Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/84122
PHOTOGRAPH BY TK; ILLUSTRATION BY TK DOWN W like the fabulous Las Vegas, that "ASIA'S LAS VEGAS" HAS QUICKLY TAKEN ON A LIFE OF ITS OWN. WHY ARE LOCAL PLAYERS GAMBLING ON OUR SISTER CITY IN THE EAST? BY STEVE FRIESS This e blazed over the causeway in the thick, constant eve- ning fog until suddenly I was surrounded by more was disorienting and anxiety-inducing, an over- stimulating visual feast that jammed the circuitry in my head and accelerated my respiration. For the first time I understood what it must be to witness Las Vegas Boulevard for the first time. No, I wasn't on that Strip: I was cruising its steroidal kid brother, a place of shocking change that takes place so quickly it makes even pre-recession Vegas seem stagnant. This is the street from whence profits come so fast and furiously that they prevented the bankruptcy of at least two of Nevada's big- gest corporations during the depths of economic meltdown. its I was on the Cotai Strip in Macau. And if I had long since lost my ability to be bowled over by Macau, but it bears repeating. Its casinos field more than $33.5 billion a year, five times more than Las Vegas. These gambling dens are vast plains of baccarat tables and salons; Venetian first—and second and third— breathless ride along a perfect, massively wide fresh ribbon of asphalt in this most unlikely place made the enormity of a development like Macao Resort Hotel—a supersize replica of the Vegas original with three canals rather than just one—has the largest casino floor in the world at MGM Resorts International's CityCenter feel as if it were a very fancy doll house. light than I could digest. It West Coast of the US to lounge by the (polluted) South China Sea. Also, they don't need you. I was told by a bellboy that when he sees Caucasian guests, he assumes they must be evaluators from the Forbes or Michelin travel guides. And yet if you care at all about modern Las Vegas, then you have to understand—if not care about—what has happened in just the past eight years or so in this previously disregarded and anonymous part of China. It is, simply put, the first wholesale export of what we know to be Vegas, right down to Las Vegas Sands Corporation Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson actually filing a request to trademark the term "Asia's Las Vegas." You've probably heard all the numbers about is not a travel essay and here's why: Nobody expects you to ever go to Macau. There's no marketing machine trying to excite you about the idea of flying more than 12 hours from the The Cotai Strip in our "little" sister city, Macau. VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 93