Hello Antelope Canyon! But before that...Vegas baby!

Sunday - May 31, 2015

So...a few months ago my mama was perusing her Facebook feed when she saw a picture of this:

Antelope Canyon (photo from the internets)

For those who don't know, this is Antelope Canyon - located in Arizona on Navajo land not far from Utah.  And only (according to Google Maps) a 5 hour drive from Vegas, which is only a three and a half hour drive from home.  Hmm...

My mama then showed my dad this picture and they agreed that since this is so close, we should totally go and visit.  This was in February.  My parents were in Taiwan the months of March and April, and by that time, all the hotels (dog friendly hotels that didn't look scary on Tripadvisor) were booked up, so we ended up booking for the first week of June.  And since it's on the way and I refused to drive 9 hours at once because I am not a crazy masochist, we opted to spend the first night in Vegas, drive to Page, Arizona and stay for two nights - then drive back to Vegas, and stay for two nights because 1) I must have time to eat the world (i.e a buffet.  Mmm...) and 2) I must have time to spa.  Also, I wanted to see Zarkana, the only  Cirque show on the strip I haven't seen yet (well, I also haven't watched Zumanity, but that's not a show I'm ever going to watch with my mama.  I wanted to go into the bathroom to hide during the (relatively tame) love scene when we watched Shakespeare In Love together so there ain't no way I'm watching a circus show that simulates coitus with my mama) and since we're staying at the Vdara (yay for hotels who lurve dogs.  Boo for hotels that charge you through the nose for them!) and it's playing at the Aria next door, it's convenient!

Anyhoo, because it's Sunday, we went to church in the morning first.  We packed up our car the night before and so we could hop onto the freeway right when Sunday service was over and then head over to Vegas.  We figured we'd hit Vegas around 3:30-4pm...yeah...that didn't happen.

Anyway, look who was in a good mood and ready to start our road trip!  (when is he never in a good mood though?  He's always, always smiling.)  

So we drive.  And drive.  And we get on the 15 and we hate life.  Because not only were there TWO traffic accidents on the 15 on a Sunday afternoon, the freeway is also under pretty heavy construction and what's usually a 4-5 lane freeway ends up being reduced to two lanes.  So we totally hate life.  According to Google Maps and Sigalert, our delay was for 90 minutes.  And they were right (sob!).  What really sucked was we couldn't even get off the freeway to avoid the jam.  There was no. way. out.  We were trapped (sobbing again!).  

After driving for an hour and 24 minutes...

we looked at the odometer and realized we've only traveled NINETEEN miles.  Why 19 instead of 31.6?  Because it's TWELVE miles to church, so in the hour and twenty four minutes since we left church on our way to Vegas, we've only traveled NINETEEN MILES.  (I'm still sobbing on the inside.  It was so bad).

pardon the dust!

Even thought I wanted to punch myself in the face, you know who was still in a good mood?  I'll give you one guess:

clearly it was not dad

Like I said, incapable of NOT smiling.

Then, after the 90 minutes of wasted time I will never get back, when the traffic started clearing there was a "crossover" section of the freeway.  Being a FOB, I had no idea what the hell that was supposed to mean...until I saw that part of OUR traffic was on the OTHER SIDE OF THE FREEWAY.  Huh.  You learn something new everyday. 

And so we drive.  And when my mama decided she was tired and it was my turn to drive, it was ONE HUNDRED AND SIX DEGREES.  I opened the car door and thought I'd stepped into an oven.  This was no bueno.  And because of how no bueno it was, we opted not to pee there because we being roasted in a roadside bathroom is not exactly how we envision our vacation starting.

see? no lie

Alas, after mucho hours of driving that we were not expecting, we finally made it to our destination: Bally's Las Vegas.

Now, we've been to Vegas probably like, a hundred times.  Seriously.  But we've never been to Bally's before.  I hate to admit it, but even though I'm a TOTAL cheap ass, I'm kind of a hotel snob.  BUT - we only planned to stay one night in Vegas, and since we had no plans for Sunday night other than grab dinner and get a good night's sleep, I didn't want to spend the $280/nt Delano was asking for if I wasn't even going to properly enjoy the room and property, so I looked for the cheapest hotel that would let me bring Bendi in without having to smuggle him into the hotel stuffed in a backpack.  And Bally's was it.  We got a king bed petstay room for about $130 for Sunday night, and since I'm being super cheap, I even brought my air mattress (a necessity since we could only book ourselves a king suite in Page as all the rooms with two queen beds were sold out) up to the room instead of paying $25 for the rollaway.  Because bitches, cheap is how I roll.  Unless it's with someone else's money.  Then I'm all about extravagance.  

