Originally written in SEPTEMBER, 2008

So, as the commercials promoting Las Vegas Tourism say: What Happens in Vegas – Stays in Vegas.

Lucky, because Vegas is one hell of a bore if you ask me and talking about it is like discussing a trip to the classic suburban shopping mall.

Vegas is designed to make patrons feel comfortable by making them subconsciously uncomfortable. It’s hard to find an exit and trying to find the time is even more difficult because disorientation is the name of the game.

Whatever your vice, the whole lot – its Vegas, baby!  My writings are honest – I love to hate Vegas.

I only really went to Vegas because it was a milestone birthday for Tania and she had organised some friends to come along and celebrate. I have no moral or ethical obligation against excessive drinking, gambling and/or debauchery.  I can party and make rock stars blush, or at least make them feel really embarrassed by how trashy I am being in their presence.

So, our room: We had a great room at the Venetian – its one of those uber-swanky over the top razzle-dazzle fuck off resort hotels in Vegas. Two huge beds plus a fold out sofa – I took the Sofa. The room was bigger than some of the apartments I have lived in over the years, and had all the trappings associated with royalty: gold finish this, fancy toilet paper that.

We managed to sneak about 3 extra people in without paying the extra “per head” charge which saved us a bit of money – probably $50 per person per night.

This is the epitome of class in Vegas – no amount of flashy extravagance will ever erase the memory of me having to hide under the desk while hotel staff brought the extra three towels we had requested.

In hind site, the extra towels were a dead give away.

To make matters worse, when the hotel staff arrived I was on hold to a OneWorld Alliance Customer Service Representative and after spending *that much time* on hold listening to how great Qantas is at doing just about everything except picking up the phone, I wasn’t about to give up on the 20 or so minutes I had spent on hold.

At least they had the good sense to keep me on hold for those fateful minutes I was in hiding so I didn’t have to whisper my complaint down the phone. Now THAT would be humiliating.

Ya gotta vocalise during a complaint, helps with the healing process.

I wondered if the hotel staff were completely stupid – did they notice the phone receiver was being pulled under the table? I am pretty sure they saw me pop my head out to check “all clear” at least twice but they were kind enough to let me go without being charged.

I especially appreciated it when they did not enquire as to what I was doing on the floor.

Basically I was in Vegas staying in this awesome hotel room and I’m hiding under the table like I’m Jewish and the Gestapo are doing a raid.

Vegas itself is pretty amazing in that its not really amazing at all, its just a fancy place for peasants to spend money they don’t have, while they don’t sleep and get pregnant and/or married.

You know, Vegas has so many celebrity endorsements – Cher, Elton John, Celine Dion, Bette Midler, Kevin Federline and anyone else seen on a Reality or Tabloid TV show. I mean these guys, even the D list tabloid fodder of the world, get paid BIG BUCKS to go there. They wouldn’t do it otherwise.

Kevin Federline? He must pull a cool $50,000 to go and ‘be seen’ at some mega club and do fuck all except rap “Popo-Zao” – a song which was not cool, not even for 15 seconds let alone 15 minutes.

Britney passed out in a Vegas club on NYE and probably doubled her rate for the next appearance due to the publicity her overdose generated.

It’s that sort of a town.

So the celebrities get all this money to go there, but the peasants pay all this money to act like celebrities. It’s such a rort. The hotel room turns out to be the cheapest part – I think ours came in at something like $350 a night which divided by all the people sharing worked out to be about $50, which is quite reasonable.

I tipped the Mexican maid a $10 and received tacit approval to pocket anything that wasn’t bolted into the foundations of the building. I also got about 20 items of shampoo and other toiletry items off her cart as well (Sanitary Bags anyone?) which I am sure she was totally okay with me helping myself to.

Tacit Approval rocks.

So, how does Vegas make this money back? Gambling, duh. But they are also charging you for absolutely every little thing you could imagine – they haven’t worked out how to tax breathing but I imagine that with every breath I take, someone near by is placing a bet on whether it would be my last.

