a night in Macau
WELL, perhaps I exaggerate. I can think of several things worse than a night in Macau, chief among them being two nights in Macau. I have written before in these pages of the perils of a visit to the Portuguese enclave, but a recent evening of fear and loathing in the Bosnia of the Orient has filled me afresh with a raging hatred for the place.
My experience of Macau's culture of violence had, until last weekend, been strictly theoretical; a ghoulish gorging on press accounts of the bloody concatenation of shooting and looting that has marked the triad casino wars. But on Saturday night, the abstract suddenly and shockingly became quite real, in the split-second it takes a well-aimed beer bottle to split open a skull like a ripe mango.
The evening began well enough. Dinner with four friends, followed by a brief flutter and a drink in the Mandarin Oriental hotel. Before returning to Hong Kong, we adjourned for a cold ale at the Talkers Pub, which we had been informed was a decent and relatively safe bar. As we chatted, a trio we had seen earlier at dinner arrived, and one of the two women wandered over and introduced herself. It was at this point that one of my friends committed what is obviously in Macau an unforgiveable faux pas. He had the temerity to suggest that her friends might be bored, and should come and join us.
The other woman walked over and introduced herself to my friend. What happened next keeps looping round in my head with the blurry insistence of a bad dream. The third member of their party, a feral brute with one eyebrow, clip-on chest hair and a ponytail, suddenly materialised behind the woman, whispered something vicious in her ear, and then - in what was the cheapest shot I have ever had the misfortune to witness - smashed a bottle over my friend's forehead without so much as a word of warning and with a force that would have done Isi Tu'ivai proud.
As blood gushed from a jagged wound, we suddenly became aware that there were 20 or 30 pairs of Portuguese eyes regarding us with less than friendly stares. No one showed the slightest inclination to offer assistance, apart from two chaps who grabbed the fiery latin lover and assisted him in making a speedy getaway in a taxi.
I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that we visited one of the friendly bars. God only knows what goes on in the unfriendly ones. We spent the next several hours becoming acquainted with the hospital waiting room as a doctor pieced together the gory, glassy jigsaw formerly known as my friend's brow. Needless to say, by the time the doctor was finished,we were united by an overwhelming urge to leave Macau at warp speed. Unfortunately, the 3 am hydrofoil was proclaimed full. I have never seen five grown men look so simultaneously close to tears as when we were informed that the only way out of the enclave, short of swimming, was the 6 am hydrofoil. Miraculously, however, some scalpers appeared, offering us the privilege of paying double the fare to get us on to the 3 am. Which we were more than happy to do, until we boarded the vessel and found it half-empty.