Other than self parking being in China (okay, I lie, it's in Paris.  And that's no lie.  Self parking is actually in Paris, you have to go from Paris to Bally's) and check in being a pain in the ass (they insisted on seeing Bendi to make sure he's not over 50 pounds, and that wasn't as easy since my dad had taken him out for a walk after the long car ride and I had to stand to the side with all my luggage watching everyone else check in while they refused to check me in without seeing Bendi) - it wasn't so bad.  (we're not going to talk about the melt down the three of us had when certain somebodies *cough*dad*cough* refused to answer their phone which snowballed into us all freaking out and yelling  at each other about picking up the FREAKING PHONE.)

Our room number?  

No joke.  We really got assigned room 777.  Good omen?  Well...considering I lost about $11 at the stupid slot machine in some stupid dinky casino while waiting for dinner, I'm thinking our room number did not bring me any luck.

But the room was actually very nice: it was about 450 square feet, and since it's only one king bed, the room was large and spacious.  It really doesn't photograph well, but the furniture was clean, as was the carpeting and the bathrooms (I was afraid I'd end up finding weird and suspicious stains, but to my relief did not) and it was actually a very pleasant and comfortable room.  It's not opulent, plush, or amazing by any means, but it's a very nice room.  Even though the bathroom wasn't fancy with its own soaking tub and water closet making it bigger than my house a la The Venetian, it was pretty spacious.  The water pressure (always important) was decent and we were all pleasantly surprised.  

what's the first thing we set up/out?  Bendi's bed.  Clearly we have priorities in this family.  Dog first.

So we didn't really have a Strip view.  After all, we were in the Indigo Tower, which appears to be one of the older towers.  But we could still see some hotels out of the dirty ass window.

And of course, Bendi had WAY TOO MUCH fun exploring the room.  He discovered mirrored closets!  I don't have mirrors in my house low enough for him to look at himself, so he was intrigued by these mirrored closets.

look at him admiring himself.  He's probably thinking, "that's one good looking dog in a very dapper yellow vest right there"

Before our vacation, I of course started googling around for places to eat.  I figured we'd likely eat somewhere in Paris since there appears to be a dearth of deliciousness in Bally's, but in my research I stumbled onto Ellis Island.  It's a teeny tiny local casino about a block away from Bally's (and thus the Strip) on Koval, and they're super famous with the locals because of their food: I got a prime rib dinner (no joke, real prime rib) for $14.99.  And people, it was pretty damn good.  I would say it's just a teeny tiny cut below Lawry's.  And the ENTIRE MEAL (including soup or salad AND homemade root beer - or their microbrew beers) was $14.99.  Where else on God's green earth are you going to find a delicious prime rib dinner for that price?  That's about how much I spend on a burger at B.J's.  And that doesn't even come with iced tea (sob!).  They also had a sirloin steak special: if you join their membership club and play about $5, you get $2 off their off-the-menu steak special: 10oz sirloin with green beans and potatoes and a beer (or root beer) for $9.99 instead of $11.99.  That also comes with a soup or salad.  Let's just say that we were very, very, very full.  So full I committed a horrible sin: I left most of my mashed potatoes on my plate because I just couldn't eat anymore!  Oh, the travesty - carbs should never be wasted, but I was having the meat sweats and just couldn't hang anymore.  My mom isn't into big ass slabs of red meat, so she got the shrimp scampi with linguini.  She was less than impressed, but she's also a picky eater.  I thought it tasted pretty good, but as I was preoccupied with my big slab of meat, my dad ended up eating her dinner.  He had opted for the sirloin and I opted for the prime rib, and we had decided we were going to split both steaks in half so we could both have sirloin AND prime rib because we are pigs who lurve cow.  He ate half of my prime rib and her whole dinner.  HE had about a bite of his sirloin and he said he couldn't do it anymore.  Instead of throwing it out (and he said he wasn't going to eat leftover steak the next day) we decided to just slice it up and bring it back in a doggy bag for Bendi.  My mom didn't want him eating the grilled char marks, so she actually ended up eating the well done portions of the steak (outside) and she sliced the rest up into small pieces for Bendi to snack on.  I ate my half of the prime rib AND half of his steak AND some green beans and some mashed potatoes.  I was thisclose to hating myself.  But it was sooo good.  And SOOOOO cheap.  My mama, she ended up eating all of my dad's steak fries (she's a big fan of fries), his green beans, and some of my mashed potatoes.  Our entrees came with soup, so she had the chicken noodle (I got the same, it was really freaking good, and I'm not even a fan of soup) and she ended up leaving pretty full herself.  Basically, her dinner was a bunch of sides and a few bites of my dad's steak.  But she enjoyed the soup and liked the fries and the mashed potatoes.  So for about $40, we were very well fed.  

