Macau – Where Very Rich People Go To Spend Money
Macau is often compared to Vegas and called the Vegas of Asia. With it’s multitude of mega-casinos towering in the hot sun and shooting beams of light into the sky at night, it’s easy to see what people would think so.
However, if you go to Macau under the assumption that it is indeed like Vegas like I did, you will be sorely disappointed. People from all over China where gambling is illegal flock to Macau for one purpose only: to gamble.
And these people are rich.
Working at the Galaxy Macau, I spent a lot of time hanging around the casino people watching. The casino floor was always full. People would approach a table, sit down, pull out a thick stack of 1000 RMB (160 USD) and proceed to lose it all. Without flinching, they would pull out another stack and continue on for hours.
Every single person on the floor gambled with intense concentration and seemingly infinite amounts of money. And this was just the regular floor. I didn’t go into any of the high roller areas and can’t begin to imagine the kind of money that gets tossed around there.
Photos aren’t allowed in the casino so I can’t show you what this looks like, but it’s a foreign, charged environment that you have to see to believe.
My friend’s dad has a billionaire Chinese friend who lives in Beijing and is a regular in Macau. The casino owners all know him by name and they send private jets to Beijing to pick him up and fly him to Macau where they put him up in grand suites and invite him to play. I hear he can easily lose millions per trip.
Despite my multiple visits to Vegas, I can’t really say that I spent much time in the casino (I was too busy partying) but as far as I could tell, people were lively and laughing and reacted when they won or lost money.
Not in Macau. People barely talk. All they are there to do is gamble.
And shop.
The Chinese people have a very “you got it, flaunt it” attitude and love their brand name products. They’ll take their stacks of 1000 RMB from the casino floor to the multitude of high-end shops lining the hotel walkways and leave with tens of thousands of dollars worth of brand name goods.
Louis Vuitton is particularly popular. It’s hard to see a rich Chinese girl sans her favorite “LV” bag. Hermes (pronounced “HER-mees”) and Gucci (pronounced “couchie”) are also popular.
I met a girl in Macau who told me that her high school friend married a casino owner as a teenager. At 22, she had 3 kids and so much money that she thought herself above her old high school friends. They would pass each other on the street and this ultra-rich young mother of 3 wouldn’t even spare her old friend a glance. Stranger things have happened I suppose.
Forbes called Macau ‘Vegas on Steroids’ in 2013 and in 2014, Macau had a reported 7 times the earnings as Vegas. Seeing the way the people there gambled, I entirely believe it.
