For 450 years it was a sleepy Portuguese outpost. Now, as a special region of China, Macau has well and truly woken up. With the passing of Portuguese rule and the border to the mainland wide open, Macau is practically sinking under the weight of tourists from neighbouring Chinese provinces. Last year there were 22 million arrivals. This year they are expecting 29 million. They come here - almost exclusively - to gamble.
Luck is a central element of Chinese culture and they're well known as the world's most prolific gamblers. But it's not legal in mainland China so Macau fills that gap and the amount of Chinese money flowing through Macau's 26 casinos is staggering. Last year it was more than US$7 billion.
MARK BROWN, CEO - SANDS MACAU: The numbers here are just off the charts, phenomenal, what you watch and what happens here. You walk by and find somebody's betting US$20,000 a hand there. That's on the main gaming floor - and you're like, "That's $20,000 a hand back home," we're all standing around, like, waving and it's in a pit and whatever you once saw in here - I wouldn't say it was the norm, but you'll find that on the main gaming floor.
You can smell new money everywhere - courtesy of the economic boom in China.REPORTER: I've just seen a man betting the equivalent of A$125,000 per hand, but I'm told this is nothing and bets twice that amount are common here. And there are stories of gamblers winning and losing millions of dollars in a single sitting.
MARK BROWN: You have some huge swings where I will leave at night and we're losing $5 million and then in the middle of the night I get a phone call - "We've got it all back and we're winning $3 million," and then you wake up and you're back to losing $4 million again. It's just, like I said, the numbers are just staggering.
Just as staggering is the amount of casino development under way.
ISABEL ESTORNINHO, RESIDENT: Yeah, it is a concrete jungle.
For long-time residents of Macau, like Isabel Estorninho, it's all happening too quickly.
ISABEL ESTORNINHO: I don't think it's a healthy environment - and, of course besides not having parks and living in a very confined place and lack of education about gambling - the dangers of gambling - because this has grown too much, too fast - like a dream, you know.
Macau today is almost unrecognisable compared with the one she grew up in. Whole sections of the new city are built on land reclaimed from the sea and it's now become one of the most densely populated places on earth.REPORTER: This is now a main road, isn't it?
ISABEL ESTORNINHO: Yes, and there is...yeah, yeah - very busy road.
REPORTER: So this is now where all the casinos are - right in the middle of the water.But Macau's history is one of change and the pace is picking up.
BILL GUTHRIE, PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MACAU UNIVERSITY: What I've learned is that Macau has always been changing this way. People who only live here a little while - people who only live here five years, 10 years, 20 years will always tell you, "It's ruined now, it's too bad you weren't here 10 years ago when I arrived. "It's too bad you weren't here 20 years ago when I got here. It was real Macau then." Now, for 500 years Macau has been doing it. It has reinvented itself. Every time there's a new market available, Macau completely reinvents itself. Every time the Chinese make a new law, "You can do this or can't do this," Macau reinvents itself.
Bill Guthrie is a professor of sociology at Macau University and he's lived here for 11 years.
BILL GUTHRIE: Bill's rule - if you're walking on flat land, you are not walking on Macau.
He took me for a walk along what used to be the beachfront.
BILL GUTHRIE: All this stuff in front of you as you look out all the way across here to the major modern construction of Macau is all standing on river bottom.
But it's another patch of reclaimed land that will change the face of Macau forever. Just as Las Vegas rose from the Nevada Desert, the Cotai Strip is rising from the sea. It's a multibillion-dollar development being driven by Americans who can now invest directly in China. China has always allowed Macau to do what it doesn't want to be seen doing itself. This time it's gambling.
When it opens later this year, the Cotai Strip will be like a mini city - tens of thousands of suites, convention centres and themed casinos. The centrepiece is The Venetian - a much larger replica of the one in Las Vegas.
SHELDON ADELSON: There it is, the Cotai Strip - the new Asian masterpiece.
The main developer of the massive Cotai Strip project is the 73-year-old Las Vegas-based billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the sixth richest man on the planet.
SHELDON ADELSON: When I first got the vision, I actually, believe it or not, got the idea in a dream.
When he opens it later this year The Venetian will bring a little bit of Venice and a lot more Vegas to Macau. None of the world's self-respecting billionaires want to miss out on the action on the Cotai Strip. Virgin's Richard Branson will be setting up a casino resort soon and James Packer is opening a place nearby called City of Dreams, featuring an underwater casino, all of it built on reclaimed land.
BILL GUTHRIE: This is not the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef that's happening here - this is an invented place and all they're doing is inventing more of it. I don't see the crime in that. There's nothing being destroyed here except history and history destroys itself.