 I had intended to walk over to the Linq Promenade or whatever it is they call themselves to the new Sprinkles to buy some cupcakes for dessert.  But because I was suffering from the meat sweats and food coma, I couldn't do anything except to walk back to our hotel and collapse.  The walk there around 7 was in broad daylight.  The walk back was around 9pm and it was already dark.  As we're walking through the intersection of Koval and Flamingo all I could think was "this is where Tupac was shot" (though not where he died) and sadly, there were some homeless guys wandering around there too.  My mom was kind of freaked out by all the homeless people and we felt better after we crossed Koval and there were lots of tourists walking around by us.  As we were about to enter Bally's through their sports book entrance on the side, we see the "dog park".  Indeed, it is a "dog park" in quotation marks because a real dog park consists of more than some astroturf dumped onto a cement sidewalk.  It was just sad.

Bendi was very happy to see us.  He was even happier to see this:

see how attentive he is?

Bendi then had a dinner fit for a king.  Or a very, very, very spoiled little dog.  He was in a very good mood afterwards.  Because of the long drive, mom and dad opted to go to bed pretty early - it was lights out by 11pm.  I was fooling around online and looked over to see this:

Somebody was goofing off in their carrier.  Alas, the long day caught up with me by midnight and I felt the need to crash.  So I did.  And thus ends our first day - at Bally's after a rocking cheapo dinner and a scary walk back to our hotel.  

The next day, we're going to Arizona!  by way of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Arizona, Utah, and finally Arizona again.  

We love Vegas! A short trip report about our whirlwind two night trip to Vegas to see Andrea Bocelli

December 6-8, 2014

We LURVE Vegas.  By we, I mean my mom and I.  My brother and dad could take it or leave it, but I LOVE it.  I don't drink (allergic - sob!), gamble (too cheap) partake of strip clubs (don't swing that way), or go clubbing (don't dance, and being an old lady that loud music makes my head hurt - I mean, I'm traumatized every time I walk past a Hollister, I really don't think I can hack a club) but I still love Vegas.  What's there for an old lady to do?  Uh, shopping.  Hello Forum Shops!  And spas.  And shows.  And the best?  The food.  Oh, the food.  There is nowhere else in the world that has the amount of fantabulous restaurants of all price points concentrated on one measly street.  There are little cafes, stands, kiosks, buffets, bistros and immeasurably expensive and fancy restaurants.  There's something for everyone.  And where else can you see some guy rocking his Wranglers and cowboy boots with poop still on it sitting next to some diva in a ballgown?  (seriously. I saw this)

Why this trip though?  Because Andrea Bocelli wasn't stopping off in LA for us to see him and the closest location was in Vegas.  And my mom and I love Andrea Bocelli (and any excuse for Vegas), so I purchased tickets as a Christmas present for the two of us.  Yay!  Originally it was just going to be a girl's weekend in Vegas, but as we drew closer to the trip and my dad was faced with the reality of fending for himself for two days (with the dog) he asked to come along.  Which was awesome because he just hung out in the room watching TV (which is what he does at home anyway) and I got to bring my dog along since my dad was the built in dog sitter!

Because we are cheapasses, we opted to go on Saturday (the day of the concert) and return on Monday to 1) avoid high prices for Friday nights, which we wouldn't get a lot of benefit out of since I'd be working on Friday; 2) avoid crazy ass Sunday traffic back to LA; and 3) pay low LOW hotels rates on Sunday.  All I had to do was take Monday off, which was easily done.  Instead of leaving in a hurry after work and slogging through Friday evening traffic only to make it to Vegas around 10 pm, we slept in on Saturday morning and left after a leisurely breakfast and packing plenty of snacks for the road and our hotel room.  

The drive is long.  And boring.  So we took pictures of the clouds.  And the mountains.

My mama drove most of the way.  My mama drives like a speed demon, though she feels a compulsion to nag at me when she thinks I'm driving too fast.  Uh, hello.  I drove the last 100 miles, but because of her Nascar worthy driving, we got to Vegas in a little over three hours.  Yay!

This time we opted to stay at Delano since they're pet friendly (and also because I got a pretty good mlife rate) and an easy walk to MGM Grand, where the concert was held.  I like Delano, just like I like The Signature as they're separate from the casino, so there's no haze of smoke to walk through and no casino to traverse to reach the elevators to your room, but it's also connected to a major casino (in this case Mandalay Bay) so you're super close to gambling, food and all sorts of entertainment.  I like the separate but connected types of hotels.  Also, Delano smells like a spa - from the lobby to the elevators to the hallways of the rooms - the decor and scent is very serene.  I like the separate living area from the bedroom, the big couch and armchair, the nice desk and chair - and I LOVED the entertainment panel, so you could connect your own devices via HDMI to the TV.  We streamed NBA games and movies from Amazon to the TV - good stuff!  