Even the stupid fridge has one of those sensors so if you even think about touching the bottle and removing it – even if I do not consume it – yep, they charged me!! Worst part was spending nearly 30 minutes on hold for the Operator.

When I finally got through, I made up some bullshit story about being alcoholic and could we have the fridge replaced out of respect for my sobriety, they told me it would cost $20 for an empty fridge to be delivered.

So yeah, with all the lying and deception and racketeering between the casino’s – and me – I really feel like I’m in Vegas.  Authentic Vegas, like when Frank Sinatra was around.

The gambling thing is so intense and it is such a low-rent status symbol, like all of a sudden it’s cool to throw money away and drink cheap champagne. Rich/Richer, Poor/Poorer.

So get this, I’m playing Blackjack and I lose $100 in 10 minutes AND I was cheating. A textbook example of Poor/Poorer or at least textbook stupidity.

Vegas is also about the shopping, which is confusing to me as I am not sure who makes a profit out of this little side racket. I mean no one actually seems to buy anything, and if they did, do the profits go to the casino? I am sure the casinos would charge rent and utilities and all that kind of stuff but I highly doubt the shop would actually make enough sales to actually cover any expenses.

I am positive there is some kind of under the table arrangement going on – I know, in VEGAS of all places – where by the Louis Vuitton’s and Victoria Secret’s of the Strip are there purely to make people FEEL like they are living in the land of luxury not to actually, you know, sell anything.

So basically, EVERYONE is in on the blatant lying, deception and/or racketeering.

I tried to do Vegas on the cheap. I walked around a lot – Tania and I did a couple of late night walks up and down the Vegas Strip stopping only to put $5 in the pokies to get the attention of one of the truly ghastly cocktail waitresses (“there’s a 50c tip in it for you, toots”) or to eat for cheap at Fatburger.

We basically walked in and out of every casino and rated them based on its witching hour patrons, who seemed to be old people totally addicted to the slots or sleazy guys playing poker with elderly strippers gyrating on the table.

NOT Celine Dion, Elton John, Bette Midler, Paris Hilton or any of the Kardashians or Playboy Bunnies partying it up, like the press would have you believe.

Nor would Cher be seen dead playing the slots next to any of her elderly brethren – I doubt Cher will ever be seen dead to be honest.

We did The Strip twice and on the second night we actually made it down to Mandalay Bay which is like, so far away from The Venetian. Its MILES or at least 1 mile, which is a very long way to walk, especially in America.

As we made it to the Manadalay Bay the sun started coming up. We caught an unfortunate glimpse of ourselves and despite our ragged, exhausted appearance we were both sober and still enjoying the walk.

Still, we felt like most of the people we saw; they lost their life savings, gambled away payroll and had then puked on themselves.

Anyway, at this hour all the shops were shut, the only food was 24-hour fast food. We did it so cheap I have no doubt in my mind that the overlords of Vegas were watching us on CCTV and hurting at how much money we didn’t spend.

By day, I did more of the same, except I expanded my walking repertoire to include overpriced and faux ritzy shops. My personal favourite was to cross the road from The Venetian and walk up a little bit to Caesars Palace aka Palacio de Elton John, Cher & Bette Midler. They have this shopping bit called something really fancy but the best bit was: The Escalators.

These escalators went up AND around corners. They looked amazing and the best part was THEY WERE FREE.

I rode those babies all day. Up, Around & Down. Repeat. Free! Sex with handrails.  It was better than that time I did it on a shower-seat.

Okay so Vegas is also about the Buffet and Vegas would not be Vegas without a buffet or two. The first buffet was the holy mother of Buffets – THE Belagio Buffet. “All you can eat (Including Crab Legs) – $40″. We went after we’d spent 4 hours in the car driving from Los Angeles to Vegas in insane heat and we were all rather catatonic – all that sitting really takes its toll.

