After a rough patch, that naughty nightlife icon the Playboy Bunny is back with a spring in her step. Welcome to the new Macau Bunny Club.

When visitors walk into the club, perched atop the Sands casino resort, they get "a unique VIP arrival experience" via a lavish labyrinth of private gambling parlours and high-tech media rooms dotted with Aussie bunnies plucked from a recent Sydney audition.

Top End talent

Meet one success story from the bunny call, Darwin-based Kia Devine, 20, who has been a Bunny at the club since mid-November. Assessing how Macau compares with Darwin, Devine paints the island tucked under China as less multicultural — dominated by Chinese and Portuguese — but refreshing.

"It's definitely a change — towards newer technology and, generally, just a different lifestyle and culture. It's still relatively easy-going, but it's so much more flashy than Darwin could ever be," she adds, also describing Macau as "beautiful".

She denies that girlfriends of male visitors get jealous of all the beautiful Bunnies because the club is "lady-friendly" and other women see Bunnies as role models rather than rivals.

For Devine, the trickiest adjustment has been converting her sleeping pattern so she can switch from daytime to semi-nocturnal shifts in her exotic surroundings.

Foreplay

An hour by hydrofoil from Hong Kong across the Pearl River Estuary, Macau is a humming gambling hub. Still, Macau was Playboy boss Hugh Hefner's second venue choice.

First, Hefner wooed the Paris of the East, Shanghai. Yet she spurned his advances. Only after that did Hefner approach Macau and get lucky.

Boomtown

Macau has long been a chancy good times resort. Under Portuguese rule, it was decidedly dubious — notorious for prostitution and gang brawls.

After Portugal returned its 30-square-kilometre colony to China in 1999, crime dropped right off. And now, Macau — the world's most densely packed place — entices millions of visitors from mainland China.

Barred from indulging in their unofficial national pastime at home, mainlanders treat Macau, nicknamed Asia's Vegas, as a bolthole. Boosted by the mainland market, Macau looks set to edge past the original version — and become the world's top gambling resort.

Money magnet

If you crunch the numbers, Macau is already ahead of the glitz of the Strip. More money changes hands over its tables here than anywhere else in the world.

Dream team

Irrespective of reported low pay, being part of the Macau Bunny team sounds like a dream job — far more fun than serving drinks on an A380. One day, a Bunny performs at a corporate function attended by banking bigwigs. The next, she could be dancing with Lady Gaga, according to Sands Macao's Creative Director, Tomos Griffiths.

Soft skills

So how do you land a Bunny job? With ease, if you have the body, sceptics may say (with some reason). Dags need not apply.

But a Bunny needs a knack for sustaining conversations with strangers under awkward conditions while dressed as an animal that hides from predators down a burrow. That takes charm, poise and, yes, brains — reflected by the likes of Devine, a Charles Darwin University law student.

Paws off

If a client stupidly tries to snog a Bunny, she is meant to deflect him by extending her hand — or paw — for a handshake. Officially, hanky-panky is out.

Tailspin

Still, conservatives paint the work as sleazily demeaning — a difficult perception to shift. The original Chicago club Playboy Bunny uniforms were so tight that hostesses had to bend at the knees, not the waist, when serving drinks.

That move — the "Bunny dip" — is still performed by Hefner's army of glamorous rabbits: what remains of it.

Rabbit-proof

Harmed by the degradation allegation, scores of American Playboy clubs have folded, as the magazine might. Now the US Playboy club empire consists of just one branch.

Fantasy tower

The branch is located — you guessed it — in Vegas, inside the Palms Casino Resort on the 52nd floor of the soaring Fantasy Tower. The club's decor incorporates rich, dark colours and plump leather sofas illuminated by Baccarat crystal chandeliers. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, you can see the Las Vegas Strip and valley.

Retro revival

Hefner casts his flagship Vegas club as proof of a comeback and a more favourable climate toward his brand. During the 80s and early 90s, his argument goes, America went through a conservative PC phase that faded.

After, fascination with good-times-retro apparently grew. Now, consumers embrace everything vintage, from James Bond and The Beatles ... to the Bunnies.

Eastern empire

Undeniably, Asia has a soft spot for Bunnies. In November, Playboy opened a three-storey clothes shop in Taiwan's capital Taipei, and the brand recently inked a 50 million US dollar deal with a Shanghai-based firm planning to open over 2,000 Playboy-branded outlets in mainland China.

Auspicious? 2011 is the year of the rabbit on the Chinese horoscope. Hippity hop.

Check out RALPH's pick of the 12 hottest Playboy babes by clicking the logo below