We were on the 27th floor and had a decent view of Luxor and the strip - my little dog very much enjoyed hanging out in front of the window and looking out.  The room was very clean and I aside from the random ginormous picture of some chick's butt underwater (always a little awkward when you're staying in a room with your parents) I liked the decor MUCH more than its previous incarnation as TheHotel.  I liked the neutral colors and minimalist lines - it made the room seem MUCH more airy and they also used the space a lot better than TheHotel did.  What I didn't love?  The walls were thin like cheap toilet paper and you could hear EVERYTHING - from the people farting next door, flushing the toilet, to room service pushing their carts down the hall in the morning.  If you're a heavy sleeper (like me) or have ear plugs, you'd be okay - but I can see how this would get super annoying otherwise. You'd think a fancy hotel like this (and you could tell they didn't skimp on the furnishings) would have better sound proofing - but I swear the Motel 6 has better sound proofing than this.

scary huge picture of some chick's butt while making out with random half naked man in a pool.

my dog is confused.  But he's often confused.  I do think though he very much enjoyed his stay in this hotel room.  They gave him a little doggy bag with a few doo doo bags and some cookies that he scarfed down.  Also, every time we took him outside people would go "awwww!!!  what a cute puppy!"  and he'd be all excited thinking it was nice of them to recognize his awesomeness.  He felt like a celebrity.

magic entertainment panel - good for charging our eight thousand devices and also to hook stuff up to the TV for entertainment

see?  He likes looking out the window.  He's never seen floor to ceiling windows before.  Poor deprived little guy.

Bedroom (we made our own beds - with a dog, we opted not to have maid service as we were only staying two nights.  We literally walked our dirty towels out to them and they happily handed us clean towels and some extra toiletries.  Win!  But this is why the beds look kinda lumpy - we're not so good at the housekeeping stuff)

extra TV and closets in the bedroom.  This built in was a good use of space - there are plenty of drawers and space for clothing and luggage

I like the separate shower.  I also liked that it was very clean

you can't really see it, but there's a TV on the wall, so you can watch Maury while bathing.

Being brilliant (not!) I decided to buy my little dog a patch of grass for the hotel room so I wouldn't have to take him downstairs to use their designated dog pooping area.  After doing some research, I settled on Fresh Patch and spent about $30 (including shipping) for a big patch of grass to be delivered.  This was HEAVY.  And a pain in the ass to carry up.  The good part?  My dog LOVED the grass.  The bad?  He refused to pee and poop on it.  He rolled around on it, he ate the grass, brought his toys on it, dragged his snacks to eat on the grass, he slept on it...he just did not pee or poop on it.  FAIL.  I spent $30 and labored and toiled to get it to the hotel room only to have him treat it as a playground.  No bueno :(

Because we are Chinese and my parents are incapable of being without Chinese food for any amount of time (dude, we left LA 3 hours ago!) we opted for a super late lunch (it's around 4 pm) at the Noodle Shop.  Because it's close (in Mandalay), because it serves Chinese food, and we're just too lazy to drive out for real Chinese food.  This place has pretty crappy reviews, but as long as you know what to order, the food is pretty good,  CRAZY ASS expensive, but pretty good.  Stick with the basics - and since we're Chinese, and the servers are Chinese, they're honest with us when we ask them what's worth ordering.  We ended up ordering two dishes for the three of us, which was plenty.  Fortunately, since we spent like $50 on the two dishes.  We got the House Special fried rice (surprisingly good - but I could get the same tasty dish for about $9.50 at Sam Woo as opposed to $18.50) and an order of the super combination seafood soup (it had everything in its mother in it) with noodles for about $30.  Yes, the portion was large and it was very tasty, but dude, I could get this soup for like, $12.50 or something at any other Chinese restaurant.  But as we're in a casino in Vegas, we knew we'd get butt raped, so we were prepared.  I thought about getting something else, but it was a good thing we didn't since this was the perfect amount - we were pleasantly full without hating ourselves and it hit the spot for my parents.  

What was fun about this trip?  (other than the fact that it's Vegas and unless you do it Hangover style you're GOING to have fun)  my cousins came along!  They too love Vegas, and it's always more fun with friends, and they stayed at Mandalay Bay so we were super close.  Because we had the larger room and the living area, they came and hung out in our room with us when we were in the room.  After awhile, it was time for my mama and I to prepare for the show!  

