My husband always fancied going to Las Vegas at some point in his life. Planning for a US trip required far more planning than just a mere extended weekend plan. So, for his birthday on Oct 6th, I decided to take him on a surprise trip to the other famous Las Vegas, in the east - Macau. And planning for Macau over an extended weekend from Singapore was definitely easy.
The trip was to be done on the weekend on Oct 6th - Oct 8th, 2012. So my first step was to incept the idea in my husband, to take a day off from work on Oct 8th, which was a Monday. I didn't have any brilliant idea of how to do it, so just told him to take the day off, so we could plan to travel somewhere, and if nothing, we could just enjoy a long weekend at home. And it worked just fine! Now that the long weekend of 3 days was confirmed, I started out with the planning.
The trip was to be done on the weekend on Oct 6th - Oct 8th, 2012. So my first step was to incept the idea in my husband, to take a day off from work on Oct 8th, which was a Monday. I didn't have any brilliant idea of how to do it, so just told him to take the day off, so we could plan to travel somewhere, and if nothing, we could just enjoy a long weekend at home. And it worked just fine! Now that the long weekend of 3 days was confirmed, I started out with the planning.
Flight information:
I booked Tiger Airways flight from Singapore that flew directly to Macau, for the 6th of October 2012, 10.25am. The return was on 8th October, 6.40pm.
Hotel Booking:
Now, this was something that I spent a lot of time over. I wanted to book us at a very exquisite hotel, since it was a special occasion of my husband's birthday. There are lot of hotels, at every range and choosing once turned out to be quite a daunting task. I had to compare costs and rework my math to ensure that it fit into my budget. I realized that the best way to make this possible was if I split the 2 nights stay into 2 different hotels - one night at a mid range hotel and another at a luxurious hotel. For the luxurious hotels, I shortlisted the Hard Rock Hotel, The City of Dreams and The Venetian. And the winner was The Venetian, Macau - the largest casino in the world!.
I booked us into the GrandView Hotel for a premier room for the first night. For the second night, I booked a Royal Suite at The Venetian which cost me around 1400HKD.
Visa Requirements
For citizens of most countries, the entry is visa-free for at least 30 days, depending on which country's citizen you are. We fell into the category of visa free entry for 30 days.
For UK nationals it's 180 days and for European Union nationals it's 90 days visa free travel.
Planning the Itinerary:
Right, tickets, hotels and visa done. Now to chalk out the 3 day plan. First, I started with finding out about Macau.
Macau was an overseas territory of Portugal till 1999 and now is a Special Administrative Resion (SAR) of the People's Republic of China. Cantonese and Portugal are the widely spoken languages here. English is spoken by most people in the main tourist places and hotels, but not by those at the smaller tourist attractions and locals.
Macau is divided into 4 regions - Macau peninsula, Taipa, Cotai and Coloane. As tourists, we would be interested in the Macau peninsula and Cotai, where most tourist attractions and casinos are located.
Apart from visiting the world famous casinos, the other tourist places includes the ruins of St.Paul's cathedral, the Senado Square, the House of Dancing Waters show at the City of Dreams, Ama temple, the Macau Tower, The Fisherman's Wharf and the Michael Jackson gallery.
Of the many things to do in Macau, I first identified the "must-do" items. Hugely inspired by Michael Jackson and whose songs are always included in my husband's song mixes, a visit to the MJ gallery was the top most priority. The next item was the House of Dancing Waters show. I immediately booked 2 seats in section 100, row J, for the 8pm show on 6th Oct, at a cost of 480HKD per person.
Now that the important items were fixed, the rest of the touristy stuff was easy to move around.
Since the language was going to be a major hindrance to the travel, I printed out the name of the above places in Cantonese and Mandarin, along with their English names for my reference.
Ok, looks like all is set. Now to execute the surprise plan. On 5th October, I waited until the stroke of midnight to wish my husband and handed him an envelope with the ticket. He was jumping with excitement when he saw the bags all packed and I was happy to have successfully executed the surprise part of the plan!
Day 1:
6th October, 2012
Our flight to Macau from Singapore was at 10.30am and reached Macau at 2.30pm local time. The immigration was done pretty fast and soon we were on our way to the Hotel GrandView while spotting some of the world famous casinos en route.
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| The Macau Tower |
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| MGM Hotel and Casino |
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| Wynn Hotel and Casino |
The taxi ride cost us 40HKD. The check in at the hotel was pretty smooth. We had to pay a deposit of 500HKD. I checked with the hotel reception if they had anything special for the birthday of a guest and they very kindly obliged to send us a bottle of champagne to the room. The room was spacious and tidy, and after popping open the champagne, we quickly freshened up to start our day's sight seeing.
