Macau - 15th December

In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I'm watching the casino manager. And the eye-in-the-sky is watching us all. - Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro in Casino 1995).
The first thing that hits you when you first see the macau skyline after a smooth and fast 55 minute ferry ride from Hong Kong are the big casinos and the long winding bridges connecting the other islands with the main island. and they don't get any bigger than the ones in taipa - a short 15 minute ride away from the macau ferry terminal. the venetian modelled loosely on its european city namesake is big and as a friend of mine puts it succintly "one big monstrosity". complete with gondola rides, the who's who of luxury brands, buzzing casinos, gigantic food courts and an artificial soft skyscape which makes you forget whether it is daylight or nightime outside, the first time visitor can be forgiven for getting lost inside. small wonder, they hand out maps when you enter the complex.the casino tables are buzzing with activity and even if you are in the rare minority who don't gamble, you would be dazed with the sight of the many tables with animated chinese (they are the overwhelming majority here with the rare few indians or westerners making up the rest of the 0.5 percent of the crowd) who are gambling away. the action doesn't heat up at least well into the late hours of the night when the big rollers with stacks of currency and an entourage of admired onlookers wheel in.after a lot of searching and believe me, its the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack, yours truly found a blackjack table where the stakes were the rock bottom equivalent to a 100 HK quid and which was inhabited by a poker faced chinese and an indian (who else!!) and after a nervous start yours truly managed to double the money and therafter making a hasty exit to the accompaniment of a sardonic grin from the dealer. And is it addictive or what. old pensioners, young rakes, honey mooning couples, bored businessmen.. they were all there for the pot of gold at the end of the croupier. small wonder that gaming revenues contribute about two thirds of the GDP here and prices of property have gone up fivefold to about 2500 patacas (roughly 1 HKD) in the last five years. and venetian is not the only one. there are hordes of them coming up at a feverish pace around taipa all built with money from the blazing IPO market here. the pace of construction and the speed of development is truly breathtaking and we were reliably informed in a colorful brochure that a 38 km long highway connecting macau, HK and the mainland would be up and running by 2015 cutting the journey time sharply so as to allow more time to be spent at the tables.i am not a gambler and this is my first trip to a casino but the psychological mind games it plays on you is a wonderful study. the lighting is carefully done so as it disorient the player in forgetting the time, you can't see any clocks around the place, the most expensive tables are near the entrance and near the stairs with the cheaper ones tucked away at the corner of the room, waiters with glasses flit around the big tables, etc etc.still,if you are a first time visitor to macau, do the historical places in the daytime, sample the local cuisine in the daytime, pick up trinkets at the flea markets but do visit the casinos in the night. and of course, gamble a bit.