The show started at 8 pm, so I told her we should leave our hotel by 7:15 since I'm crazy anal retentive and hate being late with a passion.  We didn't think it was appropriate to wear crap jeans and flip flops (my typical uniform when not at work) to the concert, so we each brought a dress and heels - the only time we dressed up the entire trip.  After slapping on some makeup and putting on our dresses, we were ready to go.  My dad and cousins hung out in the room snacking on the donuts, croissants and cookies we brought along (because we are pigs.  And by we I mean me).  I wish there was a tram that carried us directly from Mandalay Bay to MGM Grand, but alas, there is not.  Instead, we rode the tram that took us directly from Mandalay to Excalibur (the express one, there's one that stops off at Luxor before going to Excalibur too), walked from Excalibur to Tropicana on the sky bridge and then took the escalator to another elevated pedestrian bridge outside Tropicana that lead us into MGM Grand.  All in all, it took about 10-15 minutes from our room to get to MGM Grand.  Not too shabby.  What sucked?  It took TEN THOUSAND YEARS (okay, that may be a slight exaggeration) to get from the entrance to our seats inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena.  Two factors: MGM was hosting some rodeo championship that week (see what I meant about the cowboys with cow poop on their boots?) which meant the place was CRAMMED with cowboys - as well as special sections and stages and all that good stuff for their rodeo thingy, AND there were about 20,000 people there for the concert - so you're looking at thousands of people moving through the casino trying to push our way to ONE spot (it seriously bottlenecks) while shoving our way past the extra hundreds to thousands of cowboys there for their rodeo thingamajig  - not to mention all the places that are blocked off for the mechanical bulls and "gold buckle area" where they were serving jello shots and there were bales of hay stacked everywhere.  AND the stages for the country performances.  Oy!  It's a good thing we left early, because it was a hot mess!  Also, we're talking about two VERY diverse groups of people crammed into the small space at the same time.  Cowboys and old people who like opera.  Hmmm...

after we FINALLY got through all the bottlenecking and levels of security.  Yay!  (okay, bad selfie)

Can you believe we spent like, $180 for these nosebleed tickets?  There's another section above us...but man is this overpriced!

Um...a lot of people don't seem to respect the rules when it comes to no photography or taping.  People all around (and there were some morons taking photos with flash) were snapping photos and there were a few guys in the rows in front of me TAPING the songs.  WTH???  I had my phone stashed away in my purse - but after seeing all these people taping and taking photos, I readied my phone during intermission to snap ONE photo (without flash) just to have a souvenir.  The first half of the show was primarily opera.  I'm not really an opera buff - but let me tell you, this man's voice is magical.  Yes, I have his CD's, MP3's and even a DVD of his concert in NYC - but watching him live is NOTHING like watching him on TV or listening to him in the car.  You can feel his voice inside - it's like your internal organs are vibrating along with his voice...it's something indescribable, which is why it sounds stupid when I try to convey how moving it is to hear him live.  My mom was clutching her chest and I was tearing up - I didn't understand a word he said since most of what he was singing was Italian with some Spanish operas thrown in - but you could FEEL the music.  I got chills.  The first time I got chills was when I watched Wicked at the Pantages and heard Defying Gravity live.  I've watched a lot of shows since and though I've enjoyed them, I never got the chills again.  Until I saw Andrea Bocelli - and the chills and the tears and the feeling inside - blew Wicked out of the water.  Whew!

After a 20 minute intermission (I saw in my seat and obsessively refreshed the Clippers game to follow along with the score) the songs were more pop oriented - there were some Christmas songs as well as some of the more famous of Puccini's pieces.  For his many encores, he sang The Prayer and Time to Say Goodbye - and dude, when he started on those, you could see an ocean of cell phone glow pop up as people were filming those songs.  Okay.  For his very last song he did Puccini's Nessun Dorma, which is incredible live.  When he sings vincerò, I felt like I was being lifted out of my seat by the power of his voice alone.   I know just how cheesy and hokey that sounds - but seriously, if you like music at all and have a chance to see this guy live - DO IT.  

After the concert is over we shuffle our way out with tens of thousands of people and navigate our way through cowboy land before we get back onto the shuttle from Excalibur and ride our way back to Mandalay Bay.  Yes!  Back to sanity.  Sorta.

Everyone is still in our room watching TV, so I throw on my crappy sweats and we snack and watch TV before my cousins decide it's late enough for them to shuffle back to their rooms.  I play with my Bendi and like an old lady, shower and go to bed.  What's funny?  On our way back to our hotel, a group of much younger chicks crammed onto our tram right before the doors shut.  They were...loud.  And inebriated.  And had just gotten out of the Thunder from Down Under show.  They were still very excited about it.  It was about 11 pm at this point, and while my evening was winding down and I was dreaming of slippers and bed, their night was just starting.  They were rocking some SERIOUSLY tight dresses (which honestly, some of them - okay, MOST of them should NOT have been wearing.  I mean, I'm no prude, but there are some articles of clothing you should not be wearing unless you think looking like a stuffed sausage with your cellulite hanging out is a hot look) and some hooker heels that made my feet hurt just to look at them.  I always wondered how they could manage to keep those shoes on all night - my query was answered: as one of the girls said, "I'm gonna keep drinking until my feet go numb and I can't feel them anymore."  They made me feel like an old fuddy duddy.  But seriously, a night spent in sausage casing with shoes that would make me blurt out where my granny hid her gold while squashed in a small space with music blaring and sweaty people dancing around me...that's my idea of being tortured.  I'd rather be waterboarded.  