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| Room at GranView Hotel |
We first headed to the St.Paul's Cathedral ruins. I showed the print out of the location to the taxi driver and soon we were on our way there for a cost of 60HKD.
The ruins of St.Paul's is a 17th century Portugese cathedral. What remains today is only the facade, which is reinforced with concrete and steel, to uphold the otherwise leaning structure. The Cathedral stands on a small hill with steps leading up to it.
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| Ruins of St.Paul's Cathedral |
We decided to walk to the Senado square thereby giving us a peek into the local atmosphere. We came across a residential area and the contrast of this to the otherwise rich section of the place was quite striking.
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| The other side of Macau |
It is said that "If you haven't been to The Senado Square, you haven't been to Macau". And I quite agree with that. Although there is nothing obvious at first glance, it is a nice beautiful place to stroll around, sit, relax and capture a few memories. The tiled wavy floor along with pastel coloured buildings take you momentarily into another dimension of existence.
We walked around Senado Square, window shopped and headed out to the main area. It was now time to try our luck at the casinos. We first went to the Lisboa casino and then the Wynn casino. We tried our luck at a few games and after being satisfied with our losses headed out to the City of Dreams to catch the show at 8pm.
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| The Grand Lisboa Casino |
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| Wynn Casino |
The House of Dancing Water show was spectacular! It is a water based performance with artists ranging from gymnasts, circus artists, divers to motorcyclists. The story is told over various sets that keep changing, through various artists over a period of 90 mins. The magnificence and the technical detailing of the entire show has to be experienced.
We were still in awe of the show when we entered the City of Dreams Casino and couldn't stop talking about it.
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| The entrance at City of Dreams |
We grabbed a quick snack, since we weren't too hungry. We headed back to our hotel, freshened up and again headed out to see few more casinos. This time we went to the MGM casino, the President Casino and a quick look at our hotel's casino. We lost a total of 150HKD.
Day 2:
7th October, 2012.
We had breakfast at our hotel for 160HKD (the breakfast was not included in the room's rate) and checked out of the hotel but left our luggage there.
We headed out to the MJ gallery at the Ponte16 resort. The gallery was very well laid out with a lot of original artifacts from MJ's life. There were a lot of his personal items, autographed by MJ himself. This was like being in heaven for my husband.
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| A sketch of Charlie Chaplin by MJ |
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| I am the one! |
At the MJ shop, we purchased a black sweatshirt with a golden silhouette of MJ and key chain of his Billy Jean glove, for which we got a free MJ mug :)
At the MJ cafe shop we had a quick bite of pizza and coffee.
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| Coffee in MJ mug at the MJ cafe |
We next went to the most oldest and famous temple, called the A-Ma temple. It is believed that the name Macau was derived from this name.
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| View from the top of A-Ma temple |
At the shop nearby we bought some souvenirs and headed back to the GrandView Hotel to pick up our luggage.
My husband obviously had no idea why we were checking out and as part of the agreement to this trip, he was to not ask me any questions regarding the itinerary. So as agreed, he just followed me, and next we were inside The Venetian!
Our check in was smooth and we were soon taken to our suite. It was a lovely spacious room, with a separate living area, bedroom and a huge bathroom. We were just thrilled to be there. As part of today's plan, we were to just chill in our room and walk around the hotel and casino.
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| Inside The Venetian |
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| Gondola ride inside The Venetian |
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| The opulent ceiling |
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| The grandeur |
As per that plan, we walked around the hotel, soaking in the exquisiteness of the place. We grabbed lunch at one of the stalls in the food court area, did some shopping and went back to our room to dress for the evening.
We played around in the casino, walked out to the front of the hotel from where we could see the night view of the Las Vegas strip of the east. We then walked across the road to the Hard Rock Cafe and enjoyed a few drinks to some lovely live music.
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| The Venetian |
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| Panoramic night view of the Las Vegas strip of the east - Cotai, Macau |
Day 2:
8th October, 2012.
We woke up to a lazy morning, ordered in breakfast which was served in style, with a restaurant kind setup.
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| Breakfast in room |
Today was our last day and after checking out of the room, we still had some time left before we had to catch out flight back to Singapore. We just walked across the various sections of the hotel, did some more shopping and headed back to the airport, satisfied of a well executed plan!
Other things to do in Macau:
There are quite a few things that we couldn't see in this trip. The Macau Tower has a deck for panoramic views, restaurants, malls and a thrilling walk around the outer rim. And for all you adventurists, you can try the bungy jump, sky jump and the tower climb.
The Fisherman's Wharf is an adventure theme park with roller coaster rides to children fun fare rides, Roman styled shopping centre, Colloseum designed venue for concerts and performances.
Hopefully another time. Till then,
Happy Holidaying!
