A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

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fountainhall

A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by fountainhall »

It is the third richest piece of land on the planet after only Luxembourg and Qatar. Its GDP per person is twice that of the UK. It has an area of just 30.5 sq. kms and a population of 650,000, yet its foreign exchange reserves total almost US$20 billion. Every year the government hands back to every single resident a rebate of US$11,200.

Shanghai may have changed more than any other city physically over the last 15 years. But when it comes to wealth, it is eclipsed by what used to be until 1999 the tiny Portuguese enclave of Macao.

Macao is a fascinating place – even if less so than it used to be. Thanks to an agreement with the Chinese Emperor, the Portuguese traders who discovered it in the mid-1500s paid an annual rental of 19 kgs of silver for the right to live and trade there. Soon it became like any small Mediterranean port, with its Praia Grande, its hilltop fort, colourful houses, multitude of little restaurants and – of course – its nightlife. By the early 19th century when the traders were permitted to travel to Canton for a few months each year, they had to leave their wives and families back in Macao. Once in Canton they were not permitted to mix with the local Chinese, but no doubt many did. And on returning to Macao, their wives were not the only ones to welcome them back. The opium den owners, bars, gambling houses and the prostitutes inhabiting the whorehouses on the quaintly named Rua da Felicidade (Street of Happiness – still there in its quaint glory but now mostly souvenir shops and restaurants) no doubt found their coffers filling up once again.

When I made my first visit to Macao in 1979, it was almost as though nothing had changed over the previous 150 years. It was the perfect antidote to the boom and bustle of Hong Kong, a step back in time to a more relaxed, enjoyable and courteous age.

I first discovered it when friends suggested we go for dinner one evening. Getting there was easy. We’d assemble at 5:30pm for a hydrofoil trip covering the 40 miles in just over an hour. Once through immigration, a cheap taxi ride would take us to the faded grandeur of the Bela Vista Hotel. Built on a small promontory overlooking the channel between Macao and Taipa Island, this had once been one of the smaller grand old hotels of Asia, spoken of lovingly in the same breath as the Peninsula in Hong Kong, Raffles in Singapore and the Eastern and Oriental in Penang. (On my first visit to the then crumbling E&O Hotel the following year, in the bar there was a framed cutting from The Times of London from the mid-1930s that read – “The E&O Hotel Penang – The Finest Hotel East of Suez”).

By 1979 the Bela Vista was a hotel that had seen better days, but it was a joy to sit on its south-facing terrace as the sky darkened drinking our cocktails or incredibly cheap but excellent Portuguese wine (no taxes levied on it!).

From there we would proceed to one of the nearby restaurants where the whores used to ply their trade, or more often over to Taipa Island and the large open-air restaurant that still exists today, Pinocchio. Other times we would venture further to the next island of Coloane to the small and wonderfully hospitable Fernando’s, also still there today even though the waterways between Macau, Taipa and Coloane have now been filled in. Simple but utterly delicious and ridiculously inexpensive Portuguese cuisine washed own with more wine and ending either with one of the traditional Macanese egg tarts or a divinely sweet dessert.

On our way back to the ferry pier, we could have stopped off at the charming, small but equally faded Dom Pedro V Theatre, the first western-style theatre in Asia that had hosted the Asian premiere of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly”). Playing nightly in those days was “The Crazy Horse Show” allegedly direct from Paris featuring a Follies Bergère type of entertainment with presumably a great deal of emphasis on tits and ass.

We preferred a short stop at the gaudy (i.e. ugly) Hotel Lisboa and one of the island’s few casinos. None of us were into betting but we’d happily put a few patacas on to a roulette table, our favourite numbers being the four around 36. And goodness knows why, but several times we made enough cash in those 15 minutes to pay for most of our trips! For, indeed they were to become regular trips over a number of years.

In the process, as everywhere in Asia, Macao began to change. The developers moved in as manufacturing moved across the border to neighbouring Zhuhai in China. Soon Macao was being promoted as a tourist destination and not merely the gambling mecca that it had been for decades for the gambling-mad people of Hong Kong.

And Macao did – and does – have some fascinating sights. Forget the touristy volcano as you leave today’s jetfoils, the faux Chinese village and the glitzy, gaudiness of the Cotai Strip where in 2002 the Chinese government permitted the Sheldon Adelsons and Steve Wynns of our planet to open massive casinos. (Incidentally, did you know that the Venetian in Macao is twice the size of its counterpart in Las Vegas? Or that by 2014 the revenues from gambling in Macau were seven times greater than those from the Strip in Las Vegas? That has been reduced a bit due to the Chinese government’s corruption crackdown but signs are that it is on the way up again.)

No, take a walk in the chequered square by the Leal Senado, the historic capital and centre of government of the city. Almost everywhere in this part of Macao is walkable and so go up to the old Guia Fortress to look around and get your bearings. Come down via the delightful 4.4 acre Lou Lim Yok Garden, an old Chinese private garden modeled on those in Suzhou. Although constructed less than 100 years ago, its pavilions, ponds, cloisters and bridges take you back centuries to Ming Dynasty China. In the centre is a glorious pavilion where recitals are held during the annual Music Festival. Part of one wall was taken down and replaced with floor to ceiling windows so that the audience could have a full view of the lit garden when attending concerts.

The famous façade of the ruins of St. Paul’s Church is another tourist magnet. Originally built by the Jesuits in the early 17th century, the Church was destroyed by fire during a typhoon in 1835. But the façade and the steps leading up to it remain today as a symbol of the city.