Being cheap Chinese people (and people who like to fit into our clothes) we decided to do ONE buffet a day.  We'll do breakfast on our own (which is running down to Starbucks for coffee and a muffin or a croissant) - then do a late lunch at a buffet, then a light snack/dinner.  I really wanted to do Caesar's Palace's Bacchanal buffet, but I also didn't want to wait three hours in line - and being super lazy people (and also being people who had mlife gold cards - status matching from Hyatt Platinum - who didn't have to wait in line at mlife hotel's buffets and cafes) we opted for Bellagio instead.  I wanted to ride the various trams and walk - it would take around 20 minutes.  The rest of my lazy family wanted to drive - so we left the dog inside the room and we drove over to Bellagio.  We exited near their conservatory and spent a few  minutes there acting like tourists while photos of flower bears' butts.

whee!

Our plan of attack?  To get to the buffet by 2:45 so we pay by 3:30 and get to eat both brunch food and dinner food!  This is how cheap ass Chinese people roll! I think I'm the only one who likes brunch food - so I eat eggs benedict, french toast, and bacon.  They also had prime rib out for brunch - mmm.  When the dishes change to dinner dishes about 20 minutes into our meal, they bring out a kobe sirloin.  Hmm.  Most of us have never had kobe before.  Because we're not crazy enough to spend all that money.  We're intrigued so we try some.  Eh.  Honestly, it tastes kind of reminiscent of liver.  Weird.

Of course there's the mandatory sushi bar with not great sushi - but it's still decent.  And the colors are pretty - perfectly suited to food porn!

While everyone else is still working on their savory foods, I am drawn to the dessert table.  The macrons...very average.  Eh.  The texture was okay, but it was kind of flavorless.  The white chocolate nutella cup was pretty good - but the mousse was too sweet, so I dumped that out and ate the nutella cup.  The fruit tart was pretty good, as was the creme brulee and the flan was good as well. 

So...why do we torture ourselves and eat at the buffet?  Well, 1) my cousin Henry eats like a horse.  Actually no, he eats like 5 horses.  That man can put away food like there's no tomorrow.  2) my cousin Ling can put away food as well.  3) at a buffet we can all choose what we want to eat and how much we want to eat without fighting over which restaurant to go to, trying to figure out the entrees and what the portions are and choking down food we didn't really like if we order the wrong thing.  For myself and my parents, going to a $35 buffet isn't really worth the money since we don't eat that much.  We'd probably spend the same or a little less if we went elsewhere and just ordered a la carte.  But it's just easier on a group of people who have different tastes and appetites to go somewhere where all of us can just get what we feel like eating - so to the buffet we go!

After my dad invited himself along to our trip, he started looking into shows he could go to.  He asked me to buy him to tickets to the Australian Bee Gees show, which I fortunately found tickets that were 30% off to.  They ended up being about $40 a ticket, and as he didn't want to go alone, we decided on the show for Sunday night so mom and I could accompany him.  We ended up having a night out (there were some craaazy Bee Gees fans there, lemme tell you) for LESS than the price of ONE Andrea Bocelli ticket.  Let's just say these were two very different experiences.

For the Australian Bee Gees show, the production values weren't super high - and they were also located in the Thunder from Down Under showroom, which I couldn't find.  I lead my parents wandering around the Excalibur Hotel, which I haven't been to in a good 15 years...at least.  It wasn't until we took the escalators up to where the food court was that we saw the Thunder showroom.  It's...small.  And dark.  And I was a bit squicked out about sitting at tables greased up nekkid men gyrate on nightly,  but I soldiered on.  And had fun!  It was a good show.  Not that I've ever seen the real Bee Gees live - but these guys could sing, engaged the audience well, and everyone had a good time.  Especially the group from the Philippines who went crazy and danced through all the sets.  They split their show into two parts: the early years (where they wore some gnarly wigs and bell bottoms) and the later years - where they rocked the black.  A MUCH better look for them.

crap photo, but no longer in orange bell bottoms!

The show lasted for about 90 minutes - after which we meandered back to our hotel (the Excalibur really does not improve upon further acquaintance) and snacked.  And snacked.  My cousins came over and hung out and we watched TV and ate more.  Then like old people, we went to bed.  Yay!

