After freshening up in the hotel room we were ready for the long night ahead.  Sunny's parents had asked to take us out for a meal later in the evening but first we would visit the famous casinos! 

Sunny planned to take us to the biggest casino in Macau called Sands.  We walked for 10 minutes to reach the building, which we had seen earlier and found it to be absolutely massive!  To give a small idea of the size, there were four lanes of traffic under the casino just for taxis to take all the people away.  Entering the casino was easier than expected and we didn't even have to show ID, we simply needed to pass through a metal detector.

As soon as we walked into the lobby of the casino it was massive and very plush.  We could see a small room on the ground floor with a few tables and slot machines.  After finding out that all we needed to do to get chips was to go to a table and put down the money we took an escalator up to the first floor.  Nothing could prepare me for the scale of what we saw!  The floor was massive, there must have been about 500 tables of many different games including black jack and roulette.  The floor was buzzing with people milling around the tables and it was very exciting as it was my first visit to a casino - as it was for Clara and Sunny too.  After walking around for a while to see what was available we went up to another floor and found another 300 or so tables.  This casino was massive and even had a cabaret show on stage while people were playing.  We decided to play roulette as it was easy to know the rules and went to an empty table to play.  We cashed in $300 (20 pounds) into chips to bet on the game, however, the minimum bet was $25 and we were only allowed to bet on the numbers - to bet on red or black would be a minimum bet of $100.  Surprisingly enough it didn't take too long to lose our money!  We did win once, but that only prolonged the agony!  We hadn't really known what we were doing, and it was obvious you needed to bet on a bigger scale in order to do any better.

Next we decided to try the slot machines.  We sat down at one machine and started to play by putting a $20 note into the slot.  After a few turns it became easier to play and we eventually worked out how it worked.  After a little while Clara was the only one with money left in her machine and she had somehow managed to keep winning her way up to $120 (from $20 start).  We cashed in the money into tokens as I wanted to try and find some video poker machines to play.  We had to go back down to the first floor to play these and eventually found a few machines in a corner.  I attempted to teach Clara and Sunny how to play but they weren't really interested so they went to play some traditional slot machines with the rotating wheels.  After two minutes I heard a shout from Sunny, "Ben, Ben, Clara's won something..."  I thought that she had probably won a little bit of money and after going over I was suprised that she had won $300!!  She only found this out when she thought the machine had broken and called someone over to look and they told her she had won - much to the annoyance of the woman next door who was obviously a serious gambler!

The attendant came back 2 minutes later with the money she had won, Clara was, needless to say, ecstatic!  The attendant told her how somone had won $3,000,000 earlier that afternoon!  By the time we had claimed the money it was time for us to leave to go back to Sunny's house to meet his parents and go for the meal.  As we walked out of the casino we had spent $360 and won $420 - somehow we came out 5 pounds up!  Before we went into the casino, Clara had asked us if we felt lucky and she said no, turns out she was wrong!

We left the casino and went to get a taxi to Sunny's house.  On the 10 minute drive we found out some more of the differences between Macau and Hong Kong.  Macau has a very European feel and this goes down to things like traffic.  Driving in Macau is like driving in Italy, very chaotic, and everyone owns a scooter!  As we got to Sunny's flat we met his parents and I did my best to say hello, as they speak very little English.

We set off for the meal about 10 minutes later by going down to the parking garage where Sunny's dad's car was parked.  When we got there we found Sunny's dad drove a very nice new Mercedes Benz - the car of choice in Hong Kong!  On the way to the restaurant Sunny's dad took us on a scenic drive of some of the area of Macau.  We passed over one of the bridges between the islands and looked at some of the casinos on the next Island.  We also passed a massive buliding site, which is where the Venetian (a famous casino in Las Vegas) are building there own in Macau.  We also took in some more sights including the airport before going to the restaurant.

Sunny had asked earlier what we wanted to eat and we had said some traditional Portuguese food.  The restaurant we were going to was owned by a Portuguese guy and was very small, having enough seats for about 25 people, all crammed in!  When we arrived the restaurant was full and we had to wait outside.  It was a good job we did as Sunny's dad had to go to park his car, which seems to be almost impossible in Macau as it took him 30 minutes to find a space!  Luckily (for him, not us) we could not get into the restaurant until he came back.  We also had to wait for Sunny's brother Omar to arrive when he finished work. 

When we finally got into the restaurant it was well worth waiting for.  As Macau is chinese, people eat Portuguese style food in a chinese way.  They order many dishes which are placed in the middle of the table and then people take small portions of each.  We had some really nice dishes such as prawns in tomato sauce, pigeon baked in the oven, duck in rice baked in the oven, fresh fish and even whole baby squid.  When we eventually got to the end of the meal we finished with creme caramel and walked out stuffed!  As we entered the restaurant it turned out that one of the other tables knew Sunny's dad, it was his boss from work.  Towards the end of the meal he came over, and was quite drunk, and started talking to his dad in Cantonese.  At the end of the conversation Clara looked at my wide mouthed and said, "That bloke has agreed to pay for our meal!".  It turned out he had that much money he wanted to pay for us all, and the waitress confirmed this when our total bill was $140 (10 pounds). 

By now, today had been quite surreal, what with winning our money back and having the meal paid for!!  To end the evening we agreed to go for a couple of drinks with Sunny and Omar.  We went outside and got into Omar's, very nice, new, Suzuki Vitara Jeep and set off to our first bar.  It's worth pointing out now that laws seem to be very lax in Macau.  In Hong Kong you must wear a seatbelt or you get fined, but in Macau no-one wears a seatbelt!  The other thing is that while we were eating Sunny's dad continued to drink lots and lots.  At one point Sunny was trying to drink more to stop his dad drinking.  His dad was obviously quite drunk but still managed to drive home - I'm just glad he wasn't taking us!

Omar took us on the 10 minute drive to a new area that had just been built called Fisherman's Wharf.  The area was basically like a theme park which sits on the side of the harbour and contains a number of rides and some shops and bars as well as a couple of casinos.  When we got there we found that the area was still being built and that while some things were finished, others still needed to be completed.  We went to an outside bar where a band were playing on the waterfront and had a couple of drinks.  After 10 minutes the band stopped playing and it seemed as though we were transported back to England and into Toff's or Ziggy's nightclub as cheesy music was played!

We left the bar a little later and Omar agreed to take us to a bar at the Macau Cultural Center where he works.  We parked under the center in an underground car park which Omar used his work pass to get into.  He said it was a bit of an abuse, but then again we parked next to his bosses car, and the car park was hardly empty!  We walked upstairs to the bar, which was full of youngish chinese sitting on sofas with loud dance music blaring out.  The bar was very reminiscent of Macmillans or Nexus in York with a couple of differences.  Firstly the people were all wearing t-shirts and jeans, there seems to be no dress code or anything on a Friday night.  Also on each table were a number of pots and dice for people to play dice games with.  We ordered some drinks, which were much cheaper than in Hong Kong, and also got a small bowl of beans to eat with them.

We left the bar about 1.30am and Omar drove us back to the hotel where we went upstairs and straight to bed after another long day!  We were only saying this evening that we had been here 4 days and it seemed more like a week as we had done so much.

Second Bar - Cultural Center

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