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We have a few pictures from Macau, all the rest are videos. But we’ll include some of the pictures here:
Property prices continue to rise in Macau. But many properties don’t look like something you’d want if they gave it to you for free.
An opera singer at the Venetian in Macau. She is actually from the real Venice and was very friendly! I wonder if her enthusiasm will last beyond the first few months of working there 
Yesterday we visited 5 of the major casinos in Macau, the Lisboa, Grand Lisboa, Wynn, Sands, and the Venetian. The oldest casino in Macau, the Lisboa, looks like an old Chinese gambling den inside, and the newer Grand Lisboa, while boasting a shiny exterior in the shape of a lotus flower, just looks like a newer version of the gambling den concept inside.
The Venetian on the other hand, has the true integrated resorts feel. It has 3 canals, although only one is open now. Paintings decorate the roof and corridors, there is intricate decor to imitate that found in Italy, and there are even live performances of opera along the canal.
Apart from that, most of Macau is a decrepit city that looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the Portuguese left nearly 20 years ago. The majority of buildings are old and unpainted, the streets are narrow and smelly, and the only time the city seems to have some color to it is at night when the lights are turned on in the streets, shops, and the many casinos that line even the most back alleys in town.
But just because the buildings look decrepit doesn’t mean the housing is cheap, the influx of foreign staff to man the casinos has caused a housing boom which has inflated prices of even the worst buildings.
We are now about to depart by ferry to Hong Kong and we’ll tell you all about our experiences when we get there! We’ll also add videos and pictures as soon as we are back in Singapore and we will get a better laptop so that we can do video editing while we travel the world.
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This is just a short post from the hotel lobby where we’ve connected our laptop where we probably weren’t supposed to We were supposed to have internet in the room but they messed up with our reservation and the room we have doesn’t have it so we had to use a plug in the lobby which wasn’t supposed to be for the public.
Anyway, the flight on Tiger Airways was quite fine, the only thing that made it seem like a budget airline was the fact that they sold food rather than giving it for free, and that the seats didn’t recline. I don’t really mind that they sold food, buying food on the plane is still cheaper than taking a normal flight. My only gripe was the lack of reclining seats. Is it really so expensive to maintain a reclining seat that they have to bolt them in place?
Ok we’re off to explore now and we’ll be telling you and showing you more as we see it! And remember, if you like this blog, tell your friends about it by clicking on the Email post button below!
By the time you read this post we should be almost landing in Macau. (I’m using the timed post feature in Wordpress for this.) We’ll be flying on Tiger Airways, which is supposed to be the best budget carrier in Asia, with all new planes and Singapore ownership. After some experiences with European budget carriers I’m not so sure about flying budget, but let’s see if this carrier is any different.
One nice thing with this budget carrier is that you can pay a bit more and book the emergency exit seats. Since I’m pretty tall (1.9m+), I really value that extra leg room, even on a short flight from Singapore to Macau. On that subject, flight time is expected to be a bit over 4 hours, and we’re hoping the weather has cleared up as they just had a typhoon a few days back.
Now for any of you who are interested, here’s a breakdown of our flight costs, these are for 2 people:
This works out to around: $185USD for both of us or around or $92.5 USD per person. Not too bad considering it includes pre-booked emergency exit seats. And as with most budget fares, the biggest chunk of the price goes to taxes.