The next morning I called down around 10 asking for late check out because...well...I'm lazy.  I didn't relish the thought (I was still in PJ's) of having to rouse myself up, get dressed and have everything packed up within the next hour - the front desk people were super cool and let us check out free of charge at 1 pm - which I suppose isn't a big deal since it's a random Monday in December.  There probably wasn't a whole lot of demand for our room at the time.  But this allowed me to wake up, slowly start packing stuff away and taking ALL our junk to the car (while my mom was having way too much fun at the penny slots - a misnomer if there ever was one.  Yes, it says $.01, until you realize there are 60 lines and you have to bet 60 pennies each time.  You might as well play the nickel slots!) and suck down some much needed caffeine and a snack.  I didn't want to eat heavy because our plan to was to hit the M Resort on the way back since we like the hotel/casino and especially their buffet.  It's comparable with Bellagio and Wynn (not as good as Cosmopolitan, but few are) and it's only like, $15 for lunch!  And it's on our way home, and right off the 15.  For those not in the know, the place to get gas is on Las Vegas Blvd heading SOUTH - the prices drop lower and lower as you get further from the strip - and M Resort is about 10 miles off the strip, though on the same road.  So we just headed in that direction and found a plethora or Chevron stations, each cheaper by the mile.  We gassed up, gave a few bucks to a vet asking for money (I felt bad for him.  Even if he's bilking me, the man served our country) and headed to the M Resort.  They have a pretty spacious parking garage - so the dog was going to be okay, especially since the weather was cool.  We took him out to pee, fed him some water, and left some snacks and toys and chew sticks in the car for him while we went in to pee ourselves (TMI I know) and stuff ourselves at lunch.  They really do have a very good buffet - we stop by at least once every trip - either on the way in or on the way out.  We've stayed there before as well, and their rooms (we had a kickass corner suite) are very nice as well.

We ate.  And ate.  And ate.  My favorite part?  (well, one of my favorite parts) is that espresso drinks (cappucino, lattes, etc) are all free - they're at the dessert station and a nice lady will make them for you on request.  They also have decent gelato and a nice selection of desserts.  My parents like it because there's a nice sized Asian section - I just gorged on cow.  And more cow.  And potatoes.  And bread.  Mmm...that's not even including the desserts.  We managed to leave by 3 pm.  My mama drove again, and we never stopped once - we managed to make it back to LA around 6:30 pm - just in time to see the Clippers game.  BEST. GAME.  of the year.  Not ever - but pretty damn good.  Blake shot a buzzer beating 3 pointer!  BLAKE.  

So that's it - our short weekend of shows, food, time with family, slot machines, and sin.  I'm already wondering when we're going back!

We go home (sob!)

Wednesday - September 17, 2014

We go home today (sob!).  I'm always sad when vacations end (I have to go back to work - sob!) but I actually do miss home.  I miss my own bed - I miss having my own room and not having to share a bathroom (though the last two nights of just sharing with Raymond hasn't been too bad) and I miss my puppy.  I got my puppy three weeks before we left on vacation.  Yes, that wasn't smart - but he was so cute and I missed my Bento (God rest his soul, he passed away on July 26th of this year at 11 years of age) so much that I needed a puppy.  See?

Isn't he adorable?  I missed him a lot, so even though I was sad our vacation was ending, I was happy to see my baby.  

Raymond and I wake up and trudge our way down to the lounge to have breakfast.  Instead of their baked omelet dish, they had hot oatmeal, but plenty of carbs and croissants and other deliciousness available.  We fueled up knowing that we were going to spend the day traveling.  He was flying back to Hong Kong while I was a weenie and just flying home to LA.  But since airlines no longer feed us I knew I had to eat breakfast (not that you had to force me to eat.   Please).  So we stuffed out faces because that's how we roll.  Then we went back to our rooms to finish up.

Um....we had a lot of luggage.  A lot.  We weren't going to fit into a taxi - so Raymond called the front desk and asked if they could call for a van taxi for us - and they did.  Yay for service!  We had a cool taxi driver - he lived in Hong Kong for about a decade so he could speak Cantonese (though we speak Mandarin, though we both speak the language of dim sum - which to me is the most important part of Cantonese) AND he lived in LA for a few years as well...so he knew our teeny tiny hometown!  We even talked about restaurants and places we like.  It was probably the most entertaining taxi ride we've ever had...the world is indeed a small, small place.  

Because we're taking different airlines to different places, we say goodbye to Raymond and drop him off first.  Then we go to the Air Canada hub and check in.  Where are the people?  It's all machines now!  We had to find someone to come and check in our luggage for us since they wanted to charge us.  Alas, as my parents are premier gold, they can't!  But we had to get a live body to come over and waive the fee and print out the tags for us.  Check in was easy.  What was a pain in the butt?  Going through immigration.  OMG.  Once again, there are no longer people, but machines.  Which would be great and fast, except they pull random people to go and talk to the ICE people (all 3 of them, sitting there sipping their coffees with the most bored expression on their faces) in their little kiosks.  What sucked?  My dad got picked while my mom and I were cleared, but since we were all together, we all got in line (didn't want dad to feel abandoned) and shuffled our way through.  I thought it would be fast, but the guy kept asking us questions - where we went, what we bought, how much we spent, what I did for a living, why we were away from home for two and a half weeks.  Blah blah blah.  What I really wanted to do was ask him if we looked like terrorists or people smuggling small children, but I had enough sense to restrain myself because I know the bored looking rotund man had the ability to order a cavity search and keep me from going home.  That would be no bueno, so I kept my mouth shut, smiled my cheesiest smile at him and he eventually waved us away.    

