Macau: A melting wok of cultures

With its casinos, Las Vegas hotels, Portuguese-style buildings - Macau is a little bit of everything

For a second, when I wake up, I don’t quite know where I am. My hotel room is completely over-the-top with Italian marble floors, gilded ceilings and a bathroom as big as a mid-sized Manhattan apartment. Beneath, I can see a network of canals on which gondolas ply constantly. But beyond the canals, there are pagodas, plush skyscrapers and a dull grey sea. A cup of tea later, I look at my nearly empty wallet, the contents of which I gambled away the night before, and then remember. I’m in Macau, the strange mishmash of cultures served up with a Chinese twist — and I need to go to an ATM. 

For an island that has the distinction of being Asia’s last European colony (it belonged to the Portuguese until 1999), Macau has the air of not really having a clue about its identity. It is as if every cobblestone on its pretty streets tells the story of a melting pot, or since we’re in this side of the world, a melting wok. It has a glitzy casino strip and the best of Las Vegas hotels (we are at the Venetian, a Sino-Italian dreamland where our gondolier turns out to be a Taiwanese who sings O Sole Mio in a mystery accent). Pretty blue glazed tiles on a wall are reminiscent of the Azulejos, Portuguese blue-tiled murals. A pagoda-style temple around the corner, and several others dotting its skyline, point to its Chinese heritage. Indeed, under the policy of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, China looks after the military defence and foreign affairs of Macau, even as Macau maintains its own legal system, security force, currency and customs policy. The mishmash that is Macau doesn’t end (or begin) with its history alone. It used to be an island, but is now an isthmus, thanks to a sandbar that’s grown over the decades.

Unlike its American counterpart, Las Vegas, which that bears the daytime air of an aging diva who has supped too well the night before, Macau looks radiant in the morning light. Cobbled streets, flanked by yellow Portuguese-style buildings, red Chinese lanterns and window boxes overflowing with blooms are a pretty sight. It’s no surprise to learn that it is among the richest places in the world, courtesy its open economy, its status as Asia’s foremost tax haven and the bustling gambling industry. 

I rest a while at the dancing fountain outside Wynns’ — one of four big Las Vegas hotels operational here (the others being the Venetian, Sands Macau and MGM Grand). Around me, tourists mill about taking selfies with the fountain that is dancing to one of my favourite show tunes, Frank Sinatra’s Luck be My Lady Tonight. I can’t imagine a song more appropriate for Macau. 

That evening, the concierge at the Venetian tells me I must explore the hotel, which, when it was built, was the second largest building in the world (by floor space). Apparently, it is now the seventh largest, but as I wander through its ornate casino that buzzes non-stop with solemn Chinese gamblers, I feel it somehow lacks the carnival-like spirit of its Las Vegas counterpart. In Vegas, pink-haired old ladies and Bermuda shorts-clad tourists gamble cheek-by-jowl with the more serious variety of gambler — but in Macau, gambling is a no nonsense sort of a business. I lose, of course, and unlike in Vegas, don’t have a lot of fun doing it. 

The next morning, I decide to breakfast on the ever-popular Macanese street snack that has more calories than I need for a week — waffles filled with chocolate, condensed milk and peanut butter. It’s guaranteed to have you reaching for those antacids, but that sheer embarrassment of flavours is quite irresistible. A narrow alley beckons, leading me from the European-style cobblestone lane I’m on into a different world of old wooden houses and traditional Chinese spice shops with an array of dried herbs, seaweed, roots and fish. 

All too soon, it’s time to board the water jet to Hong Kong airport. As its skyline disappears into the grey China Sea, I muse that I’ll always remember Macau not for its casinos, but as the place where a Taiwanese gondolier serenaded me on a make-believe Venetian canal — as we sailed past Portuguese mansions and Chinese pagodas.