Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Finally, I don't think I can possibly justify any chapter on Macau without mentioning its vibrant nightlife - after all, this is what brings many people to the region in the first place. Macau has changed quite considerably since the handover to the Chinese, and nowhere is this more obvious than on the Macau peninsula, with its sudden proliferation of new multi-million dollar Casinos, and at no other time can you see the new Macau in all its glory than after dark.
If I compared Macau to Las Vegas, you might reasonably think I'd gone slightly mad - but it wouldn't be far from the truth. When I visited in 1997, the peninsula already had its fair share of Casinos, notably the famous floating Casino on the waterfront and the Lisboa Hotel. From Fernando's, I took a taxi back to town and had a brief look around the Lisboa to see what all the fuss was about. At the time, the Lisboa seemed quite low key from the outside, but after stepping into the lobby and having to walk through a metal detector and be frisked by a bouncer, I found myself in a large gold covered room in which people were sitting around blackjack and poker tables playing for ridiculous stakes. The walls were covered with slot machines, many of them boasting of twenty million dollar jackpots! It was all a little too expensive for my taste. Since the handover to the Chinese, the casino scene in Macau has exploded - there are now casinos everywhere and most of them contain small cities full of shopping malls, nightclubs and food courts. The Venetian, in particular, is an exact copy of the casino of the same name in Las Vegas - you can float around its indoor canals on gondolas, wander through its shopping malls with their clever sky projected onto the ceiling to make you think you're outside, or throw all your money away at the tables. From the outside, the Venetian is indistinguishable from its Vegas namesake - but then, I suppose that if you've got a winner on your hands then why change it? The only real difference between the Macau of the 21st century and Las Vegas is that Vegas has everything together on one strip rather than spread around the city centre - but there is evidence to suggest that they are trying to create a little Las Vegas on Macau at the new Cotai Strip which is being built on reclaimed land between the two islands.
Anyone wandering the streets of Macau at night, however, is likely to find much more than just the bright lights of Vegas - not all of it entirely wholesome. As well as the casinos on every corner, he is likely to find himself surrounded by flashing neon signs advertising everything from nightclubs to strip joints and seedy massage parlours. Macau changes dramatically when the sun goes down - the quaint charm of the backstreet shops and markets is suddenly and mysteriously replaced by in-your-face advertisements for every vice known to mankind. Suddenly, you understand why so many shops were boarded up during the day - after dark, the boards come off and you find yourself walking past windows full of sex toys and adult videos. But, to be fair, none of Macau's vices are anything particularly new - it's just that, these days, they are slightly less secret. Macau was well known in times gone by as a haven for drug runners and other unsavoury groups, and was a major entry point into Asia for illicit goods coming in from the South China Sea. It is heavily ironic, therefore, that modern Macau has made such previously frowned upon vices as gambling legal, and that the island is quickly becoming seen as serious competition to Las Vegas with many high rollers turning their backs on the lights of Nevada and heading here instead.
One of the first things China did after retaking control of the colony in 1999 was announce that it was ending Stanley Ho's 40 year monopoly as the king of casinos in Macau. By opening up the region to foreign investment, the island has quickly seen the overseas corporations move in, with large scale shopping malls and entertainment resorts opening up overnight. As the only region of China where gambling is legal - apart from the horseracing and football in Hong Kong, which is tightly controlled - Macau has quickly become one of the major sources of income for the People's Republic. In fact, Macau now contains the world's largest Casino, contained within Asia's largest building. Even lower end casinos don't worry any more about having tables where the minimum bet is five hundred pounds.
Macau has also become well known for its strip joints and Thai massage parlours, which are often fronts for prostitution. Some of these bars and clubs are almost on the same scale as the casinos, housed in large complexes the size of a small village where huge crowds can gather to watch exotic shows. I, myself, went along to a cabaret performance at one of the more popular venues, which I certainly didn't have any difficulty finding. Having been told the name of the most popular show, and the club at which it was being performed, I jumped in a Taxi and told the driver my destination, fully expecting him to produce his little card with lists of English/Chinese place names - instead, I hardly had time to draw breath before he said in broken English: "Ah, you want dancing girl? I take. You have good time."
Upon arrival, I was led through a metal detector and into a large club where a central stage was surrounded by hundreds of rows of seats. At the back of the room there was a bar which served drinks throughout the show, and a small group of beautiful girls wearing teddies, bunny outfits or maids uniforms were constantly walking around the theatre with note pads taking orders from punters who simply couldn't be bothered to get up from their seats, and then returning a little later with trays laden down with alcoholic beverages. Not one of them was Chinese, Thai or otherwise eastern in any way - somebody seemed to have convinced a load of western supermodels to come in just to serve drinks. On stage, the show actually turned out to be quite tasteful - there was none of the over-the-top sexuality of the shows in Pattaya, and not a ping-pong ball in sight. Instead, the audience was treated to a series of ten minute sets by girls who seemed to be straight off the cover of glamour magazines from all over the world stripping off and teasing the men in the front row. On one occasion, two guys carried a shower cubical onto the stage and a girl proceeded to soap herself up and take a shower in front of everyone - which was, at least, original.
Between shows, television screens descended from the ceiling above the stage and began showing film of scantily clad women giving massages to clients and lazing around with them in spa baths. It was all done as though we were watching any other advertisement between sections of a television program, but it was obvious that this was the (not very well) hidden seedier side of these clubs - punters were being invited upstairs in the lift, to where they could take their pick of any number of waiting models whose clothes would mysteriously fall off at the first sight of a dollar bill. While I was sipping at my drink and watching the girl who had decided to take a shower on stage, in fact, I suddenly found myself being offered a menu by the waitress - a large flip book in which I could look through the girls on offer and place an order, so to speak. It really was all quite surreal.
This, of course, is the high class side of the worlds oldest profession here in Macau - as soon as the sun goes down, it is almost impossible to get anywhere in a taxi without being taken via a massage parlour, whether you like it or not. The drivers, who don't speak a word of English at the best of times, suddenly forget even the few words they do know and want to take everyone to the nearest brothel - even if you happen to be female and wearing a nun's habit. I thought, on the whole, that it was probably time to leave Macau behind and move on...
About Simon and Burfords Travels:
Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.
- comments