Monday, July 21, 2008

A trip to Las Vegas

"A place where illegal things are done legaly" Thatz what Geetha and Arthi said about Las Vegas. When Raj told me that we were going to Las Vegas for the long weekend i felt a little excited and a little hesistant. And as usual booked tickets at the eleventh hour and rented the car...kudos to Raj. Am as usual spending time on my couch :) Well the day came finaly...all set up and packed with bits N pieces to patch up.
I would say it was not a nice one though... with series of not-so-good omens...;) the car was not that great...it wudnt pick up fast...the CD of songs were not working...it was a hot evening...road full of trafic...oops..and there came my usual travel sickness. Head aches and mood swings...i vomitted in the high way without minding the cars coming behind...and then learnt that the fine for littering is arnd $1000. How i miss my country...[come on folks not for littering...atleast we can stop anywhere for emergencies].
Obviously, we both were in a very bad mood. I almost started thinking - was that gonna be a good trip at all? The traffic was damn slow and Raj started feeling sleepy - thanks to the late nite movies!!! So we pulled over the car and he started sleeping for a while. I was jus watching the cars...the mountain...and slowly turning orange - then i realised that the sun is gonna set. It was a lovely time with sun setting behind the mountains...the least of the red rays reflecting over the roads and cars. Slowly i forgot to hear the noice of the cars and started immersing in that red clouds...and the darkness taking over the world. And then...Raj woke up !!!The drive lasted for almost 5 hrs and then slowly the dead sides of the roads came alive...with lights and sounds. Yes the city limits of Las Vegas began appearing...welcoming ppl to the world of casino. Raj was telling about the casinos , the shows etc. Then came the hotel named Sahara where we stayed. That night we just went a ride in our car along the famous street - The Strip of LV. Many of the largest hotel, casino in the world are located on The Strip. The themeing of these hotels n casinos is what the first thing you will notice in this road.
The next day noon we went to Hoover Dam - A dam across the colorado river on the border between two states and two different time zones. It was build in arnd 1930's. When i gotta knw this, i was quite astonished...in 30's such a spectacular design. But still i didnt find it facinating...may be i cudnt enjoy much due to the heat. It was around 47C and dry!!! Then we drove back to the hotel and parked the car in the hotel. Now started the major stuff. We went to the strip road. This time we took monorail to reach there. The train runs across 7 stations - 4 miles within 15 mins and fully automated. Announcements at for every stations ... an audio clip about Las Vegas...very few seats but good space are the features of this rail. we first went to the Newyork - Newyork casino. The hotel itself replicates the important land marks of the Newyork City. There were many other features which were out of my interest so didnt notice them much. We went to a show over there...nothing to say about it. Except for one thing...at the end of the show the hostess was asking whether anybody celebrating their wedding anniversary. There was a couple who were married for 20 years. You should have been there to watch the reaction of the crowd. Oooo...20 yrs...all exclamations from all the sides. I jus realised how strong our bond are in india. [well err...may be until our generation]. Enna ulagamda ithu!!! :)
Well then started the journey of gambling. My very first gambling was with a machine and as you have expected, i have lost the entire money. I didnt find anything facinating in that place but Raj felt otherwise. We went on to explore many other games, the profit and loss were random. I quite started enjoying the place itself. There was one place Paris - where in the interior has been designed in the such a way to bring in the evening effect. It was cool and i liked it much. So we spent our rest of the time there losing and gaining. I noticed many older guys were hitting the gambling machines with a sense of tiredness and with no light in their faces. Perphaps they might have seen too much - lost too much or even enjoyed too much!!! Well, by the time we were tired and lost the amount of our limit, it was early morning. So we headed back.
The strip road - yeah the place were the wallets were stripped down. The place full of lights of many kinds and people of many kind - drunken, old, lost, fun loving, crazy....people of all sorts. I felt like i m an alien over there with Raj enjoying every bit of it. Many might have been there for gambling and i was there to experience how gambling make a person greedy!!! mmm...people find losing direct money for fun as facinating but for me Vegas is the place where sanity is stripped out legally.
Vegas, not my cup of tea huh!

4 comments:

Thiagarajan.S PMP said...

keep writing. expecting more.

Unknown said...

you have the art of writing(storytelling), the more you write, the better you become at it

Dhivya said...

nice write up...

Anil Govindaiah said...

I was moving with your story... you shld have put it more... of the Vegas rather the Casino... :)
Anyways, you have the art of putting the words... I say write more... and I shld accept that I really enjoyed reading it... bdw... did you have to pay 1000$ for phewing.. on American road??? :)