Macau is an interesting place. A Portugese port and trading concession with a 500 year history, it has retained (just) a touch of its Portugese heritage while becoming the only part of China with legal casinos. It's other major industries are reproducing "antique" furniture and tourismo, with a small sideline in impossibly long names for every company and institution that must end in 'Macau', leading to a lettering and signage industry without peer in the Portugese speaking world (outside of Portugal and Brazil). 24 hours in the place was about long enough to get a feel for it. Really it's just a huge vacuum cleaner for Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese money, the casinos providing the suction and not in a particularly classy way either. Interestingly when I inquired if they had some kind of booklet explaining some of the games (bacaarat, some dice games with flashing lights, more bacaarat, 3 card poker and did I mention bacaarat?) I was told they have booklets in Chinese and Portugese. Nothing in English, though. Fair enough too given we seemed to be the only non-staff gweilos in the Sands.

So if your idea of a good time is not seeing sunshine as you watch thousands of your hard earned dollars go to the coffers of rich men who own the place, surrounded by smoke and surly Chinese people who have idiosyncratic methods of card turning and playing (how does waving a piece of paper over the cards help?) while aged and ugly token gweilo women dance on bar tops for the amusement of no-one in particular, then Macau's the place for you. Oh, the food's pretty good.

Suffice it to say if something like this ever happened there would be a new inmate of Macau's mental institution.