Macau 2012 - The Casino's

It should come as no surprise that the big reason why I wanted to go to Macau was to visit the casinos. I had read much about the 36 or so casinos in the country and had hoped to do a couple a day and get through close to half of them.

The first thing that hit me about the place is how much the casinos were competing for patrons. I caught the ferry to Macau and even at th ferry terminal departing HK, there were ads and casino representatives trying to leave a first impression. When I left the ferry there were no less than twenty staff, mostly females wearing scad clothing, trying to hand out brochures and point you in the direction of their buses.

The bus stop at the ferry terminal was huge. It looked like the same location that the Grand Prix garages were and every casino had a bus, with the bigger casinos having bigger and more regular buses  What I discovered about Macau is that the casinos basically ran a free public transport system - so long as you were at a ferry terminal, the airport or the China border and you knew a casino near where you wanted to go, similarly, if you ever found yourself lost you could find the closest casino and bus your way back to the ferry terminal, then back to your hotel.

The casinos were far more elaborate and modern than I had imagined, however, every one featured Baccarat as their main game and most if not all targeted high rollers. This posed a challenge for me, as I am definitely in the low roller bracket and my preferred game, poker, was only offered at 4 or 5 casinos. Rather than play at several casinos as I had expected, I chose to visit casinos, occasionally played a few hands of roulette or three card poker and played all of my Hold-em poker at one casino that i particularly liked, Starworld.

Starworld issued the coolest membership card that I own. It is completely black, looks like a credit card and has  aces in the corners. It is membership to their "Poker and King" club and they had a corded off section reserved for high rollers and pro's. The table was empty while I was there, however, you just never know! I lost a fair bit in the first few days but recovered a bit. I ended up $900 down in the end but still feel I had value for money - most days my buy-in would last for a good session.

The prettiest casino was definitely the Venetian. A large portion of it was an upper class shopping centre. They had indoor gondolas, the shops looked like old buildings, the ceiling was a painted sky that looked so realistic, if it were not for the air conditioning you would think you were outside. I heard that it was a scale replica of the casino in Las Vegas, believable and impressive if true. The best looking casino goes to the Grand Lisbon - it looks like a giant flower and unmissable in the city skyline. I had a good view of it from my hotel. Best outdoor feature goes to the Wynn, whose water opera display went off every 15 minutes and was mesmerising. Biggest disappointment was the City of dreams, across the road from The Venetian. There has been lots of local media how James packer sold off Channel 9 to build this and it looked ordinary (in comparison to other casinos in the area). You can see why he is struggling to get his money back.

Grand Lisbon from the base of my hotel.

Venetian Casino - Cotai. Indoors 

Venetian Gondola - This was quite long, also indoors.

City of Dreams Dragon....meh!

I may not have seen all of the casinos, but I did see all of the major ones, and a few not so major ones. I'd love to go back here but probably wouldn't stay a whole week next time.