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Sun City, South Africa
It would be hard to imagine that anyplace could be as unique and outrageous as Vegas, but there are some gambling meccas that are just as worthy of a week’s vacation. Sun City is probably least known place that I’ll mention. I haven’t been there in a long time. The last time I was there, I was too young to even set foot in a casino. Most of my memories from that trip are of me trying to sleep in the back of a minivan. Be warned, it’s more than a 2 hour drive from the Johannesburg airport to Sun City.

Once you arrive, you are in for a nice treat. Sun City is sort of a jewel in the middle of the desert, not unlike vegas. The man-made jungles and resorts seem to rise out of nowhere. Although there are many game preserves in the surrounding area, a typical vacation in Sun City bears no resemblance to any kind of Safari.

This is a place mostly developed for parasailing and lounging by the pool. Don’t get me wrong, South Africa has lots of great stuff to do, but when most people think of South Africa, they think of Landrovers and Giraffes. I should mention that we did go on a safari for about a week. I’ll sum it all up for you in 1 run-on sentence. We had a guide who had only seen a TV a few times in his life, we had a hippo named Esmeralda that bathed in our pool every night, and I got to see a crocodile that killed was said to have killed 17 people.

Now… back to poker. Sun City does have some tournaments with respectable buy-ins on occasion, and there are also plans to host a 1 million dollar tournament this fall. However, if you are just looking to grind it out at a poker table, I’m not sure that it would be worth the hassle of flying all the way to South Africa.

I’d suggest this more for the people who are interested in taking a nice vacation and using the poker table as an excuse to ditch the wife and kids for a little while.

Here is a couple of pictures of the Cascades Hotel, where we stayed in several years ago.

Below; Looking out of the glass elevator from the back of the Cascades hotel.

The Cascades hotel is right across the street from one of the casinos, but is actually one of the smaller hotels in the immediate area. Below are some more photos of the other Resorts in Sun City.

Above; The Palace of the Lost City
Below; The Sun City Hotel

Macau, ChinaMacau is quickly becoming a Mecca for Asian poker players. With almost 1 billion citizens, China is somewhat of an untapped market.

Recently the city has hosted several large poker tournaments. There has also been a number of other events there, including conferences for the poker affiliate industry. Although gambling is limited in China, Macau is bringing a lot of growth to the area and it looks like this is going to become a hot spot on the international poker scene. The amount of financial growth in Macau exceeds that of Las Vegas or any other gambling city.

The Sands Corporation has recently expanded it’s operations to Macau, opening the Venetian Macao Resort-Hotel. Harrah’s has also shown some interest in developing their brand here.

In September the Asia Pacific Poker Tour will be hosting an event in Macau. From what I hear, the games there tend to be pretty juicy because the majority of players have little or no experience. Right now there are satellite tournaments running on Pokerstars where players can win a $6,000 prize package for as little as $2.20 or 50 FPPs.

Below is a photo of the Venetian in Macau followed by some photos of the skyline.