Vegas!

I woke up yesterday morning at 7am to get ready to leave for Vegas. I didn't fall asleep until after 4am just 3 hours before! I didn't have any trouble getting up though. I got ready and we left the house at around 7:45am. The desert wasn't as sandy and flat as I had expected. I guess I was expecting something like an egyptian desert or something. Instead it was hilly and there were lots of plants and trees growing out of the ground. The desert trees are called Joshua trees because the branches spread out and it looks like it's praying. Anyway, it is roughly a 4 hour drive to Vegas. Luckily, we never saw that no A/C sign on the way there so we were able to keep our A/C on the entire way. After about 2 hours we did make a pit stop at a very small town (if you can even call it that) called Baker at around 11am. We went to Del Taco and I had 2 fish tacos. The fish was fried so it wasn't as good but it's Del Taco, what can you expect? There was a tall sign that showed the temperature in Baker. It was 101 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 38 degrees C! At 11am in the morning! I felt like I couldn't breathe. We continued on and we saw some houses along the side of the road in the desert and wondered where these people bought their groceries. There were no grocery stores anywhere in sight and there were only 2 restaurants that they could eat at. We continued on and reached Primm Outlet at around noon. Originally I didn't really want to stop at Primm Outlet because I really didn't want to spend money because like I said, I'm not supposed to shop. Tara wanted to stop by at JCrew though so we had to go in. Lets just say that I ended up buying the most out of the 3 of us. Damnit! I can't control myself! Ok, I don't regret any of my buys though. I FINALLY after so many outlets found exactly the Coach dog collar that I wanted. I've always wanted to buy a khaki Coach monogram dog collar for Pipi but they never have one large enough. Guess what? They not only had it at Primm, they also had the matching leash!!! Not only that, they were MASSIVELY on sale. I bought both for $54!!! The collar at regular price is $68! Who says only small dogs can rock out in style? So we ended up at Primm for 2 hours and ended up getting to Vegas at around 3pm. 

Vegas was HOT. We stayed at Imperial Palace. Not exactly like the last time when I went to Vegas and stayed at MGM Grand, and got to visit the presidential suite, but it's on the strip and it was under $100 for the hotel room for the 3 of us. Good enough for me! When I walked into the Casino, the first thing I thought was Rush Hour. I wonder if they filmed there? Ah the cigarette smell. We checked in and took the elevator up to the 16th floor. We stayed at room #16115. It was decent. It was supposedly newly renovated so it was decently clean and I got a bed to myself. Tara was telling us how many of the refrigerators in the hotel rooms there now have sensors so if you even touch anything they will charge it to your room. We didn't have a fridge in our room so that was good. We put our stuff down and headed downstairs and started hotel hopping. I love hotel hopping. We never even hung out in our own hotel. We immediately left to go see all the other nice ones. We went to Paris first and took pictures of the eiffel tower and walked around inside because I wanted to see the little french stores. They had canned duck confit in one of the gift shops, pinot noir in tetra packs, and duck foie gras! We were getting hungry so we decided that we were going to eat early and headed over to the Bellagio buffet. It was a 'cheap' $30 which was a surprise because we were expecting $50. There were the, as expected, overly salty king crab legs, which I had a few of, but there were also other tasty things like mushroom ravioli in truffle sauce, lobster ravioli, chilean sea bass, shrimp cocktail, sushi, ahi tuna poke (mmm), salads, creme brulee yada yada yada. We tried to eat as much as we could but the buffet was a total waste on us. None of us ate $30 worth of food. After dinner we walked over to Caesar's Palace because Tara said there was a big mall inside of it, but as soon as we walked into the first store, I spent $60 there. Let me tell you, there are some massive sales going on in Vegas right now. Everything is on sale! It's like going to an outlet. Business is bad. I bought 2 rhodium 18K gold plated hoop earrings with Austrian crystal for $29 each, one in white gold and a smaller one in gold. I talked to the sales lady a lot and asked if she would give me a discount if I bought both so she gave me another 10% discount on top of the sale. Since my ears can't take anything but gold, it's not everyday that I can afford to buy hoop earrings, with crystal too! By the time I decided and bought the earrings it was already nearing 7:30pm and we had to catch the show Jubilee at Bally's. We headed over to Bally's and went to the box office to pick up our tickets. Tara had ordered them online but when we got there they didn't have her name on the system and couldn't give us our tickets. We ended up being late for the show so they switched our tickets to the 10:30pm show, which I will talk about later. So after we picked up our tickets, we walked over to the Bellagio to watch the water show. It wasn't that spectacular but I guess you have to see it. We headed back to the hotel to rest for awhile because we were all so stuffed. By then I was really about to pass out due to my lack of sleep the night before, and my lack of sleep on the way there. We headed back out to catch the show and were delighted to see our new seats. Instead of the back rows, they gave us a table on the floor right smack in the middle front of the stage. I thought Jubilee was a burlesque show but it was more like a topless show girls with big feathers type of show. It was pretty good expect I found that the in between acts were more amazing. There was a juggler who did the usual juggling tricks with pins and then tennis balls but then he started playing a keyboard using tennis balls! He would throw the tennis ball to hit the keys that he would want to hit and then catch them as they bounced back and he did it with such accuracy and speed, it was amazing! Another in between act was these 2 guys who did a lot of holding each other up with a single arm, those types of things. They were so strong and so steady. I was happy to see that all the topless girls were all naturals. No fake boobies here! The show was good but seriously nearing the end of it I was totally dozing off. It was almost midnight and I had to try so hard to keep my eyes open. It was around 12:30am by the time we got back to the hotel and we all just passed out. No partying for us!

