So I was at a stand-up comedy gig last night and the comedian said
“Vegas is the only place in the world where once you land you’ll call one of your friends and say ‘I’M IN VEGAS BABY!!!’. It really is… you don’t hear anyone landing in Ohio and calling his friend and saying ‘I’M IN CLEVELAND BABY!'”.
And yes ladies & gentlemen. That’s where I am!
I’m going to be here for a week. Actually it was supposed to be for a few days to kill time before I have to get back to San Francisco on the 31st August to orientate our new team just before I head home to KL. Then yesterday as I was looking at the hotel rates for San Francisco I was like wtf? The hotels in Vegas are like 60% cheaper than the hotels in SF. So I decided to spend more time in Vegas killing time and only head back to SF when I really have to.
It’s been fun though. Let me run through with you what we did from the pictures we took in the past few days.
Shorty and I went to watch The Beatles Love Cirque Du Soleil. It’s basically like a circus with all sorts of stunts and dancing to the Beatles old songs.
Shorty first heard about this when she saw an ad about it on TV in San Francisco and she immediately decided she had to go. So we got the tickets and went. She loved it but I didn’t know many of the songs they played so I didn’t really enjoy it. Now don’t get me wrong… I love the Beatles too but maybe I don’t know ALL the songs… and the other songs they chose to play… well I didn’t quite like them. So I thought it was just really bad song selection.
We walked down the Strip many times in the past few days. Another thing that same comedian I was referring to in the beginning of this entry talked about during his gig was “depth perception”. He said “Just because you can see the Stratosphere… it don’t mean its a block away”.
And that’s so true of us. Somehow everything in Vegas looks close but when you actually start walking it’s pretty friggin far eventhough you can see it right in front of you. It’s easy to underestimate how big each hotel is and how long it takes to walk past each one.
This is one of the nicest hotels on the Strip. The Bellagio.
Famous for its beautiful fountain show that they have every 30 minutes or so.
You can watch a video that I found of it on YouTube here.
I remember reading about it in a book about Vegas once. It was actually built by Steve Wynn for $1.6 billion plus another $400 million he spent just on art to decorate the place. The whole theme of the hotel was that it was supposed to be a really luxurious place… and well he spared no expense even in the expensive art he got for the place. That was what got him personally interested in art.
Eventually though because he was spending so much money building the Bellagio the share price of his company then came down so much that a competitor of his bought it over and now owns the Bellagio. Kinda sucks right.
So what he did later on was to build an even more luxurious hotel called the Wynn… and the Encore.
And yes…. that thing in the bottom left of the picture here… is my finger.
The hotels here on the Las Vegas Strip are huge. Each of them have thousands of rooms each and they have very different themes. There’s a hotel called New York New York.
And a hotel called Paris with an Eiffel Tower of its own.
Or even this huge complex called City Center.
There are just so many things to do in Vegas. Sure there are the hangover Strip Club kind of things but apart from that and the gambling there are tons of shows to watch.
Shorty and I have been watching a new show almost every day until well.. we’re kinda running out of money so today we’re not going to do that today.
Part of the fun part of Vegas was meeting one of Shorty’s readers: Rachel and her boyfriend Anthony.
This is them making some personalized M&Ms at this machine.
And this is me with Anthony.
With my eyes closed for whatever reason.
One of the first places we had a meal together was at this Diner kind of place. I ordered some corn beef with bread but it looked huge on the menu so I decided to order like a half portion. And this is how it looked like.
Seriously. There is so much meat it’s almost like they just killed a cow and slapped two slices of bread around it.
We had a fun few days hanging out with Anthony and Rachel but unfortunately they had to go back today. So let me end this entry with the last dinner we had together at Wolfgang Puck last night.
Ok guys… time to go sight-seeing. More updates in the next few days!
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space