A 40-year gambling monopoly in Macau ended in 2002. Sheldon Adelson scored one of three lucrative gaming concessions and can now open as many casinos as he likes. His first - the Sands Macau - returned its $265 million investment in its first year. On opening night, there were stampedes to get inside. Adelson's chief executive officer, Mark Brown, is practically salivating at the thought of the market on his doorstop.
MARK BROWN: There's actually 3 billion people in a 5-hour radius flight to get here. We plan on having...building our own infrastructure as far as getting people around, getting people here, the amount of buses we're purchasing we're buying ferries, we're buying planes, we're buying helicopters. The government is working tremendously with us to also help. I keep going back to the government because we have to do a lot of work on the border system, the borders - what time they close, what time it opens. Right at this moment it doesn't work with our schedule so we would love for the borders to be open 24 hours. I doubt if we can get that on but if we can stretch that a couple of hours on each side, that would be helpful.
It's another opening night for another new casino, but this is no ordinary premiere. The Grande Lisboa belongs to Macau's most powerful man and it's his answer to the foreign invaders. The empire is striking back. 85-year-old Stanley Ho wields enormous influence in Macau. He made his fortune through his 40-year monopoly on gambling. He owns much of the land - and with this one, 17 of the 26 casinos. Another of the richest men in the world, Ho started his career as a smuggler, winning the people's hearts by helping to feed 400,000 post World War II refugees.
With luxury to rival the new American casinos, the Grande Lisboa is Stanley Ho's new flagship. He says the Americans promise to bring in high rollers from overseas but he believes that they just want to steal his customers - the Chinese.
STANLEY HO (Translation): They rely totally on the Chinese. Customers are from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong or Japan. They're all our old customers. There are no new customers.
But there have always been questions about Stanley Ho's alleged connections to organised crime, which he has repeatedly denied. And he's failed in bids to win a licence in Australia. Long before the casino building frenzy, Macau was known as the world's largest 'laundromat' - a reference to money laundering. But Ho is not the type to give much away.
BILL GUTHRIE: Whenever you talk about organised crime in the US, I think everybody automatically assumes you're talking about incredible evil - about drugs and sex and forced sex and so on and so forth and all that that goes on. Illegal business in China just meant business and Macau basically did business with China and so you have to draw that line through Macau, you have to start talking about what the business is.
As I watched the glitterati from Hong Kong, Macau and China arrive for the grand opening of Stanley Ho's casino, I spotted a fellow Australian. Getting in on the action is James Packer. Australia's richest man is betting big on Macau's future. After winning a concession with Stanley Ho's son, he's investing billions of dollars here.
BEN LEE, GENERAL MANAGER - DIAMOND CASINO: He knows the Australian scene very well. However, whether he can translate that knowledge into a purely Asian market remains to be seen. There are very steep challenges ahead for him and his team.
Ben Lee is a former Packer employee from Crown Casino in Melbourne. He's now the general manager of the small, lower-end-of-the market Diamond Casino in Macau. He wonders whether Crown is a strong enough brand.
BEN LEE: It's already an extremely competitive industry. Crown will be here against the "big boys", not to mention the local incumbent - the big boys from Vegas, MGM, Sands-Venetian, Steve Wynn - all of whom are known internationally. Crown International is also well known but only in a very small niche and limited market segment.
Lee believes Packer made a great start when he chose Stanley Ho's son, Lawrence, as his local partner.
BEN LEE: It would sound like the perfect partnership - it's a typical east-meets-west situation. He is extremely influential here - he's got quite a complex and wide reaching set-up. I don't believe he could have found a better partner than Lawrence Ho.
Ho Junior and Packer are due to open Crown Macau next month. Other casinos will follow.
MARK BROWN: I guess anyone who comes to town here is going to be very successful. There's enough here for all of us to go around.
REPORTER: Have you ever met Jamie Packer?
MARK BROWN: Handshake, hello. Very quickly.
REPORTER: And his partner Lawrence Ho?
MARK BROWN: Lawrence Ho, yes, very, very nice guy, nice man, very intelligent and, like I said, he's got a great partner, so the two of them together will be successful.
Packer seems to have fallen on his feet. The Beijing appointed governor of Macau, Edmund Ho, who is no relation to Stanley or Lawrence, seems genuinely happy to see Mr Packer. Here appearances mean everything and Packer should be happy with his seat and his face on the big screen. He's between the two most powerful men in Macau - the Governor and the Casino King.REPORTER: What are people saying about James Packer on the casino grapevine scene here? What's the impression of him?
