What happens in Vegas...

We ate SO much.

In Vegas everything is subsidized by the casinos, so most things are cheaper than you'd expect from a tourist trap. And since our party didn't really gamble, we came to Vegas for the buffets (the buffets!!).

Day 1, MGM Grand buffet. We had just arrived and were tired, but hungry. Since we were staying at the MGM Grand Signature, we decided to just look for a cafe for quick bite in the shopping area in the hotel; we'd planned to go to a buffet the next day. Then we passed by the MGM Grand buffet area, where a $16 buffet beckoned. What the heck right? A lunch in any other restaurant would easily cost $10 or more.



Dude, we'd never seen more variety in any other buffet. Jen was slightly scared; there was just too much choice. A whole Asian section with chinese food and sushi, mexican section, chicken cooked several different ways, and ditto for beef (oh the steak tips), seafood (shrimp salad!).......and the freaking dessert spread!

We learned many valuable lessons that day. Divide and conquer (everyone get a different set of desserts), teamwork (everyone eat a bit of everything). We missed our target of 20 desserts by a wide margin, even though everything was mini-sized.

Then we went back and slept for 2 hours.

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Gambling - We weren't so hot with this. Us being the poor graduate students that we are, we stuck to the penny slots. Penny slots ie 1 cent per pull. But you can bet on up to 30 lines per slot pull (horizontally across, diagonally, and weird V/W shaped lines), so our money did run out pretty fast. I lost a whole $5 on the slot machines, through the 4 days there.

Give me back my money!!!!!!!

I'd say around 75% of the machines in the casinoes are slot machines, all with the exact same software but with different 'themes', like "Indian Princess", "Texas Gold", "Gone fishing", "Pagoda Treasure" etc. The others were blackjack and poker machines, also with 2 cent bets. Boy did we go crazy.

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But one of the things to do in Vegas is to check out the different casinoes, and this is where Vegas really reveals itself to be less of a city and more of a theme park. There's the Luxor, a black pyramid that shoots light into the sky at night, there's a "New York" complete with mini-Liberty, a Paris with mini-Eiffel Tower and Arc of Triumph, a Venice with indoor canals and gondolas! Not to mention several huge man-made lakes in the middle of the desert. In Vegas, if you can go over-the-top, you do.
















Watched a very Vegas-y show, and got drunk.

We were sitting in a bar which had a live band, and the only ones cheering (going "wooo wooo wooo") since most others were much older, and the 4 of us were also high. So of course the lead singer beckons for Srinjan to go up and dance with her, and of course we force him to go up, where he boogies with her in front of a group of strangers.

He runs back quickly, but lead singer isn't done with us yet. Horrors, she asks all 4 of us to go up. And doesn't stop asking till we do. T_T So we were dancing to Outkast, just the 4 of us in front of a whole bar of amused strangers, some even taking photos and one woman a video. We're dreading the day it appears on Youtube, titled "Four crazy young kids TRYING to dance".
Thus I see why the promotional tagline, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas".

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Strangely enough though we were in the middle of the desert, it was chilly.

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The highlight of the trip was the Wynn buffet, which Frommer's rated as 3 stars out of 3. Dude it was one level above the MGM Grand buffet; the juice they served us was the best I ever tasted. JUMBO shrimp, teriyaki steak, buttersquash ravioli etc etc. And dessert again: tiramisu was heavenly, and the ice-cream... sorbets usually taste of ice, but the mango sorbet here was like cold mango puree, and whatever the hell banana foster ice cream is....wow...


We managed 24 desserts this time!

And walked at 1/4 normal speed for 2 hours after that.




















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Other random things:

Biggest Hawaiian T-shirt in the world! We thought of going in and asking the guy: "Do you have that in blue?"

















The Scream, Vegas rendition. The chocolate fountain is extends above the photo; it's twice as high as you can see here, with three streams of molten chocolate twisting and flowing aside each other: white, normal and coffee (we think).


















The glass walls kept her at bay.















A cashout voucher of 10 cents, from my daily gambling allowance of one dollar. I borrowed the dollar from Jen; I think she's not very happy at me losing 90% of her money.













Ghost Rider is an awesome movie and its release has automatically divided everyone into the world into the cool and those who have not seen it.













The other things Vegas is famous for.








Ever the British gentleman, even with a Playboy bunny.




















Bath soap + jacuzzi jets = Bubble MAYHEM.

We actually couldn't stop laughing at how freaking many freaking bubbles there were. The foam flooded the bathroom and threatened to invade the hotel room proper. This picture only shows the "After", when we managed to get rid of some of them.