monkeycrap's Diaryland Diary
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Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas, City of Hope
The creaky elevator opened up reluctantly as it hit the third of three floors, where our motel room was located. The emerald-green-candy-pink facade of the establishment somehow, in a weird way, managed to complement the faint bandung-coloured hue of the Nevadian sunrise that greeted us as we wrenched with the key that led us into room 306. I had to curb my Gil Grissom tendencies to knock on the door and say in that gruff tone, "Las Vegas CSI, open up." Seriously, the peace and quiet of a morning check in made our off-the-strip, rather secluded, internet-found motel seem like the place where illegal plans, unwanted babies, or both, are conceived.
It's not that far off a thought, really. We took a walk from the motel to the strip and were greeted by adult theatres and ero-clothing-video stores. Guilt-tripping because of the accidental post-adult theatre mishap? No problem, get married at the little white chapel next door to ease your conscience! While making your way there, why not pick up one of the many advertising newspapers from the mailbins portraying photoshopped images of scantily clad women in provocative positions? These same images are depicted on small travel calendar type cards handed out along the strip, and in case you haven't had enough, plastered on mobile billboards (that zip along the roads) along with telephone numbers that, when dialled, turn whatever you see in the pictures from .jpg to .mov format, if you get my drift. The magic of Vegas. Take that load of sleaze and add it to the outrageously cheap $1 frozen margarita slushes, 99 cent beers, and the hedonistic-what-happens-in-vegas-stays-in-vegas-vibe that permeates the city, and you sorta get the idea why Vegas has been dubbed city of sin.
Yet, despite all that, Vegas does have its bad points. The food, for instance. Yeah, we did manage to get some decent grub in the form of Denny's and in the neverending snakes of the MGM Grand Buffet, but other than that, finding food proved to be rather difficult. Don't get me wrong, there're fantastic restaurants, such as the Mesa Grill in Caesars Palace, run by Bobby Flay, or that one called Wolfgang Puck. But not within budget la, show me the price of stuff at wolfgang puck's restaurant and the reaction'll most probably be an expletive that sounds like his surname.
So we were looking for asian food, cos we got really sick of steak and chips and steak and chips and steak and, you get what I mean. We ended up at this chinese restaurant which served this.
CHICKEN MOO GOO GAI PAN! What in the blue hell is a CHICKEN MOO GOO GAI PAN?? Sounds like what comes out from my mouth during toilet constipation hour man. It's like some ang moh chef decided to string some (what to him are) chinese sounding words together to make his excuse for chicken and vegetables sound exquisite. Also, may I please direct your eyes to the top of the menu, to the appetite-inducing WOR WON TON SOUP. All I can say was, when Baolin and I ordered the soup, after a few sips, and upon realization that it costs USD$15, we went "WOR!!!" Jayne, bless her heart, got the combination fried rice. Combination of what, MOO and GOO?
The girls went sephora shopping, which left me with some time to engage in some $1 lime margarita slush-flushing at the next door casino cum bar. As I battled brain-freeze made worse by the constant slot-machine-jingle-jangle, I noticed the forlorn, weary looks of the slot zombies, going through the notions of depositing coin, pulling lever, awaiting nothing. Yet, somewhere in that look of despair lies that faint spark of hope, which they attempt to rekindle, paying for the fuel with chips and nickels. And that's what Vegas sells and runs on, false hope, so depressing, yet so crucial.
Put a despaired slot zombie with a few towers of margarita slushes and you get John, this burly bald Jesse Ventura lookalike we met along the strip at 5 in the morning. He was in the state bordering dead drunk and still sober, and somewhere in between wiping the girls' hands on his bald-oiled head and pronouncing me "his biatch" after we did the initiating hand-slap-chest-bump routine, he reminicised and teared about his daughters back home (apparently they don't live with him) and how much he loves them, misses them. Raw emotion in the land of poker faces.
Jayne just reminded me to mention that 3 of us went clubbing at the Jet Mirage Nightclub. It was pretty good, but wah lau, see the way some couples go at it on the dance floor like animals in heat ah, like watching discovery channel set to justin timberlake music.
We went to catch the famed "Sirens" show at Treasure Island, which was supposed to be a theatrical feast for the eyes. The pyrotechnics, yeah maybe. But the storyline? I thought it'd be some lame Pirates of the Carribean story, but it turned out worse. Basically the story goes like this. Pirate man gets captured by barely-clothed sea sirens who constantly gyrate to R&B tunes. His mates from his ship must save him, because, boo-hoo poor guy, he was forced to dance with those hot girls. So the guys fire cannon at their ship. BOOM. The girls gyrate. BOOM. Gyrate more. BOOM BOOM BOOM. Dance even more. Then suddenly, guys ship explode. The end. Moral of the story: hot dancing girls can sink any guy's ship.
It's not a place I'd wanna return to, really. Glitz, glamour, bright lights, fast food, slow digestion, quick bucks, slow losses and true-blue false hope. I don't know, it didn't impact me much. Like the brain freeze caused by magarita slushes, it hits you, you get numb, then it goes away.
4 Queens. Get it? Ha.
Cards littered on the street. Follow the number on the card, make a telephone call, and...
8:52 p.m. - 2008-03-18
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