BEN LEE: There's not much talk about James Packer. The industry goss is mainly about the American operators. The Crown team has been fairly low profile to date, from my observation, and I think there are probably some trepidations about the viability of Crown Macau.
REPORTER: A lot of people are saying no-one can fail in a market with 3 billion in such a short radius around Macau, but you think it's not so certain for him?
BEN LEE: Nothing's certain for sure here. We've had some casinos open recently and their targets, their figures, are definitely not hitting the target and I'd probably call them mid-size operators, so not as large as Crown, but similar, so there are already clear precedents - unless your location is right, unless your marketing, your product's right, there is no such thing as guaranteed success.
As the spectacular ends, the queue to get into the new casino snakes around the block. There is clearly no shortage of gamblers to fill the main floors of any of the casinos in Macau, but the real battle is for the high rolling VIPS. This is a secretive world and many high rollers from China don't even give their names.
BEN LEE: And that creates two problems for some of the Western operators, like the Vegas mob in that they have to know the names of their customers before they are allowed into their commission program.
So, just to be clear, some of these high rollers that are betting up to HK$1 million a hand don't even give their name?
BEN LEE: Absolutely right.
REPORTER: What steps are you taking or what concerns do you have that a lot of this money is coming from corrupt sources?
MARK BROWN: Do I have concerns about that? I don't think the money is coming from corrupt sources.
REPORTER: But some it may be from China, yeah?
MARK BROWN: Some money might be coming from corrupt sources all over the world. It's no different here than it is anywhere else.
In this part of the world there is a complex nexus between crime, politics and business. It's common knowledge that the organised crime triads operate behind the scenes.REPORTER: This city is known for history of crime, of vice, prostitution, money laundering criminal activity connected to the triads. Is all of this still a concern, still a problem here?
PEDRO MOITINHO DE ALMEIDA, PORTUGESE CONSUL GENERAL - MACAU: Well, this is something you should ask the Macau authorities, not myself, but I can only say I have lived here before the handover and I live here and my family lived here for some periods and never had any problems, either before or after. It's one of the safest cities in the world. Of course, it's known that there are triads working in Macau but for the common people, the common citizens of Macau, this is something we don't feel the presence of.
In gambling there are always more losers than winners. And directly opposite these temples to Mammon, the god of greed, is this once quiet little church, built in 1835. With only months till opening of the new casinos, Father Luis Xavier is worried about the impact on society. He's already inundated with gambling addicts.
FATHER LUIS XAVIER: Imagine that every day, every morning, people come, "You, father, can you lend me 500 patacas "because I lost my money, I don't have money to get to Hong Kong."
REPORTER: That happened?
FATHER LUIS XAVIER: This happens very frequently. We cannot afford to meet all these requests.
Macau's youth are flocking to relatively well paid work in the casinos. There are even schools to train staff as competition for the best employees becomes fierce.
Gilberto studied architecture but he now works in a VIP room at one of the new casinos. He arrives late for the family dinner. They're from the minority Macanese community - part Chinese, part Portuguese - and he's Isabel Estorninho's nephew.
ISABEL ESTORNINHO: He does a little bit of public relations for the casino to take care of the high rollers.
REPORTER: Is he the first one in your family working in a casino?
ISABEL ESTORNINHO: Yes, he is.
REPORTER: Is he the last one, do you think, that will be working in a casino?
ISABEL ESTORNINHO: I don't know. Maybe not, because with so many casinos around, it's hard to say. Maybe I will go and work there if they pay me well enough.Vanessa, this is my niece Vanessa. She's studying in Australia, in Perth. She's on holiday.
REPORTER: So do you think you'll end up working for a casino one day?
VANESSA: Well, I don't know. Maybe, maybe. If I'm coming back, maybe, but, well, I hope not, but we never know.BELLA: It's just moving too fast. We never know there's no planning, casinos are everywhere, there are no restrictions of anything, so anything goes, basically, and it's ruining Macau. I don't like it.
REPORTER: When you say "ruining", you mean culturally or physically or..
BELLA: In every aspect, even socially I think it is ruining it. You can't have a casino in front of a high school, for example, but it's allowed in Macau. There are no zoning restrictions. Kids can't go into casinos until they're 21, but they can work in one if they're 18. This is totally unacceptable, totally unacceptable - not a place to raise my kid, definitely not.
REPORTER: So what will you do?
BELLA: Move them away.
REPORTER: Where to?
BELLA: The States.MAN: Las Vegas.
BELLA: That's where he's moving his grandchildren.