I booked a flight to Hong Kong with the expectation that I would also be able to pop into Shenzhen and Macau and planned on spending a few days in each place.  It turns out that due to a new law in Macau hostels have been more or less eliminated and the cheapest place to stay was over $70 per night.  In talking to many people they said Macau could be seen in a day and so I decided to just take the Ferry over, see the sites for a day then book a late night flight to Korea same day.  I arrived at the Ferry terminal a few minutes before the ferry I was planning to take, but did not account for the fact that Ferry’s might fill up and this was the case.  I had to wait an additional 2 hours for the next open Ferry which put me a bit behind schedule on my one day exploration (although typical me, I really did not have any sort of a schedule)  I arrived in Macau at around 1pm and found the bus that would take me to the north part of town, which is were the older architecture and Portuguese influence really shines.

In the line up for the buses I met a fellow Canadian guy who was in Macau for one night in order to renew his Chinese visa.  He was in China teaching English but is on a tourist visa, so every three months you must leave the country and then return.  In this case he decided to check out Macau.  Since we were both alone, we decided to explore together and so we set off on the hunt for cool stuff to see and do.

First thing on the Itinerary was to find some food.  I was in the mood for dumplings, so we did a quick look and tried to find a dumpling place close by.  We failed a few times and eventually just settled on a place that appeared to have a bunch of people in it.  Turned out to be delicious, I got a curry and it was great.  After our stomachs were full, I did a quick Google search to see what was in the area and so we eventually came across the ruins of St. Paul church which was built in the 1600’s and destroyed by a fire in 1835.

After taking a quick look at the ruins, we continued into the old quarter which had really cool architecture and tons of shops and food etc.  We walked through the streets and enjoyed the sites.  If I would not have known I was in Macau, I could have guessed I was somewhere in Europe.

We then made our way over to the Casino’s on the North side of the city.  We wandered through the Casino Lisboa and the Wynn Casino observing rather than gambling.  It appeared that the chinese really enjoyed sic bo, which is kind of a mix between roulette and craps.  It’s a dice game similar to craps, but you bet on outcomes similar to roulette.  The minimums were pretty high and the tables were pretty full, so we just continued to wander.

After the casinos, we decided to continue to wander south, which brought us to the Macau tower.  We didn’t end up going up to the top, but checked out the different options and how much they cost.  You could do a bungee jump, edge walk or a assisted jump type thing.  You could also just go up to the observation deck, but none of them seemed really worth the cost, so we decided to jump on one of the free shuttle busses which would take us to a casino on the south side of the city.

We jumped on the bus bound for Studio City Casino.  It was here we decided to try our luck at gambling.  The strangest thing was that the casino only accepts Hong Kong Dollars, so you had to convert your Macau bills to Hong Kong before you could play and the exchange rate was a tiny little bit less than 1 to 1 so you ended up having to have slightly more than what you wanted to play which was a pain in the butt.  The real table games were all pretty high minimums so we opted to play video roulette which had a much lower minimum.

We walked away after spending about an hour at the table down around $10 or so and we decided to change venues and check out some of the other casinos.  We went to the Parisian and the Venetian which were both pretty cool and just as nice as the ones in Vegas.  The strip was a little less bright and vibrant, but there is a lot of construction happening right now and I am sure things will get more glitzy in the future.

It was at the Venetian we decided to sit down at the tables again to see how we could do.  We played a bit of video Sic Bo just to say we did and ended up about even.  There was a free shuttle to the airport and the last one was at 10pm, so I wanted to make sure I caught that.

At 9pm I took a look to see how much Macau cash I had left and realized that I really didn’t have enough to make it worth it to exchange, so I decided to gamble until I either lost the money or it was time to leave.  By the time I got up from the roulette table, I had tripled my money and was feeling pretty good with $60 in my pocket!

I jumped on the free shuttle and had to wait at the airport until the gate opened for my flight.  So instead of chilling in the lounge for a few hours, I had to wait to check in at the MacDonalds in the other section of the airport.  Once I was allowed to check in, I headed to the lounge and had some pretty good hot food and some beverages.  At 1:30am, I boarded my flight and was off to Korea!!!!!