Sparkle done with style in Macau
Nothing captures the wacky extremes of Macau's split personality as succinctly as the entrance to its newest hotel.
The largest glitter ball I've ever seen - at least seven metres in diameter - hangs like Planet Disco between the elegant colonnades of a heritage facade.
In a city where gracious-old and shiny-new rub shoulders constantly, this may be their most intimate encounter yet.
The Sofitel Macau, on Macau's Inner Harbour waterfront, is the city's newest bauble but occupies some of its most historic ground. Ponte 16 was the Chinese city's founding fishing port, dating back to Portuguese colonisation in the 17th century.
The hotel and its accompanying casino, shops and entertainment venues are built around the old pier's surviving facade and clock tower. The new design reprises the ornate columns and arched windows of the original architecture. Until now, there has been no resort development in this UNESCO-listed heritage area and the architects were required to apply appropriate sensitivity.
They had only to glance across town to remember what not to do. Looming over the skyline is the jagged and hideous silhouette of the Grand Lisboa casino, intended to resemble a lotus flower but with what looks like a gigantic sink-plunger plonked on top. Its pumped-up kitsch is typical of the city's gambling palaces, which generate 98 per cent of Macau's income.
Inside them, everything seems to wear earrings and so relentless is the glitter that you swiftly acquire a bling tolerance. It's the gaudy face of Macau's mix of China, Portugal and Vegas, ancient and cutting-edge, east and west.
While the Sofitel hasn't been shy with the sparkle - it is, after all, a five-star hotel - it has deployed it with taste. Amid the marble are subtle, deco accents: delicate glass flowers adorn lamps and crystal curtains shimmer like waterfalls behind muted-gold lounges in the lobby bar, Rendezvous.
My 16th-floor room is a soothing confection of browns, creams and golds, burnished silks and dark timber. There's a glass-topped desk, remote-controlled day and night blinds, plasma screen television and wi-fi. The bathroom is a sybarite's delight, with separate glass cabinets for toilet and shower, a window into the bedroom with electronic blind and a television at the end of the deep tub.
Toiletries are by L'Occitane and there's one of my favourite Sofitel signatures - the squishy, towelling-covered spa bath pillow that many guests can't bear to leave behind. My sole gripe is with the mirror when I'm using a hairdryer; there's no socket in the bathroom and the only mirror in the room that is near one is partially obstructed by the desk.
This 408-room hotel is the 22nd Sofitel to open in China. All such Sofitels now feature posh flourishes such as MyBed - an all-feather bed and light-down duvet - and the "turndown experience," which sounds like what happens to an unsuccessful lothario but is actually a detailed ritual of making your room sleep-ready, involving lots of loving touches; essentials placed within reach of the bed, temperature and lights tweaked and room primped to perfection.
From my window I can look across the Zuhai River to the hills of mainland China, just kilometres away. Squat fishing boats sit on khaki water and the air shares the same muggy haze as neighbouring Hong Kong, 60 kilometres to the east.
We're among the hotel's first visitors. It has been open for just a few weeks and the staff greet us like eagerly awaited friends. They're keen to chat and I accumulate knowledge.
The Grand Lisboa's sink plunger is a feng shui element designed to trap money inside it, says Cecilia, who runs the Club Sofitel Lounge. Her colleague, Terry, updates me on Hong Kong movie stars' love lives and useful snippets of Cantonese. Service throughout, even by the high standards in Asia, is intuitive and attentive.
We have dinner at the hotel's Mistral restaurant, on the deck overlooking the pool and waterfront. Chef Joel Khalil's sumptuous buffet, in true Macau style, leaves no influence unturned: there's Portuguese, Macanese, Chinese, Japanese and touches of the Sofitel's native French. (when we return for a degustation dinner, Joel serves up frog leg vol-au-vents).
It's delicious and scrupulously fresh. The wine list includes two "wine flights" - a trio of sauvignon blancs and one of pinot noir, both with tasting notes.
By Christmas there will be another restaurant here, fronted by the US-born celebrity chef Harlan Goldstein, who already has four acclaimed eateries in Hong Kong. Also to come is Vin Bar, a French-style wine and cheese bar and a spa. But the most striking work in progress at this hotel is its mansion - a four-storey, 19-penthouse wing for high-spending guests. It's almost ready and we're the first to see inside.
Here, Macau's love of the lavish has been indulged without check. The penthouses, built around an indoor lake and averaging 189 square metres each, have elements of opulence that would make Elton John beg for restraint. In the five rooms of the "blanc romance" suite, everything from the velvet sofas to the knee-deep carpet to the cruise liner-sized bed is, of course, white.
In the "black galaxy" suite, we're encased in black marble walls decorated with mother-of-pearl, acres of suede, fur and a black spa bath the size of my apartment. Each suite has butler quarters and each appears to anticipate the arrival of an army of rap stars ready to party for weeks.
As we gawp at this extravagance, the world's economy is crumbling. But Macau isn't afraid. Despite the Chinese government's recently increased entry restrictions for mainland Chinese - a key gambling customer base - this place continues to expand.
It already packs 28,000 visitors a year into its 28 square kilometres and two years ago surpassed Las Vegas's total gambling revenue. In five years' time, say locals, there could be as many as 75,000 hotel rooms in the city.
Another major chain's 4000-room hotel is slated to open next year, as is James Packer's ambitious joint venture: a billion-dollar-plus underwater casino and hotel complex called City of Dreams. The most irresistible gamble, it seems, is still on gambling itself.
The writer was a guest of the Sofitel Macau.
TRIP NOTES
Staying there: Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16 is 20 minutes' drive from the airport. Rates from around $HK1300 (about $300). See sofitel.com.