Hong Kong amazes me every day, specially yesterday.
Back in the day, when HK was under British rule, the island used to be very strict when it came to gambling, alcohol, prostitution, etc. The Triads looked for a place for their headquarters and be safer from the cops and therefore set shop at the next island called Macau which was under Portuguese rule and was way more lenient. Nowadays Macau managed to transform to an industry which does pretty much the same thing, but legaly. CASINOS.
Macau is pretty much a copy of Las Vegas, if it where on steroids. There are 25 Casinos within the Cotai Strip, and there is an island just for the Venetian, which is one of the few buildings in the world bigger than the Pentagon. There are identical copies of many hotels such as the Sands, Venetian, Sands, Rio, etc, and the net gross is greater than the one in Vegas.
My day started with a phone call from my friend Phillip, suggesting that we take a ferry for Macau, spend the night gambling and partying and then taking another back in the morning. After we where all done with classes we did exactly that. We went to the ferry station, boarded the 8pm ferry and arrived at Macau at 9pm.
Macau was everything I imagined and more. We took a shuttle to the Venetian and where amazed by its size; It was huge! We immediately signed up for the VIP rewards card and started gambling to rack up points. The goal was to reach 28 points so that we would get a complementary ferry ticket for the way back. It didn't seem too hard since each ticket only cost 150hkd ($20).
The lowest table minimum for blackjack was 300hkd which scared us since we where not planning on gambling that much, so we decided to hit the roulette where the minimum bet was 50hkd. Chasen and I somehow got on a roll and suddenly where hitting every number. There was only one spin in which I did not get paid something. After making a hefty profit I decided to play it safe and stop playing. Wise decision. Chasen kept playing and managed to loose everything he had won. I left with Sean and Josh to get some food and roam around the hotel while he stayed with Matt, Dave, Chris and Phillip. Two hours later we went back and noticed that Chasen was still playing. He had somehow managed to win everything back and even double what he had originally made. I guess here everyone actually is a winner.
We decided to cash out and checked our rewards card to see how many points we had earned. I was surprised to know that after playing over 4 hours I had only gotten 9 points. so much for that free ferry ride. Chasen had only earned 30 even though he had placed bets significantly higher than mine all night long. Matt decided to give it a try to see what he qualified for, turns out he had not made a single point all night long, oh Matt. It makes one wonder how the casino expects someone to earn 88,888 points to get a complementary helicopter ride.
At 3am we headed to a club called D2 to celebrate our success. Turns out that the club lets prostitutes in and gets a cut of their profits. It was disgusting to see how many old guys where surrounded by local prostitutes. We partied through two separate DJ's and finally headed to the ferry station just in time for the 7am ferry back to Hong Kong. I got back into my dorm just in time to hear my hall-mates alarm clocks.
Apparently we are heading back next weekend but this time staying for the night. Turns out there is a complementary buffet and an epic go-kart track.
No comments:
Post a Comment