Macau or Bust!

Due to Sunday night's activities, Monday morning, and indeed much of the afternoon, didn't exist for most of us. This was especially the case for Lons who has picked up a dose of something, food poisoning he says, alcohol poisining we reckon, he can be a bit of an attention seeker apparently. But he bravely made the 5pm meet, only half an hour late, and we headed off for the Macau Ferry Terminal where we met Al, who impressively had just come from a full days work. We also met up with Ken, another ex-pat working in HK and known to some of us previously in the UK. Pete invited Jack along but apparently he had a big presentation to the Sainbury's buying team to make so had to decline, he did however promise to pick Pete up two pounds of sprouts on the way for him to share with Walter.

So eight of us set off on the 7pm ferry and were in Macau an hour later and being whisked off by the shuttle bus to the City of Dreams Casino on the Cotai Strip on the South Island. Rather like HK, Macau has two main islands and the casinos are split between the two. An hour and a half here allowed me to rediscover my Blackjack form and for the guys to discover the game of Sic Bo, an ancient Chinese game played with three dice. Next over the road to the Venetian, an impressive replica of the one in Vegas, and just as big and difficult to find your way around. So after Al took us on a misguided tour of the property we found somewhere to eat with the plan of moving on at midnight. The food wasn't particularly good and the service was so slow that come midnight we were still complaining about the cold chips and ordering our second Margaritas. Lons wasn't up to eating but kept us entertained with his frequent, and urgent, trips to the Gents. Another similarity with Vegas is that the casino restrooms are always in tip top condition, well until Lons gets in there of course.

The eponymous Hodge

Cabs now over the bridge to the North island and to the Sands, which everyone agreed was probably the best casino. Time here to try to fathom out the complex rules of the game of Baccarat, which is huge over here. For us it remained unfathomless, although I did experience a little more beginners luck than Meister. Next it was cabs to the Wynn where we turned up at different entrances and took 10 minutes to find each other. Much like the Vegas version, which I've never really liked, the Wynn in Macau is a bit up its own arse and when we saw the HK$500 minimums on the Blackjack tables we decided to give it a miss and go across the road to the Casino Lisboa, the first and original Macau casino. Once we'd actually found the casino we realised that it was essentially a locals place and that 8 westerners walking in raised a few eye brows. So we headed next door to the newer version, the Grand Lisboa, which was a bit friendlier. The Caribbean Stud poker tables were particularly severe on poor Al but I had a bit of sucess at Blackjack. The guys found a Sic Bo game and this kept us all amused until 5:30 when we headed to the ferry terminal for our return to HK. Arrived back around 7am and straight back to the hotel for breakfast before a few hours sleep. All in all a fantastic night.