Three-Day Getaway to Macau

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We were hungry and in search of authentic Macaunese or Portuguese food. This is not the place to get it but if you are hungry, and want a buffet, and to try a variety of cuisines, then you should try this place. We came here on a Thursday night, and this place was deserted. There were maybe handful of people at 9:30pm. The place closes around 10:30pm. There is an a la carte menu as well as the buffet. It is MOP$250 for the buffet and includes your choice of coffee or tea. Surprisingly, my favorite dish was the cauliflower mousse with salmon caviar. The buffet included:

Seafood - Raw Oysters, raw clams, Scottish smoked salmon, lox, shrimp
Appetizers - Imported cheeses, cous-cous, two kinds of steamed fish, seared ahi tuna salad, prosciutto and melon salad, Chinese, BBQ meat such as duck, suckling pig, pork. Sashimi including octopus, salmon, red snapper. Pumpkin soup, beef and tofu soup.
Main - Chicken curry with naan and roti, fried rice, steamed Chinese vegetables, e-fu noodles, prime rib, lamb chops.
Dessert - chocolate fondue, blue berry cake, cheese cake, hazelnut cake, chocolate decadent.

Bottom Line: I gave this place 3 stars because the Wynn in Las Vegas is by far my favorite buffet. For the same price as the Las Vegas buffet, the buffet in Macau was sub par compared to its US version. Some of the hot items were only warm in temperature. Service was excellent.

Sail Away!
Catching a ferry from Hong Kong is quite easy. TurboJet operates hydrofoils every 15-30 minutes, 7 days a week and offers trips less frequently into the wee hours of the morning up to 6am (www.www.turbojet.com.hk).  We left from the Ferry Terminal in Central. However, you can catch a ferry from the Kowloon side to Macau in Tsim Sha Tsui. Take the MTR to Sheung Wan, the west most point on the blue line in Hong Kong. Go up to the third floor of the Shun Tak Centre to the ticket window to the left. You do not need to purchase the tickets in advance. On the weekends and during holidays it will get quite crowded so you might want to buy a round trip ticket. It won't save you any money just time.

Tickets come in Economy and First class HK$142/$244 each way. First class tickets sit on the seats on the upper deck and are allowed to disembark first. You can purchase a ticket and if you are early you can try to make it on standby for earlier trips if you wish. Day tickets are cheaper than evening (after 5:30pm) tickets. Weekday tickets are cheaper than weekend tickets. Make sure you give yourself enough time to also pass through immigration before boarding. You will go through customs twice: leaving Hong Kong, and entering Macau. 10-15 minutes before your sailing time, there will be a line by the gate for you to get your reserved seat number in the form of a little sticker they place on your ticket. If you are traveling in a party and wish to sit together then, I suggest you send one person to get your assigned seats.

The trip takes about 1 hour. There is a TV screen showing either some advertisements or some TV show (America's funniest pets). They sell drinks, sandwiches, ramen noodle, and other snacks on the short one hour flight. If you are prone to sea sick you may want to take some medication as the boat gets a bit rocky.

As a resident of the Bay Area in California, we frequent Las Vegas on the weekends. The clanging of the slot machines, the scantily clad cocktail waitresses, and long buffet lines were not to be found anywhere here in Macau. Over the past two years, Macau has changed quite drastically since the lifting of the monopoly on the casinos and allowing foreign investors to build their own. The Sands and the Wynn have been the newest foreign addition. The Venetian is set to open in late 2007.

We took a stroll through the Wynn hotel, a smaller version of the Las Vegas with its own dancing fountains out front featuring a miniature show similar to the Bellagio in Vegas. In the casinos in Macau, the gambling section is separated from the rest of the hotel by security checkpoints. They aren't as sensitive as the ones in the airport so there is no need to remove shoes, belts, and empty pockets. A quick bag check will suffice. There are no slot machines that make the typical noises that fill the air of Vegas casinos. The well endowed Vegas cocktail waitresses ready to take your drink order are replaced with older fully clothed and covered women pushing carts with free bottled water, ice tea, and milk tea. Asian people don't really drink much. They are there just to do business: Gamble. The flavor of games is also quite different. They have single zero roulette. Baccarat is also very popular. A dice game called Sic-Bo involving three dice is also quite the draw. As hard as we looked, there was no Texas Hold'em Poker to be found. . . anywhere.

They clearly don't have ESPN. Some games have a virtual dealer with several computer stations where each gambler can sit and bet at their leisure. Both Hong Kong and Macau have also made a conscious effort to make public places non-smoking. In some casinos, they have a non-smoking gambling area. Half a dozen new casinos are planned to be built in the next two years near the new fishermans' wharf area. The buffet craze hasn't caught on either. Some casinos have a semi-buffet which include a salad bar, a selection of a main entrée from three choices and a dessert. The Wynn has a toned down version of their Vegas buffet in Café Esplanada.