Maccin' on some Macanese

Holidays here are much like ones at home. Some students go home to visit family and some go on vacations. Even though we only had Friday and Monday set aside as a holiday, I was planning on traveling outside of Hong Kong…until flights to anywhere spiked by $200 per ticket. The only other option was another trip to Macau…

This trip, instead of going as a predominantly exchange group, we (myself, Daniel, Ali and another American, Josh) were accompanied this time by a group of international local students. This ambiguous title names a student that was born and raised in Hong Kong but went to a British, or international grade school and high school. These students have a British accent and are more familiar with western culture than traditional local students.  Instead of learning about Hong Kong or Chinese history they learned about British history and literature. These type of schools are a great example of the lasting influence of Britain's colonization of the territory.

Chitra (HK), Ankita (HK), Me, Josh (IL), Hil (MA), Ali (NY), Haywood (HK), Prateek (HK), Mike (OH), Dan(OH)

As I have mentioned, Macau is the other special administrative region of Hong Kong and known for its Vegas atmosphere with most of the region occupied with casinos. The last time we were there, it was for a day trip during Chinese New Year so this time, our group wanted to experience more of the night scene and casinos. To the guys, this meant “suiting up” and the girls were told by Haywood, one of the organizers, to “dress to impress…and that means wear earrings”.

We left the harbor in the mid afternoon on Friday and took the evening ferry to Macau. After check-in, the guys left the girls to get ready and explored the casino across the street for some pre-dinner gambling. The girls and I ended up taking a while and by the time we headed down stairs all of us were starving. We went to a traditional Macanese/Portuguese restaurant which was so delicious!

All the girls at the Venetian

Our first stop of the evening was to the Venetian Resort and Casino. The inside of the hotel portion was beautiful with ornate decoration and detailed architecture modeled after historic Italian sites. The entrance was lined high end shops and boutiques that eventually led to the open casino ground. Here, there was a younger crowd of people and quite a few women as well. Of the people in our group who gambled (all the guys and one girl) only one of them left casino with more money than when they entered. The rest of the gambling group looked to the next stop for more luck.

MGM Casino was next on the list. Here, the girls that were not gambling, enjoyed complementary juices and a majority of the boys continued to lose money. The atmosphere of this casino was different than the Venetian in that it attracted an older and maybe more serious group and was also full of smoke making our stay at MGM short lived. 

The last casino on the evening’s agenda was the Sands. As the girls were getting tired of watching the boys gamble, we quickly walked in and out only end up in a taxi queue waiting to go back to the hotel. As we were waiting, a white stretch Chrysler pulled up and dropped of a large group into the Sands. At this, Prateek, a friend of ours, asked the driver if he was free for the night and how much the fare would be to transport our group to a “disco” club instead of the hotel. Prateek negotiated a price of $400 HKD (which is about $4 USD) for our group of 12 people and we hopped in the limo for a ride that ended up being cheaper than a taxi fare!

Obviously we couldn’t go back to the hotel since Prateek had sent it to a club so we ventured back into the center of town for an evening of dancing. We headed back to the hotel entirely too late and woke up in time to take the 1pm ferry back to Hong Kong. Our one night in Macau was definitely short-lived but turned out to be a great Easter mini vacation.