Asia: VIVA MACAU Part 4
Although the current flood of international gaming money is a new development, gambling has been one of Macau's attractions since the mid 19th century. As Hong Kong grew into a booming international trading post, Macau, a backwater run by a lesser colonial power, faded. But after World War II, its reputation for casinos (and related vices) grew. In his book Thrilling Cities, James Bond author Ian Fleming wrote of an evening he spent in the early 1960's at what was then Macau's premier nightspot: "The Central Hotel is not precisely a hotel. It is a nine-story skyscraper, by far the largest building in Macau...The higher up in the building you go, the more beautiful and expensive are the girls, the higher the stakes at the gambling tables, and the better the music."
There is still a Central Hotel, but it is now a seedy two-star lodging. In the 1970's, the action shifted to Stanley Ho's Hotel Lisboa, a complex marked by a round, neon-covered tower topped with what appears to be a giant roulette wheel. Inside, the décor is Morris Lapidus-meets-Louis XIV. Think excess and you've got it. It is an old-style Chinese casino, smoky and full of men, mainly, gambling with a quiet intensity, the low rollers playing a dice game called Big/Small, and the players in roped-off VIP rooms focusing on Bond's game, baccarat. The girls, expensive and not-so-expensive, reputedly hang out in the lower-level arcade. This Lisboa, Macau's premier tourist draw until the Sands opened its doors, will soon be superseded by the Grand Lisboa, a new 44-story tower shaped like a Las Vegas chorus girl's headdress that Stanley Ho is building just across the street.
There is still a Central Hotel, but it is now a seedy two-star lodging. In the 1970's, the action shifted to Stanley Ho's Hotel Lisboa, a complex marked by a round, neon-covered tower topped with what appears to be a giant roulette wheel. Inside, the décor is Morris Lapidus-meets-Louis XIV. Think excess and you've got it. It is an old-style Chinese casino, smoky and full of men, mainly, gambling with a quiet intensity, the low rollers playing a dice game called Big/Small, and the players in roped-off VIP rooms focusing on Bond's game, baccarat. The girls, expensive and not-so-expensive, reputedly hang out in the lower-level arcade. This Lisboa, Macau's premier tourist draw until the Sands opened its doors, will soon be superseded by the Grand Lisboa, a new 44-story tower shaped like a Las Vegas chorus girl's headdress that Stanley Ho is building just across the street.
