

Anyway, arriving in Macau is an eye opener. The taxi took us past the new venetian casino which is simply enormous and is the second largest building in the world, then over the bridge gave us view of the Grand Lisboa which is like a giant LED ball with a golden palm tree shaped hotel planted on top of it.

We stayed at the Hotel/Casino Fortuna initially which had more modestly priced rooms but like vegas the room prices go sky high on a Friday and Saturday night so we had to move again to a regular hotel that had views Chinese mainland! The casinos here are what Andrea call "hardcore" casinos full of very high stakes games, oh and stupid card games like Casino War which consists of everyone being given a card and if the dealers card is higher than yours, you loose ! it's a nice fast way to loose your money.

Walking about one night we stumbled upon the control tower for the motor racing street circuit. There has been nods from the bods saying that it will be on the F1 Calender soon, apparently. Further on from here was a weird "theme village" that contained, a volcano, a Chinese kinda temple, a stereotypical middle eastern town, Italy, New Orleans, and of course Africa. Apart from the middle east and the volcano, the other areas were themes for the restaurants within them. It was all very cheesy and the locals and Andrea loved it. The thing that made me laugh was there were quite a few posters advertising a kind of an advanced laser quest that was going to the held in the middle east !! I'm guessing the soldiers vs terrorists is a stereotype too now!

Anyway, wandering about we discovered where the new MGM Grand is going to be built, it's certainly big and kinda looks like 3 giant lego bricks ontop of each other. The MGM Lion is very impressive as its colours change occasionally.

On the next block to the MGM we stopped at a bar called the "MP3 Bar" that had some westerners there. The geeky side of us was drawn to the MP3 but after sitting down there it wasn't until a very scantily clad lady came up to us and asked what we fancied to drink did we realise what it was all about. It was then that we noticed that all the westerners were blokes and all the ladies were Russian/East European go-go dancers. They even had a pole in the middle of the bar where occasionally one of the girls would give a performance. Anyway, there were a lot of men that were "on business" in the bar with leggy blonds all over them, that was until a bunch of leggy asians wandered up the road and stopped outside (i think they were mobile go-go girls, have to keep up with the times i guess). They then swamped the blokes and were chatting and getting all touchy touchy. I had the feeling that at any moment a great big "girlfriend" *wobbles head* fight was gonna break out between the blonds and the asians....alas not. It was all very interesting though and I would recommend it for a drink or two.

Macau seemed to be famous for two things food wise, one was these really dry shortbread biscuits, which are quite nice once the dryness has gone, and these pieces of flat beef jerky Chinese style with all sorts of sauces over them. The shops selling these things were swamped with a throng of asian tourists buying loads of stuff whilst outside there were ladies from the shops offering samples of the biscuits and the jerky. They were at least to everyone except for Andrea as one lady refused to give her a sample biscuit. There was a moment where the woman was stood on the spot turning in circles whilst Andrea was running round the outside trying to grab a biscuit ! hehehe.

Andrea loved Macau and could of probably spent a couple of weeks here, for my part I though Macau was ok but it would be interesting to see it in about 5 years or so. For me, Hong Kong was much much better. :)