Yesterday, my friend and I landed in Macau, and it is an even smaller place than I imagined. We took a bus from the airport and got to our hotel in about 5 minutes. Everything seems to be about a 5-minute drive away.
After a quick refresh nap at the hotel (neither of us had slept the night before do a stressful pre-Chinese New Year week at work and a lack of time for packing.) We headed into the main drag of casino/hotels on the island. Having been to Las Vegas before, this looked like a miniature version to me. There's a Sands hotel, The Venetian, a few others have opened locations here. The Venetian is my favorite since it's a little Italy.
The Following is our wandering around the Venetian. We thought about doing the gondola rides, but at about US$25 dollars, I decided to pass, since it's only about a five-minute ride.
After wandering for several hours it came time for dinner. We tried the food court in the Sands hotel mall. They had a lot of different foods from around Asia (Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, etc.) I decided to try the Indian food there since the smell was beckoning me from 3 stands over. Some Garlic Naan and curry got me ready to check out more.
We had some time to kill before the shuttle back to the hotel, so it left us some time to get pictures of all the night lights on the hotels. One difference I've noticed from Las Vegas - far fewer fountains, probably saving a lot of water there. After the night lights, we went inside the City of Dreams casino where I lost about HK$30 dollars in a few slot machines. Turns out I'm not a lucky person. One thing that's odd here is the currency. Macau has its own, but the casinos only take Hong Kong dollars (don't worry you can exchange it at the cashier's office.) Also sometimes you get change back in Hong Kong dollars. This seems to be a one sided thing (I don't recall ever getting Macau money when in Hong Kong.)
