They really shouldn’t let me out of the country without supervision, should they?

Seriously. Give me a passport and a plane ticket and I’m well on my way to causing an international incident.

But this time it wasn’t my fault.

Even I don’t have control over the weather ... or the security personnel of a foreign country.

Let me start at the beginning.

Remember how I’ve been on holidays and, because I didn’t have time to throw some columns together, I offered up a couple of my old ones instead?

Call it karma or the universe getting its revenge – within 12 hours of touching down in Macau (look it up on a map – this isn’t a flamin’ travel column) we were stuck in our hotel room as a category 8 typhoon bore down.

Oh yeah. Suddenly I had all the time in the world to write a column.

But did I even consider putting pen to paper? Not on your life!

Firstly, no one bothered to explain to us exactly how serious a typhoon could be.

I was thinking in terms of a big storm, but we later found out that they are several steps above our good old Aussie cyclones when it comes to intensity and danger.

Secondly, when I say we were holed up in a hotel room I’m not talking about some dodgy set-up in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, no siree!

Thanks to countless hours searching the internet for the most outrageous place she could find, my wife had booked us into a place called the Grand Emperor.

I’m talking 21 floors of outrageous luxury.

I’m talking gold fittings everywhere you look.

I’m talking fake members of the Queen’s Royal Guards (those Beefeater blokes with the high hats) who did a Changing Of The Guard routine every 15 minutes.

And ... drum roll please ... I’m talking four floors of casino.

Yep. The first day of our holidays and we were trapped in a luxury hotel and casino.

There is a god after all!

You see, Macau is the Las Vegas of Asia.

I was shocked when I found out.

How dare my wife bring me to such a place!

What joy did she think I was going to derive from wandering aimlessly from casino to tawdry casino until I had visited all 37?

What sort of cheap, shallow man does she take me for?

Oh, who am I kidding?

From the moment we looked out the window of the plane and saw the outrageous light show of the casinos attempting to out-glitz each other I was in heaven.

Before the wild weather began to move in we went for a late-night walk and found eight or nine of the big, flashy suckers within a few blocks of our front door.

When we finally decided to hit the sack we had to close the heavy curtains on our windows because the light show outside was making our room as bright as the middle of the day.

But back to the typhoon.

To be honest, we probably didn’t pay it the respect it deserved.

It seems typhoons only go up to level 10 and ours was a level 8.

At that level all Macau’s shops and schools must close, public transport comes to a standstill and police and security personnel are posted at very major building and street corner.

Basically, the whole place comes to a standstill.

But no one told us.

We just thought it was a public holiday or something and grabbed a couple of raincoats to set out exploring on foot.

The driving rain was a bit of a bummer, but every time the wind threatened to blow us off our feet we’d take shelter in the nearest casino until things settled down.

In hindsight, the cops waving their arms at us were probably trying to tell us something more than “have a nice day” but, let’s be honest, those Chinese can get pretty animated anyway.

And we don’t read Mandarin, so those big warning signs next to the piles of sandbags could have said almost anything.

Besides, we got to see some of Macau’s finest heritage sites with barely a soul in sight.

Just 24 hours later, you could hardly move for tourists.

And, for once in my life, no one can blame me for any of it.