Asia > China > Macau > Macau > Articles > Taking a Gamble in Macau

As Clint Eastwood once said, there’s a time to hold ’em, and there’s a time to fold ’em, and in Macau, it helps to know which is which. With some 17 casinos and a culture of gambling that goes back to its very beginnings, the tiny island territory of Macau, off the south coast of China, is one of the most complex and exotic destinations in Asia.

An enclave of Portugal for almost 500 years (China resumed control in 1999), Macau is actually comprised of three different islands, Macau Peninsula, Taipa, and Coloane, all of which are connected by bridges. With 450,000 people squeezed into just 27 sq km (authorities are constantly reclaiming land to create more space), the more crowded island of Macau proper resembles nothing so much as a lily pad groaning with people and buildings, the streets alive with feverish activity.

One of the most popular activities here is gambling, as I discovered during a visit to the legendary Lisboa Casino. The first casino in Macau and a local icon, the Lisboa stands proudly on the shoreline of Macau’s Prai Grande, shimmering in a shroud of neon like some slinky sequined dress. Inside it’s shaped like a giant roulette wheel, the centre for tables, the perimetre for change booths and jewellery stores. On the walls are signs which read “Please do not spit”, and “Watch out for pickpockets”, while hovering overhead like an exploding disco ball is a massive, multi-layered chandelier. The night I visited there must have been 2000 people inside, all of them nursing small mounds of chips, the most common denomination being HK$1000 (A$250). Gambling generates about A$4 billion a year in Macau, most of which, by the look of it, is coming out of this room. (The place feels solid, too — structurally that is. They say that when the big typhoons roll in, the Lisboa is the only casino in town to stay open.)

Having blown my dough in the first 10 minutes, I decided to seek my thrills elsewhere. Fortunately, Macau has no end of diversions. Thanks to its Portuguese legacy, life here is an intriguing blend of Europe and Asia. Many of the street signs are in Portuguese, and the architecture is elegantly colonial. You’ll be walking down the street and have an old Portuguese fortress on one side, a Chinese garden on the other. There’s piles of old money here, too: check out Macau’s ritziest suburb, Colina de Penha, where the colonnaded mansions stare out to sea like rows of well-dressed grandmothers.

Food, too, is an east meets west affair. For the very best Macau has to offer, hit the famous Fernando’s Restaurant, right on Hak Sa Beach, Coloane. But for the best shopping look no further than San Ma Lo St area, on the Macau Peninsula. Because Macau is a tax free port, jewellery is cheap and high quality. You can also score great antiques and clothes, not to mention herbal remedies. In fact, the Chinese medicine shops are worth browsing anyway, their walls lined with jars of ginseng and dried snakes’ testicles. Quite a sight.

From the shopping district, you can meander around to the ruins of St Paul Church, which burnt down in 1835 and has been left in a state of spectacular decrepitude. This makes a nice place to end the day, with a great view over the city streets and historic centre.

And if you hear a lot of banging, don’t be alarmed. In Macau, people believe that letting off fireworks scares off evil spirits, so they use them as a kind of karmic house-cleaning, ridding buildings of poltergeists by blasting off strings of bungers the size of footballs. It might sound like a war’s broken out, but it’s really just good house keeping.

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