Macau still reveres racing icon Dodjie Laurel!

We got back to Cebu early Friday night after four hectic days in Macau. Thursday was a very interesting day as we visited Macau’s Grand Prix Museum facilitated by our host, the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO), whose public relations executive, João Novikoff Sales, I mistook for his boss, Engr. Joao Manuel Costa Antunes, in our Friday column… mea culpa. Actually I was supposed to interview Engr. Antunes, but he had to beg off due to a tight schedule. But Sales and our driver, Ah Ching, did a great job showing us the sights and delights of Macau.

At the Grand Prix Museum, you can really see a lot of car racing history because the Guia Racing Circuit was the first racing circuit on the Chinese coast and it was named after Guia Hill, a fortress with a chapel and a lighthouse that towers over the city of Macau. The 3.9-mile long racetrack is still the same one they use during the Macau Grand Prix but back then some parts of it were unpaved. But those were the days when Triumph TR2s, Austin Healeys and Jaguars were the cars they used to race.

The Grand Prix Museum also honors the most famous Filipino car racer of all time, the late Arsenio “Dodjie” Laurel, who won the Macau Grand Prix consecutively or back-to-back in 1962 and 1963. On Nov. 19, 1967, Dodjie’s Lotus 41 went out of control at the Yacht Club Bend (it is now known as the Mandarin-Oriental Bend) and hit the seawall, crashed and burned. Dodjie was killed instantly. He was the first racer to die during a race in Macau’s early racing years. Even today, racing enthusiasts in Macau still revere Dodjie Laurel as a great friend of Macau and a great Filipino car racer; after all, as Sales told me, no one has won back to back in Macau.

I know that there are many Filipino racing enthusiasts who want to follow the footsteps of Dodjie, like his friends, Dante Silverio and Pocholo Ramirez, whom I gathered passed away last week. I remember seeing them race at the North Reclamation during the first Philippine Grand Prix in Cebu. Unfortunately for us in Cebu, we didn’t do a follow-up to that Philippine first because if we did, Cebu would probably be part of the Asian racing circuit today. In the world of car racing, only the Grand Prix of Monaco and Macau are races done within city streets. Of course, Singapore also tried to follow this for the F1 race last year.

The Macau Grand Prix is also the only racetrack that hosts car and motorcycle races on the same weekend. Yes, I saw the Yamaha motorcycle of Hiroshi Hasegawa on display at the museum. This should bring a lot of Filipinos to Macau in the next Grand Prix Race. Incidentally, right beside the Grand Prix Museum is the Macau Wine Museum. Now you’re not supposed to mix drinking and driving. But then, it was also the first time I ever saw a wine museum! This museum focused on the wine produce of Portugal. That was perfect for me, as I love Port wine, which is made only in Portugal!

Next stop was the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel in all its glorious 30-hectare site on reclaimed land between the Island of Colane and Taipa that earned it the title as the largest hotel in Asia with 3,000 all-suite rooms and yes, it is the biggest casino complex in the world! Yes, I have been to the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, but this one in Macau was humongous! For us folks who’ve never had the chance to visit the City of Venice, this is the next best thing you can get and it’s just a few hours of plane and TurboJet ride.

The central theme for the Venetian is to replicate the Venice of the past and they practically brought a part of Venice in the Venetian, except that in the Grand Canal, the waters are so swimming pool clean and smells nice. I heard from friends that the waters in Venice stink; after all, their canals also double as the city’s sewer!

Yes, if you’re planning to go to Macau and visit the Venetian (they now have a Filipino Family promo that ends on April 31) make sure you treat your wife or sweetheart to the gondola ride as the two of you will be “romanced” by singing gondoliers. Also within the Venetian is the 1,800-seat ZAIA Theater, which is world-renowned for the Cirque Du Soleil that have delighted over 90 million spectators in over 200 cities on five continents.

Cirque Du Soleil is a specialized kind of artistic performance that we often saw on the circus (minus the animals). But it is putting a song and dance routine for instance on a trampoline performance or a flying trapeze. Yes, like in a circus, there are always a clown and a bunch of jugglers and acrobats, but they do it differently on this show. I most especially loved the two acrobats doing the “hand-to-hand” act in total sweetness and sensuality, doing what would be impossible positions for the ordinary person. Hey, we didn’t even have time to mention the MGM Hotel and the Wynn’s dancing fountains, just beside our equally luxurious StarWorld Hotel and Casino.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.