Macau - The First Day in the Las Vegas of Asia

Landing in the airport, I was not sure what to expect. What experiences would Macau hold for me? Would it be the Portuguese cuisine and wines, the lavish hotels or the 24hr gambling scene.

Well, it didn't start off spectacular at all. Found out in the airport that the hotel I booked previously was in China not Macau. This now meant I had to scramble to find a new hotel for my girlfriend and I. It didn't help that it was a holiday weekend, Dragon Boat Festival to be exact. This ensured that prices would be exceedingly high. I spent the next 2hrs in the airport lobby combing through every online booking website I could think off, Expedia, Agoda, Hotel.com and the like. Nothing seemed affordable. Finally, when my girlfriend arrived we decided to go to the travel bureau in the airport, where we spent another 30 mins deliberating, all while the travel agent was looking more and more anxious for us to make a decision. In the end, we chose the Pousada Marina Infante.

Right across from the Galaxy Macau Casino Resort.

Immediately after booking, we were on our way to our hotel, excited to get to our room, jump in bed and rest. Not to mention, we hadn't seen each other face to face in three months. We were really really ready to get to our room, if you know what I mean. But once again, destiny had other plans for us. The hotel's system hadn't yet received our booking information, so we had to wait another half an hour. In the meantime, we decide it was eating time, so off to Galaxy we went.

Seeing more choices that we could imagine, we decided to settle down at an Italian restaurant. The ambiance screamed comfort and romance; it called out to us, "eat here, your girlfriend will love it." After all, she does love Italian. It also helped that the waiter had the best customer service I have ever seen in a restaurant. With his help, we settled on large combo pizza accompanied by a bottle of red wine. It was beautiful. At last the day was getting better. The pizza was sensational to the tastebuds, and the company divine. We had to rip ourselves away from the restaurant and head back to our hotel. Of course it helped that we were tired.

To make matters better, when we returned to the hotel, our room was ready. We wasted no time of course and headed to our room. To our pleasant surprise, it was more glamorous than the pictures portrayed, and to top it all off it had a fantastic view.

And this does not give the room justice. Just goes to show, even the roughest days can turn out to be the most amazing. Especially when you have great company.