This Spring break (Easter holidays to us), I went to Vegas!!
I’ve been there once before but only for a about five hours when I was on my Green Tortoise Bus on the way back to San Francisco after a tour of the Canyons.
Lidia and I hired a car and set off for the bright lights. If you’ve never been to Las Vegas, you have to go there at least once to see what it’s like. It’s one of those places you have to see to believe! So much tack in so little space, everything crammed into a small city in the middle of a massive dessert.
We stayed at a little hostel on the edge of the old part of town, where all the original casino hotels are. Original now equals dodgy. And for Lidia, a quiet Mexican girl who I’ve since found out has never heard of Bob Marley, this was an experience she was not about to forget.
Away from the likes of the Bellagio, MGM Grand, and New York New York, these smaller casinos sit in the middle of Crack City, where you can get married 24 hours a day for about £15.
This was where we were staying.
In a small casino close to our hostel was where I found I won most money: the deal is, you can tip the dealers in Vegas. So for instance, you can put $5 in for your own ante, then $1 for the dealer to make $2 for himself.
This works like a dream when the dealer you have is from Porto Rico, doesn’t speak a word of English and is open to bribes :)
To cut a long story short, I found that whilst playing blackjack, I could put an larger ante in for myself then tip the dealer, and he would more than gladly pull at card for himself on 18 or 19, making the house bust… and he got his tip!
The bloke watching the camera monitors must have been asleep during this entire time, or had a thing going on with our dealer. Either way, I was loving it, and made about $400 in one night there!
Apart from the casinos, and the 24 hour marriages and 24 hour (free!) drinking that goes on in this hell-hole, buffets are a big thing here too… for the equivalent of about £5-10, you can eat as much food as you want in almost every single hotel.
Have you ever seen a big fat man eating a giant plate of chicken off the bone with his bare hands? Don’t.
It’s really not a nice sight. I think fat people should have to carry a special type of ID card, that only allows them to eat lettuce or something. Or if they do want to eat like pigs, they should have to sit in their own section of the restaurant. Like a smoking section, but for fat sods who just want to stuff their faces.
Here’s the deal. If you’re fat, or overweight, or obese, you can do something about it and it doesn’t need drugs or miracle diets, or drastic surgery. It’s not genetics, and you weren’t born like that. You ate like a pig for years and did bugger-all exercise. So eat less, and exercise more. If you don’t, then don’t complain about being fat.
Bikinis, chicken, beer, and mud... enticing!
To sum it up, Vegas is like Bullseye. It’s shit and it’s good at the same time.
In Las Vegas, you have drive-thru funeral parlours and wedding chapels. That’s right, you can get married in your car without that pesky inconvenience of, oooh, let’s say, your family… or having to take your seat belt off.
You have to go there just to see what it’s like, but I wouldn’t advise staying for longer than about 3 days. Once you’ve played the games, drank all the free beer you can handle, eaten all the food you can take. Get out of there, before it gets you.
