Skiing — Park City, Utah — Las Vegas! Baby!!!

My first visit to Las Vegas

February 2015

Finally, I was on the last leg of the trip from Malaysia — San Francisco to Las Vegas. And there were some interesting looking characters on the flight.

I had never been to Las Vegas, and I was looking forward to my first visit. What would I find?

On the flight, I was handed a curious object. I had no idea what it was.

It turned out it contained breath mints and discount cards. Were they trying to tell me something about my breath? At this point, I had been travelling for over 24 hours.

Las Vegas — first impressions

In the late 1990s, I lived in the US for five years, and I thought I had some understanding of the US and the US way of life. I was wrong. Las Vegas took it to a whole new level.

I had never been to Las Vegas before, and I found it weird.

I found Las Vegas very tough to put into words. I found myself struggling to describe the place.

Now, this may sound odd, but the one thing that I saw in Las Vegas that summed it up was the wallpaper in the bathroom of my hotel room.

Have a look at this:

Look at the wallpaper.

Take a close look.

You look at it, and at first, you see just a pattern.

But look at it some more.

Look a little closer, and you may see something different.

Or maybe that is just me?

Can you see the white silhouette of reclining women on a black background?

And to me, that is Las Vegas. You look and what you see is not necessarily what is there. You look at Las Vegas, and you see odd things. Las Vegas is not normal. It’s very different.

Even as you arrive at Las Vegas airport, you get a feel for what the place will be like as there are ‘slots’ (slot machines, one-armed bandits) as you get off the plane.

The town is one of extremes. It is all shiny and glamorous on the surface, but it is a different story underneath it.

There are slots everywhere, and some of the ‘branding’ is odd.

Note the lights, the people, and the guy on the street wearing the ‘girls direct to you 20 minutes’ T-shirt. That is Las Vegas.

The shows outside some of the hotels and casinos were astonishing.

And the image below was taken at night, inside a casino. Yes, there was a mini Venice by day, complete with canals and gondolas, in one of the casinos. The painted sky was stunning. It was all a little weird. It sums up Vegas.

Overall, my view was that Vegas was a weird town. Not my kind of place, but worth a visit for a look.