Well, I decided to make an early day of harvesting chips and it didn’t work out quite as planned. To reiterate, there are 3 casinos in the area - Red Casino, Casino Dubai, and the Macau Casino, closest to our hotel. We are staying at the Hyatt Ziva (highly recommend, all-inclusive). Took a taxi ($12USD) to Macau Casino at 10am. Security tells us that the casino doesn’t open until 11:30am. We decide to walk around the tourist shops, mainly to smell mildew, I think. 11:30am comes and goes, so we try to get in but doors are still closed. Security guy now tells us “Maybe it’s noon”. We’re familiar with Jamaican time, so we hang out. Turned out to be ~12:13pm, so now you know. They make you buy a card and load it at 18 pesos/dollar. Loud American in front of me says “they try to pay you in pesos (wrong - only winnings, but they’ll convert at same 18/dollar rate). I bought $200USD and got $3600 pesos. The loud American (who “never loses”) told me how things work at these casinos. They take a 5% vig, he says (wrong - it’s 7%, but only on winnings). They use different exchange rates at each end of the transaction (nope, same both ways). The only way to get chips is to take your preloaded card and your receipt over to the table, so that’s what I did. i’m not saying I’ve never had $3600 in front of me, but I’ve never started with that much. So that felt kind of cool. Minimum bet was 100 pesos ($5 USD). I wasn’t doing well and sat out after the dealer drew to 21 3 times in about 10 hands. I left with the chips you see in the picture. They will be doled out to the people that requested them first, and the rest made available to anyone else who wants them at face value, plus or minus a few pennies to cover the spread. I did manage to get one extra slot card, but I don’t know which one is mine and which one is the blank because they don’t put your name on them like they do here in the USA.

Next, my wife and I spend $25 in cab fare to go to the Casino Dubai “on the mainland”. It’s about 2pm at this point and they tell us no table games until 5pm (or 6pm, depending on whose fingers being held up you trust). We decide it’s not worth waiting around for. We try to look up table games start times at Red Casino, thinking we might swing by, but info is sparse. So, we returned to our hotel in time to get some ceviche and tacos at the beachside restaurant, plus a couple of adult beverages (all of which had Chile powder on the rim - yum!).

I think it’s going to be “what you see is what’s up for grabs. I’ll jot down the requests as I see them here. If you requested multiples, you get first dibs at the extras (one posted here and one messaged me directly).

If anyone is desperate for more, and wants to cover cab fare to/from, I can maybe do a late night run tomorrow, but no promises.