Finally!  We were through.  Because my parents are gold card members, we got into Air Canada's lounge and we partook of their wifi, delicious coffees as well as assorted snacks (I also very much appreciated their spacious and super clean bathrooms).  We had about an hour until boarding, so we chilled on comfortable club chairs and each played on our phones/tablets and ate our heads off.  

This is how we roll - we play on our phones. All the time.

We then shuffled onto our flight to San Francisco where we were going to catch another 50 minute flight home.  We had originally booked a straight shot from Vancouver to LAX in the early afternoon, but in their typically dastardly underhanded moves, the airline decided to change the flight schedule so our 2 pm flight ended up leaving at 8 pm instead.  Uh...what the hell are we going to do all that time?  I'm not for wandering around the street like hobos for hours while lugging around my crap (see our Paris trip - sob!), so we ended up switching our flightr to a much better time even though it meant that there was going to be a layover. 

Can I just say, Air Canada's economy class sucks donkey balls.  We are not tall people.  I'm 5'2" with short legs, my mom is 5'3" with slightly longer legs.  My dad is 5'8" and his legs aren't very long either.  We come from a short people (with the exception of Yao Ming, who is a freak of Chinese nature.  We don't grow them that tall) and we felt super squashed.  Maybe I should have looked around for a tall guy and taken a photo of him smushed into the seat with his knees around his ears, but I didn't want to seem all creepy stalkery.  So all I have to illustrate the sardine can sized plan are photos of our very short legs.  

look how squashed this is!  Ahhhh!

Alas, our flight ended up being late.  We had about an hour and a half layover at San Francisco which ended up being pretty much all gone by the time we got off our Air Canada flight.  We literally ran off the plane and booked it half way across the freaking airport just to make it in time to board our next flight.  Whew!

Crappy crooked out of focus shot taken while power walking through the airport.  

We made it onto our flight and finally relaxed.  Look how happy my dad is!  And fortunately, because it's a United Airlines flight and we get upgraded to economy plus for free, we were MUCH more comfortable in our new seats for our very long 50 minute flight back to LA.  

dad happy about the leg room.  And about making the flight.

look how roomy this is: you can't even see my knees!

Because there was nothing else to do, and also because I finally had a window seat, I was fascinated by all the planes lined up to take off.  

So yes,  got a little enthusiastic taking photos of the sky, and the water, and the random houses and mountains.  But I also (if you have a microscope) snapped a super bad photo of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Which is neither golden nor did it have a gate that I could see.  

if you look really, really, really hard, you could sort of kind of see the Golden Gate Bridge

After the super short flight (btw, United has the cutest airline safety video now - way more entertaining and way less awkward than a very uncomfortable flight attendant showing you how to buckle your seat belt and waving at the exits from 2 feet away when you're not paying attention at all) we were home!  Yay for crappy LAX!

Except...we did not get our luggage.  We waited, and waited and waited, and our suitcases did NOT come down the conveyor belt.   Thankfully we saved our luggage check in stubs and we hustled our way over to the overwhelmed lady working the counter.  She clicked around on her computer and sighed, then talked smack about the Canadians as well as the morons (her words) who worked at SFO, because they put our luggage on the flight AFTER ours.  And we were not the only ones whose luggage didn't make it - there were about 4 other parties on our flight whose luggage was also on the next flight.  We opted to wait an hour and a half instead of driving the hour back to LAX the next day (or waiting a week for their slow asses to deliver my pajamas).  We grabbed some seats (which we were lucky to get because the baggage place filled up and people ended up sitting on the ground) and my mom had to call and placate our poor driver who was waiting for us.  Poor guy ended up waiting in his van for all that time (we made sure to tip him well) instead of leaving us behind.  So for the next hour and a half we just sat there, playing on our phones (again) and since I'm a snack hoarder, we ate random crackers, macarons, and cake I had stuffed inside my backpack - which was fortunate because we were starving by then.    Our baggage finally came out and we finally got into the van waiting for us and we finally made our way home.  Ahhhh.

Thus ended our two week trip.  We saw things we wanted to see, things we hoped to see, and things we never thought we'd see.  We had two weeks of quality time with family (something not easily obtained these days) and with friends.  We spent days in the boonies with no TV, no radio, no hairdryer (sob!), no Target (double sob) and ate some seriously bad pho we thank the good Lord we didn't get explosive diarrhea and food poisoning from.  We saw some seriously awesome natural phenomena, some beautiful unspoiled nature, and land and water and animals as God created.  All in all, this was a crazy successful trip, one we will remember for years to come.