Alter Ego

got home very late last night from Vegas. the entire trip went great, but it was also tiring at the same time.
there were a lot of things we wanted to do, places we wanted to see.. and all that in a matter of just 3 1/2 days. imagine going to bed every nite at 3am, and starting another day at 10pm ..( okay, that may not sound that bad, except if you take into consideration all that walking that we had to do, plus the 4 hr drive one way to Grand Canyon, and then back to Vegas on the same day, trust me, it is TIRING.)
even as i am blogging now, yifan is taking his well-deserved nap. ( he slept 3 hrs last nite and went to work today!!!)

pics are not ready yet, but hopefully i'll be able to post them up in a day or two. for now, it's just words.. :)

first and foremost, Luxor is NOT as what i had expected. the facade's awesome, totally like what a 5-star hotel would look like. beyond the exterior though, is another story. the hotel lobby was a scene of total chaos, with lots of people queueing everywhere for check in/ check out. it reminded me of Asia Hotel in bangkok with the hordes of tourists. definitely not a plus point.

the room wasn't exactly to die for either. there were no bedside tables (?!!) so we had to walk across the room to reach the phone every morning when the wake-up call came. the bed is the pull down kind, and we suspected that it's cos they sometimes use the rooms combined as a suite cos of the adjoining doors. then there was the lack of sound-proofing in the rooms. just to cite an example, yifan heard a woman next door order room service the first morning we were there !?

the Pharaoh's buffet is not fit for kings. on our last day, we had lunch there, mostly becos we had a 2-for-1 voucher still waiting to be used. bad choice.. we wasted our precious stomach space. no variety, low quality. and considering that two nites before, we had seafood buffet dinner at Bellagio, touted the best in vegas, the lunch at Luxor seemed even worse. the " yi4 fen1 qian2, yi4 fen1 huo4" theory cannot be truer. the dinner at Bellagio costed a bomb ( think a dinner of alaskan crab legs, mussels, shrimps, rack of lamb, and many others), but it was well worth the money; the lunch at Luxor-- well, if you were looking to purely just fill your stomach, i suppose that is an alternative to McDonald's.

"O" by Cirque du Soleil was excellent, with the clowns, the synchronised swimming, the contortionists, and the acrobats. luckily we bought our tickets long before, cos we saw a long line for the standby tickets when the first performance ended. on the subject of tickets, we cannot be any luckier than we were on friday when we went to the airport to catch the flight out. we thought we were too early cos we were there 2 hrs before the flight departure, and you dun usually have to be so early for domestic flights. however, last weekend being the Labour Day weekend, flights were so full that the airline was booked above capacity. tickets were sold, but the plane was full, i think about a hundred people had to go back home and try again the following day. when we checked in, there were only 8 seats left and we were sooo early. phew! needless to say, those who couldn't get onboard kicked up a fuss at the counter, and i dun blame them.

the flight was okay, but i didn't realise until 30 min before reaching the airport that there wouldnt be meals served onboard, and that we may have to pay for drinks. pardon me, but it was my first time taking a domestic short-haul flight. in the end, we didn't have to pay for drinks, not unless you ordered an alcoholic one. i was a little disappointed that there was no food, save for 2 little packets of peanuts, cos on the way to the airport, i was already planning to eat some, drink some. *sigh*

same thing on the flight back last nite. but this time around i was fine with it. we had dinner at Noodles Asia in The Venetian before that, and it was the best best chinese food i had eaten in a long time. the fried rice tasted just like the ones from the zi char stalls in coffeeshops in singapore. we went there 2 times !! i feel hungry thinking about it now. in fact, after the first meal we had there, i still thought about the food while i was brushing my teeth in the hotel bathroom, and i told yifan that i wanted to eat there again... all this while he was already sleeping, and the next morning, he thought i was mad talking to him about food in the middle of the nite . hahah.

didn't have time to browse in the stores, except for two short visits to Sephora.. first time to get my face moisturizer, and the second time, becos we were feeling itchy from the sunburn, and so had to look for somewhere to apply moisturizer to ease the itch.

all in all, i love vegas, and i want to go there again. soon. meantime, back to reality, and back to preparing dinner.

tata~~