The city boasts many other old churches and historic buildings. One, the old Opium House, has been turned into a clinic. The extensive Mandarin’s House is definitely worth a visit. A few of the many Museums, too, should be on your list since an understanding of the fascinating history of this tiny piece of land on the southern tip of China is vital to your enjoyment of it. But it is such a pity that its old world Mediterranean charm has been all but lost – no doubt forever.

I have not included any photographs only because I have only once been to Macao for a quick business meeting since getting a digital camera. In a later post I will try and dig up some photos from elsewhere that can illustrate the text.
fountainhall

Re: A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by fountainhall »

A few unoriginal photos of Macao

Façade of St. Paul's - copyright wikipedia
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Guia Fort - copyright Itsmacau.com
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Restored Terrace of the Bela Vista Hotel - copyright Kennie Ting
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Leal Sanado Square - copyright Itsmacau.com
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Rua da Felicidade - copyright Rogerio P D Luz
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Lou Lim Yok Garden - copyright Tishiyuki Masubuchi
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Entrance to Dom Pedro V Theatre - Macao Tourism
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Present Day Macao - The Venetian's Grand Canal - Your boyfriend will love it! - copyright The Venetian
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Jun

Re: A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by Jun »

I presume the latter is some fake recently built by a developer.
However even if that's the case, am I correct to adore the Portugese buildings whilst looking down on the latter ? Maybe it's just hypocrisy.
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Re: A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by Smiles »

Fountainhall . . . (adding to Jun's comments above) are you sure that the 'Venice' shot is in Macao? I ask this because Hua Hin has the exact same 'park'. If so then the developing company must be a chain, building tourist 'cities' all over the place.
The Hua Hin version has turned into a bit of a disaster. One could fire a cannon ball through the streets without hitting single Chinese tourist.
Cheers ... ( and just one more reason why I love living in Thailand )

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fountainhall

Re: A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by fountainhall »

I am 110% certain that photo is from The Venetian Hotel and Casino in Macao. It is certainly no park!! Although I have not stayed in that hotel, I have spent 3 nights in its sister hotel, The Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. It is one of several theme hotels in Vegas with the public areas modelled on scaled-down versions of the originals in Venice. The "Grand Canal" is actually situated on the second floor - a massive area with theme shops and restaurants, a large piazza, a painted sky, singing gondoliers and goodness knows how much water! Both were built by Sheldon Adelson's Sands Corporation. Las Vegas opened in 1999 and Macao in 2007.

This from wikipedia -
The Venetian Macao (Chinese: 澳門威尼斯人度假村酒店) is a luxury hotel and casino resort in Macao owned by the American Las Vegas Sands company. The Venetian is a 39-story casino hotel on the Cotai Strip in Macao. The 10,500,000-square-foot (980,000 m2) Venetian Macao is modeled on its sister casino resort The Venetian Las Vegas, and is the seventh-largest building in the world by floor area. The Venetian Macao is also the largest casino in the world, and the largest single structure hotel building in Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venetian_Macao

Here are some not so good photos from my Las Vegas stay -
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I totally agree about the older buildings being vastly more attractive than all the recent hotel developments on the Cotai Strip! The hotels are mere fake fantasies. But I promise your boyfriend will adore the interior of the Venetian. He'll feel as though he's in Italy even though it's just a rather hideous reproduction of bits of Venice.

Apologies for two of my earlier photos having disappeared. I am not a fan of photobucket and hardly ever use it. It also runs extremely slowly on my computer. I know I uploaded several copies of each photo. I expect I deleted the wrong copies. Here they are again. I'm not sure if GB can transplant them into the original post!

Rua da Felicidade - copyright Rogerio P D Luz
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Lou Lim Yok Garden - copyright Tishiyuki Masubuchi
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Re: A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by Gaybutton »

fountainhall wrote:I'm not sure if GB can transplant them into the original post
Done.
thaiworthy

Re: A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by thaiworthy »

fountainhall wrote:Here are some not so good photos from my Las Vegas stay
I beg to differ. They look excellent to me! Smiles' post reminds me of your contests: "Where was this photo taken?" (Hua Hin or Macao?) Do I sense another Fountainhall photo mystery contest looming in the future?
fountainhall

Re: A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by fountainhall »

Haha! If there is another photo competition, I shall make sure that on magnification no clues are given away!

For background, I used to run an annual competition on gaythailand initially based largely on photographs and their locations. For a tie-break in the last competition, I had used a photo of the lovely Roman centre of the French town of Annecy between Lyon and Geneva which has many canals. I had assumed the finalists would put Italy as the country. Thaiworthy had other ideas. He magnified the photo and eventually noticed a very feint shop sign in French that I had totally failed to see. Consequently he correctly answered France and won the bottle of champagne!

Just for interest, this was the photo -
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fountainhall

Re: A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by fountainhall »

Smiles wrote:I ask this because Hua Hin has the exact same 'park'. If so then the developing company must be a chain, building tourist 'cities' all over the place.
The Hua Hin version has turned into a bit of a disaster. One could fire a cannon ball through the streets without hitting single Chinese tourist.
I expect that could be because China has its own 120-acre Window on the World Park outside Shenzhen across the border from Hong Kong. It's been open since 1997 and is ranked No. 14 in the list of most visited Theme Parks in Asia with 3.6 million+ visitors annually. So I guess many of the early visitors are now travelling to see the real thing. why any Thai developer would want to open a lesser version anywhere in Thailand totally beats me!

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Re: A Step back in time to a fascinating part of Asia

Post by christianpfc »

There is "Mini Siam" in Pattaya, with a "Mini World" part that has monuments from all over the world.

There is a Venetian themed market (?) Venice Di IRIS in Bangkok .
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