The Macau Story - Pt 1

I’ve been on tons of holiday where I have social and monetary consequences catching up to me when I get back or when I’m at the boarding area running a mental recapitulation of the weekend’s proceedings and subsequent damage.

It’s always the familiar case of the tourist mentality and the notion of your invincible dollar. Yes, our limits are made to be breeched and it’s becoming a fatal routine to run out of cash and risk having to pawn our organs just for that one more bottle of vodka.

Yet, this time round, I was plague by periodic pangs of concern that I was going to have to pawn my kidney before the trip was over and mortgage my car, the kitchen sink and my parents after I get back. If I wrote down every time I thought, “what the fuck?”, it will make everything Dan Brown has written look like a primary 6 composition.

Last night, LB and I got stuck at the airport for over 4 hours. I was hungry, LB was freezing his butt off and we were at the smoking area tabulating the amount of money we spent and I believe the famous last words were “what the fuck?”.

And this is how it all happened...

It was Macau, the Vegas of the East, the holy land of slot machines, high stakes poker and illegal immigrants. No one really cares to sight see there because if there isn’t a casino in that building, you know it’s either not worth the visit or that it will be demolished soon in favour of more casinos.

This fact is well proliferated in popular mass media and although many TVB drama serials have taught us the rule that Macau is where people go to lose their fortune, virginity and sometimes their wives, we also know that humans are incorrigible beings that believe that beating the casino is a possibility much like a sub 9 hundred metre dash and happy ever afters.

Prior to the trip, I was already briefed that one of the guys had a huge appetite for lavish spending. I was properly re-assured that ‘no frills’ was the word of the day and the code by which we were going to live by for the duration of the trip.

I am proficiently aware of the merits of a budget-less travel because I am a staunch believer that a conservative approach for the purse takes away a lot of potential fun for the trip. I like, every carnal human, thrive on the thrill of the experience without the weight of inhibitions.

In retrospect to my past travels with LB, we were both comfortable with words like, intemperance, debauchery, indulgence, profligacy and hedonism. After all, these were staple words inked to my very fibre of existence. If I had more vodka and less humility, I would have told you that I invented those words and emailed it to Webster one day in a drunken stupor.

I couldn’t be more wrong.

Our first meal was dinner at some seafood restaurant that was apparently pretty popular – and pricey for that matter. I don’t remember the name because I don’t give anything that doesn’t come with alcohol, hard music, disco lights or cleavages much attention.

As the dishes started to be served, I went from “this abalone is damn fresh” to “I wonder if my pay is in yet”. There were prawns and fish and God know what else the sea had to offer and by the time they brought out the oysters, I didn’t know whether to shout for joy or for a taxi back to Singapore.

Then I presumed that it was usually a mandatory custom to have a hearty first meal as a self-celebratory welcome for ourselves - which in fact an act of masochism if you ask me -, so I anticipated the following days to be lined with quick trips to the local food stalls, slurping noodles in the cool grace of Spring.

Then we headed out to gamble and a quick introduction to the basement of Lisboa – of which I will dedicate an entire post to, just because I think it is amazingly hilarious to me. Part of me would like to tickle you with my turn of hands at the Texas Hold’em table, but it all happened so quickly and I acted to impulsively that I lost nearly half my gambling reserves in under an hour chasing a lost cause.

So what do I do when I lose money at the casino? I find the nearest bar to drink. The great thing was that most of the group had already started a heavy round of rum and champagne over at MGM, and I knew that alcohol while capable of erasing memory, also provided great solace.

Then the champagnes kept flowing, by which time I was already well tanked and convinced that buying half their champagne inventory was a great idea. Some of the guys headed out to gamble again and I was already too teased by alcohol to be even remotely able to sit with enough discipline for a game.

We eventually left together and LB and I parted ways with them shortly out the casino because we were too restless to even consider sleeping a viable option. Then as soon as we turned back, we met this group of girls that were next to our table at the bar.

They were tipsy and one of them was so sloshed, she was barely able to hold a pose. Then she started puking, which by all books is a legitimate process when you are in a committed relationship with alcohol and binge drinking. Only thing was, this girl was trying to hide the fact that she was vomiting.

I’ll paint you a mental picture. This girl was covering her mouth with one hand, waving with the other when the door man asked if she was alright and as muffled as it was, replying, “I’m okay . I’m okay”, whilst puke continued to drip through her fingers that were over her mouth.

I’ll put that in perspective. She was drunk, trying to convince people that she was okay, vomiting and trying to pretend that she wasn’t. Now that is what you call, multi-tasking. So we did what any chivalrous male bystander would do. We started chatting up her friends. And that’s what you call, seizing the opportunity.

I don’t exactly know the possible outcome of it because LB and I both saw it in varying perspective. He was confident that we could have closed and I was sure that I got cock blocked by one of the other girls. I know so, because she yelled at me. She was a lot bigger than me so I dropped the idea of challenging her to a fight.

When they left, we got so bored we decided to hop on to a cab and have the driver take us around the city to visit all the vice joints. And by this I mean your strip joints, massage parlors and brothels. It was on an impetus of boredom, not horniness and synergized by a driver that was so obliging in taking us on his red light tour.

He would stop by the side and we would walk in to see the girls and then come out 2 minutes later and he would take us to the next joint. We weren’t going to pick any girl because it is absolutely retarded to pay S$160 for girls who look like they just came out of a village. Some looked like they dropped out of a weight loss program midway through.

It was hilarious for us because we were a tad inebriated, had no idea where we were going and popping in every joint for a free visual buffet of tits. Sometimes we popped in just because we needed to pee and one of us would act like we were genuinely interested just so that we would keep their hopes up for another minute or so.

“Fucking crazy night man.”

And I was so wrong because I had NO IDEA what was installed for me the next day...