The Vegas of Asia
Another week, another casino, and millions more in betting, as Macau continues to flex its muscle as the world's Numero Uno gambling center. Claiming the wildest wages, most tables, boldest gamblers and, now, the biggest casino (and building on Earth), Macau has been likened to Asia's Las Vegas, only on steroids.
By Ron Gluckman / Macau
T
HE SUN SLIDES ACROSS THE HORIZON, the sky deepens to a rich azure, and our gondolier breaks into song. Everything is picture perfect as he poles us past a stately clock tower rising over the canal, historic palaces lining the shores.Venice, definitely. Just not Italy.
This eerily exact re-creation is, in
fact, half a world away, at the $2.4 billion
Venetian Macau Resort Hotel, on China's southeastern coast. Modeled
on the Las Vegas casino of the same name, it is much larger
and exceptionally lucrative, like seemingly everything in Macau these day.
Hong Kong's once sleepy sister city - composed of two islands, Taipa and Coloane, a tiny mainland peninsula and the reclaimed area of Cotai - has awakened from centuries of decline to become Asia's, and one of the world's, fastest-growing tourist destinations.
The site of a
Portuguese settlement in 1557,
Macau was the first
European outpost in the
Far East and a vital
port for trade between
China and the West.
But after Hong Kong, with
its superior
deepwater harbor, was ceded to
Britain, in 1841,
Macau fell into a sort of southern
European languor.
Although gambling was introduced in 1847, as a desperate attempt to end the slide, in the ensuing years the colony remained largely unchanged, a remote piece of Iberia where ivy-covered ocher, peach and lime green colonial mansions stood alongside cobble-stoned lanes.
Throughout the 20th century, visitors to Macau were primarily day-trippers from Hong Kong, an hour away by ferry. Then, in 1999, Macau was returned to China; in 2002, Wynn Resorts, MGM and Las Vegas Sands snapped up new gaming licenses and sublicenses.
In 2006 the region’s
casinos raked in nearly
$7 billion, bettering
Vegas’s take by half a billion. And in welcoming
24 million visitors
that year, Macau became
as
popular
as Hong Kong for the
first time -
in
at least 150 years.
The Venetian, its largest casino by far, debuted last summer with 3,000 suites and 1 million square feet of retail space. But it’s only the first tenant on the Cotai Strip, a new causeway consisting of less than a mile of swampland that connects the two islands.
By next year, China’s
answer to the Vegas
Strip will claim a roll call of the world’s finest
hotels: Raffles, Four
Seasons, Hyatt, Shangri-la, St. Regis, Conrad,
Fairmont and more.
There will also be museums, amusement
parks, concert halls,
convention centers and, of
course, more casinos,
including an underwater
gambling hall at the
nearby City of Dreams.
Yet for all its shoot-the-moon development, Macau remains a weekend destination: a relaxing splurge for American and European travelers after a long tour of China or a handy base for exploring Hong Kong.
The main sights are clustered together and can be savored in a day or two. Visitors can wander narrow lanes to discover old-world churches, cemeteries and entire neighborhoods dotted with Chinese temples, tea shops and fortune tellers and encircling parks with Portuguese names.
Spectacular cuisine is everywhere. Enlivened by a mélange of spices from Portugal’s far-flung former colonies, an early version of fusion food is served in scores of atmospheric restaurants, like Henri’s Galley (011-853-556-251) and Restaurante Fernando (011-853-882-264), a local favorite set on a deserted beach and offering huge platters of succulent pork ribs, pepper prawns and salt cod.
This artful balance between past and future, Asia and Europe, accounts for Macau’s allure right now. And now is when to go, before change arrives at breakneck speed.
Ron Gluckman is an American journalist who was based throughout the 1990s in Hong Kong, across the harbor from Macau, and frequently returns to the area. This story appeared in Town and Country Magazine in January 2008.
For another, more in-depth story on Macau, see Viva Macau.
All pictures by Ron Gluckman
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