Our decision to go to Macau for a few days was a last minute one. It had long been on our list of places to see while we are in Asia, but with a couple of weeks left of the summer vacation after a long trip, idle browsing revealed that it’s quite cheap to travel there in late July. We were to find out why.
Despite the short notice, I carried out some research before we left: googling “what to know when traveling to Macau with kids” turned up nothing to cause any concern. So we were surprised when we landed at Macau International Airport and found out that we couldn’t draw any money out of the ATM.
Changing money in advance and traveling with a stack of cash seems risky and redundant these days, with the global banking network allowing you to access your money almost anywhere. (Although we did take Euros when visiting Ireland recently, as there are virtually no Unionpay ATMs in the country). Most places we just rock up and take out money when we arrive. What no one had warned us is that to draw cash from a Chinese bank account in Macau requires a Chinese ID card… which we, of course, don’t have.
This failed to show up on any websites I looked at because they assume you will be taking money from an American or European account, which is no problem. We asked at the information desk, and were told that our only option was to cross back over to the mainland, draw out RMB there, bring it across, then change it into the local currency.
After a long flight, my wife was almost in tears at this prospect. So we decided to try going to a bank with our passports and pleading. Here, we learned another useful lesson, which is that it’s possible to travel around Macau mostly for free, by taking advantage of the hotels’ shuttle buses. Nobody checks, or cares, whether you are staying at that hotel; they want you visiting them in the hope you will spend money in their shops and casinos. So we hopped onto a bus and headed for The Venetian.
Gambling is of course the reason most people visit Macau, the slot games casino on there is par with Vegas, and despite the local government’s efforts to diversify the economy, it’s still the biggest game in town. Macau is sometimes known as “the Vegas of Asia” — but in fact it’s bigger than Vegas. Most of the casinos aren’t in Macau itself. The Special Autonomous Region (SAR) also includes two islands to the south of the Macau peninsula, Taipa and Coloane. 20 years ago the straits between them were filled in, joining them into a single landmass and creating a new district called Cotai. And on this newly created land is where you’ll find developments on a staggering scale.
Hey, we’re in Venice! Sort of…
The Venetian is a replica, in miniature, of Venice itself, complete with canals, gondolas, and the Piazza San Marco. It’s the oldest and best known of the Cotai casino complexes, which include The Parisian (with Eiffel Tower) and soon The Londoner. The casino lies at its heart, but for obvious reasons children aren’t allowed, so we were forced to walk through a shopping mall with an artificial sky.
The bank were not swayed by our pleading, so we boarded another shuttle bus and headed for the border. The bus took us across the bridge to Macau proper, and north to the Portas de Cerco. This is a sight in itself: with a 19th century arch still standing from the old border crossing, which during the Cold War was known as “the East Asian Checkpoint Charlie.” On the Chinese side it’s known as the Gongbei Port of Entry, processing 100 million visitors a year, and a tedious place to have to pass through twice in a single day (having already left China once).
So if you visit Macau, be sure to bring some RMB with you (and change it to Hong Kong dollars if you want to gamble, rather than Macanese pataca. HKD are accepted everywhere on a one-to-one basis, except in the casinos, where you only get HKD 1 for MOP 1.03). But my advice would be to avoid, the garish, tacky excesses of Cotai, and appreciate the quieter charms of the old city. Although preferably not during a typhoon, like we did… which will be the subject of my next post.
Photos: Karen Killeen, Andrew Killeen