We woke up the next morning and headed over to the Mirage to the Carnegie Deli to have breakfast. I cheated and I ate beef because I had a pastrami deli sandwich. Pastrami's beef right? I couldn't help it! I was at a NY deli and I wanted a sandwich. It was HUGE! Way bigger and way more meat than what we got from Katz. It was the same price too ($14.95)! I couldn't even finish half of it. The pickles were awesome. They were super crunchy and really fresh. I packed the rest and tried to eat it throughout the day but still ended up throwing some of it away. After breakfast we visited the Venetian, which wasn't as spectacular as I had remembered, but the Venetian is still one of my favourites. Bellagio on the other hand didn't stick out to me at all compared to the last time I went, which was 6 years ago. They were still playing the O show, which is a great show by the way. We visited a couple other hotels and then we went to Wynn. I think since Wynn is one of the newer hotels, it was the nicest hotel to me this time around. The Venetian and the Bellagio are sort of old to me now. Wynn had this waterfall where people could sit outside and order drinks and it was beautiful. Of course there were also the high end stores that were completely empty, but nice to walk by and look at from afar. We walked around 30 mins to the Monorail because we were originally planning on taking it to the other end of the strip to New York New York but when we got there we saw that the price for a single trip was $5. For the 3 of us, that meant we'd be spending $30 to and from. No way. I suggested that we walk back to the parking lot and drive our own car instead, which we did, but by the time we got back to the car, none of us wanted to get back out on foot. It was seriously too hot. Whenever I was standing still I could feel the UV rays burning through my skin and hot smoke seeping through my pores (OK I exaggerate but still). We ended up just driving to the other end of the strip to MGM Grand and New York New York and then... goodbye Vegas. It was the shortest and most brief Vegas trip I had ever been on, and it was also the first and probably the only time I will ever drive 4 hours through the desert to reach it, so I guess you could say that it was a different sort of experience. Also different in the way that I had to pay for things myself and couldn't afford to live in any of the bling hotels. Next up... Dubai!

It took us less than 4 hours to get back. We stopped by at Tara's boyfriend's work. He works for the company that invented and makes NuBra, which is a silicone adhesive bra without any straps. They started out making just the silicone fillers but the NuBra sources out to Victoria Secret, Macy's and other department stores now and retail for over $60. I got 2 prototypes for free :) They're in the wrong size, but they'll work, and I love free stuff! We got a tour around the factory and got an brief rundown of how the NuBra is made and the steps that it goes through to reach the finished product. The factory employs 4o employees and the adhesive part of the bra is painted on by hand. After we left, we went to go eat Taiwanese food. I had requested it since we're in California and there are more Taiwanese people here than there are in Vancouver, I figured it would be nice to try it out. We went to this place called Classroom 203. It was super cute! They ordered the desks that they use in Taiwan elementary schools to use as tables and they had the old school backpacks to carry the chopsticks and paper napkins, and they also gave you the food in the silver lunch boxes students used. They had the menu up on a chalkboard and had all these old Taiwan textbooks around the place. I thought it was a great idea for decor. I wasn't hungry because I had been munching on bits and pieces of my pastrami sandwich all day so I just ordered a small thing, one thing that I never ate when I went to Taiwan, a pork blood cake dipped in sweet and spicy sauce, covered in peanuts on a stick. It's in all the night markets but I don't know why I never bought it. It was good! The menu had more variety than what we have in our bubble tea places and they also have that really fluffy shaved ice that I said was awesome from Shi Lin night market, so my verdict is: California Taiwanese food = better than Vancouver Taiwanese food. They do have more Taiwanese people so I'd imagine it would be anyway. We went to the nearby Chinese supermarket and I suddenly thought, since they have more Taiwanese people, maybe they'll see Tong Yi pudding. Nope, they didn't have it. Someone really should export that stuff! I think it'd sell. 

Anyway, so we got back home a bit after 8pm after a long day on the road. I still feel like I don't know what just happened. Everything came and went so fast! I'll be heading back to my aunt's place tomorrow morning. In the morning Tara is going to bring us to a Taiwanese breakfast place, something we don't have in Vancouver! After that she's going to drop me off back home and go with Michelle to visit her friend in Mission Viejo. I definitely need to go to the gym tomorrow.