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Published: December 20th 2006
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We are clearly not the hardened travellers that used to be. Once upon a time a night bus was regarded with excitement. Nowadays with memories of refridgeration in Thailand and of sharing the back seat with fat snoring men in China, we look upon them as an evil necessity. Add to the mix Americans, and suddenly it could be the worse journey ever.
Greyhound buses have quite a bad reputation in the US and understandably so. We rocked up mid town LA to get the bus at 11. At 9 they turf you out of the station to wait outside the depot amongst the crack dealers that sleep rough. Next we were told (by the staff) not to walk outside the station in downtown LA when we arrived to change buses because we would get shot..... nice! I am not sure what was worse though…… crack dealers or the other Americans around us. Lets give you an indication…
Q “where y’all heading?”
A “Vegas”
Q “you are a nice colour, where y’all bin”
A “Fiji”
Q “What's a Fiji?”
Q "Your acent is soooo cute. Where are you from...Canada?”
Q “Where are you from”
A “the UK”
Q “how is the queen, do you like Camilla?”
A “aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”
And this was all within 5 minutes.
There was one normal person on the bus and surprise surprise he was not American. This guy was all cast up with a neck and back brace. He was a backpacker who had fallen whilst rockclimbing. In the true sense of being a rucksacker he was desperate to move on to the next place. He was practically dead, however.
So, we arrived at 4 in the morning. Previously we would have hung around waiting to check in. Afterall this is Vegas, the city that literally never sleeps and we could have gone ANYWHERE and it would still have been open. Not now though. We just booked into a hotel for those extra few hours kip. Pretty obvious we were on our way home ay. The great thing about Las Vegas is that is it sooooo cheap. For the price of 2 dorm beds in Fiji you get an actual room with a bathroom and hot water and a TV! It gets better, when we checked into the MGM Grand into our Celebrity Spa Suite the room was as big
as our old flat with 2 sinks in the bathroom and a revolving TV. Backpackers…where? Lets be honest though, we have stayed in our fair share of dives and this was officially the first legitimate hotel we had stayed in all year (except for one night in Bangkok courtesy of Mikey where 3 of us kipped in the same bed fo goodness sake!)
We were worried in making our decision to go the Vegas that we would stand out like a sore thumb with our flip flops and boardies. No worries there. Las Vegas is as tacky as hell. Full of old age pensioners in big white trainers with grey perms pouring quarters into the slot machines. In fact, the ringing of the slot machines is still keeping me awake 6 weeks on. It is a world of 2 extremes, the rich and the wannabe’s. Some people do swan around in DJ’s and evening dresses but surprisingly few.
That said, it is a fantastic place. The lights, the casino’s, the free shows outside every hotel, the animal shows inside the casino’s, the circus acts and dancers and the buffets. It really is Disneyland for adults. We watched a
frightning amount of money being thrown around the tables and a scary amount of plastic surgery walking around. We even managed to go and see Elton John at the Colliseum who does an amazing stage show by the way.
We did not however totally renege on our backpacking ways and when we were in one casino we were offered a free lunch and reduced show tickets if we went to a timeshare presentation. Hell, why not, it is cold outside anyway. So we spent a refreshing 3 hours with a lovely man with no intention of taking up the offer (although if you are interested timeshare in vegas is way cheap!). The sandwiches were by far the best we had ever tasted AND we got to see La Femme, a tasteful titty show, for $10 instead of $80 each. Time well spent.
Las Vegas was a good stop although we had realised that it was too close to coming home to move to somewhere new. Our heads were definitely back in the UK and it just became a nervous countdown from 5 days to O. The other main problem with Las Vegas and Los Angeles funnily enough is
that it is full of Americans. Most of the stereotypes are true. As we have travelled around we have met many Americans who proved us and many other people wrong BUT the main difference seems to be that they have travelled outside the states. The ones at home are a different breed altogether. For example, adverts which state:
“Italien food so authentic you will think you are in …(italy maybe??)
Nope…
"Italian food so authentic you think that you are in New York"
It is no surprise that Canadians have a show dedicated to the states. Called 'Talking to Americans' it is similar to Borat I guess. 2 Canadian girls we met in Australia told us that they drove across the border and were flagged down by an American car. The couple stopped them because they did not recognise the license plates and thought they had driven from....BRITAIN!!!
So that its it. Last place ticked off the list. All done. Just the small matter of a return home to tackle. Has it really been 351 days?
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