China’s “Las Vegas”

Hong Kong local time Thursday 10:28pm

Me and my parents were in Macau today. Macau is a former Portuguese colony that became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China in 1999. Historically Macau has not been a center of business or commerce but that has changed radically in the past ten years with the development of major casino hotels and resorts.

We arrived at Macau after a one hour boat ride from Hong Kong. There are several things I noticed right away upon arrival. One is that there are a ton of visitors arriving. At the ferry terminal I spent at least 20 minutes getting through customs while standing in line among people holding passports from places such as Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. The second thing I find very peculiar is the currency. Even though Macao uses the pataca (MOP) as its own currency, Hong Kong’s HKD is just as widely accepted. Merchants actually prefer to be paid in HKD because the relative value of the HKD is a small bit higher. Visitors, on the other hand, often get shortchanged when they pay in HKD and receive their change in MOP.

I guess all that stuff I learned during first year in business school about foreign currencies weren’t completely useless after all.