So we got to the buffet and we went at it like famine was on the horizon and it may well be our last meal. All up we polished off at least 7 heaped plates each, not including the desserts which came on little plates and we all had about 5 of those as chasers.

Fuck we were full after that – I have no idea what happened after dinner because I was just too full to even think. I think my brain had all kinds of weirdo chemical imbalances happening from all the mercury I had from the crabs legs or just the insane amount of sugar and fats and protein and carbs I’d just put away.

I know I put a couple of bread rolls into my bag before we left “for later”, but that’s all I know.

The second buffet we went to had all the charm of a local community old people style buffet you’d find anywhere in the world – a few hot dishes, some bread, some hokey dessert that looks like dog shit in a fancy bowl.

We were running late for The Mirage buffet and when we arrived we were told we had 30 minutes before it closed and so we hit that buffet like it was the Grand Prix.

Fortunately for us, the food tasted like shit and so after a marathon round 1, rounds 2-5 were taken at a slow pace and we all ended up getting a little sick DURING the 30 minutes we were there – it was just that bad.

Salmon with Salmonella Sauce!

Ok so I said before how Vegas is all peasants trying to act like A-Listers and how full on all that is. We were staying at The Venetian so we could get into Tao, the incredibly famous and popular nightclub in The Venetian complex. I have read about Tao on TMZ and Perez Hilton and all those tabloid webpage’s because it is a club that PAYS celebrities to be seen there, thus increasing its cred with the tabloid generation i.e. Me.

We managed to get on no less than 6 guest lists for Tao on Saturday Night – hell, I even got on one just by hanging outside of the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf so it can’t of been too much of a feat, but when we arrived the bouncers still tried to make us wait in a queue.

These bouncers thought they were such top shits in the celebrity world, like they were stopping people from experiencing “Paris Hiltons Vagina(TM)” instead of just herding people into a queue.

One of the guest lists paid off after someone called someone and our group was allowed to see “Paris Hiltons Vagina(TM)”- aka the overhyped clusterfuck that was the nightclub – before everyone else.

We got in to this mega club to find it absolutely packed. And not the good kind of packed, where everyone is going off and feeling the vibe and totally having a great time – We were going off like sardines in a can – in the sun. I managed to find a bar and get a drink, which took about 30 minutes and involved being pushed and shoved like I was hanging out in the middle of a football scrum.

Tania and I had our drinks and tried to find a quiet place to stand and drink and wait – get this – another hour before our friends got served.

The sheer volume of people created like a sea current and we were literally whirled around the room against our will and we were not even able to enjoy a sip of our drinks without being sucked out into the proverbial sea and spat out miles away, somewhere near the DJ box.

Needless to say, we bailed. I reckon if Tao Nightclub paid me $20,000 to rock up and sing some Karaoke that I would be slightly more enthusiastic about being there, but as a paying patron it was a clubbing experience I’d rather forget.

Tania, Simone, Deb and I ended up at dubiously FREE entertainment, which attracted a lot of really daggy older people, dancing dirty in their high pants.

At this point, I decided that I would lose $20 on the slots and call it a night.

Tao Nightclub also has Tao Beach, a cool pool party at the Venetian Pool. It was a really great concept, except the pool for Tao Beach was super small, like almost a spa. The music was loud enough in the ‘exclusive’ area that most people were enjoying the tunes and the baking sun in the larger, not so exclusive pool. I spent a bit of time in this pool until I realised that everyone else in the pool was drinking, ergo, they were peeing. I know everyone pee’s in pools and I am usually a card carrying enthusiast but with like 100+ people all regularly warming their spot, it was too much for even me to cope with.

I managed to get a free sun lounge in the shade (it was REALLY hot – desert – who knew?) and ordered one Jack Daniels, which cost me an absolute fortune. So even sitting by the pool cost me an absolute fortune.

A drink here, a gamble there – it all adds up. Most people love it and I have to secretly admit, I do too.