Weekend Getaways: Via Las Vegas

We drove south back towards what I thought would be Las Vegas. Matt was pretty tired from driving so much and as we approached the Vegas exit, he said that he would probably need me to take over driving in another hour. Then he exited the freeway! What a trickster! We were still gross from hiking and being in the car, so we immediately went to our hotel, The Hilton Grand Vacations Club. The hotel was pretty nice and since it was off the beaten path, not too crowded but it was far from most of the action. We got cleaned up and ordered room service. Matt had another surprise for me: chocolate and champagne!

We put on our fancy clothes and headed out for the night. Visited Planet Hollywood (tacky!), Paris (to get tickets to the Eiffel Tower. I found a 2-for-1 coupon in a brochure in the taxi cab. Go me! But I didn't want to go up until it was all lit up at night), Bellagio (to go to the Conservatory), Caesar's Palace (to wander around), and back to Paris (to go up the Eiffel Tower).

Paris fountain

Bellagio Conservatory

Eiffel Tower at night

Unfortunately, the wait to go up was around an hour and forty-five minutes and we had already decided to go to the Wynn Buffet. Matt looked up at least 5 different websites to see which buffet was the best in Vegas. The buffet closed at 11 pm and by the time we were done at the Eiffel Tower we would have had 30 minutes to eat, so we left and got a return pass for the next day. As we drove down the Strip, we enjoyed fireworks from the back seat of our cab. Not exactly as romantic as being on the top of the Tower!

The buffet was nice. It had the usual stuff like prime rib, crabs, desserts galore but there was a lot more meat than I expected.

Mmmm....Desserts!

By the time we finished dinner, the hoochies were out in full force. I was overwhelmed by skintight mini dresses. We visited the Encore which was equally as tacky as Planet Hollywood and then decided to hang out at the Parasol Lounge at the Wynn. Being outside on the patio on a balmy night was actually kind of nice. Little did we know that there was also entertainment on the patio. It was a multimedia extravaganza and also had a dancing and singing frog! It was the perfect ending of a wonderful day!

Important thing I learned during this trip: Matt cannot keep secrets from me.

Weekend Getaways: Las Vegas

I haven't journaled in more than a week. During that time quite a bit has happened. First off, I'll be leaving for new york on September 20th at 9:45 pm. I'm flying over to Washington DC with Michelle and meeting up with Cindy in Maryland. After that, the three of us will be driving up to New York.

As for what has been going on. Last Tuesday night I meet up with Michelle, Matt and Tim Lau at Chuck E. Cheese's to hang out. Matt had a coupon for 100 tokens so we all played Skee Ball to our hearts content. It was pretty fun. They have this new game that is a ride and it takes your picture for you. It was only 2 tokens! By the end of the night, we had 600+ tickets. We wound up sending 200 of them on cotton candy and the rest on these little motorcycle men that were 15 tickets each. We wound up with over 30 of the motorcycle men. I wish I had a digital camera so you could see them. But they are freakin awesome! After that, Mike Yim picked me and Michelle up from Chuck E. Cheese's and we went to The Loft to eat with one of Mike's friends. The night was fun because it was a spontaneous get together. I miss spontaneity.

On Wednesday, I got one of my lower wisdom teeth pulled out so I was out of commission for a while. My medication was making me barf so I wasn't doing much besides resting. I watched a few more movies: The Graduate, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Double Indemnity.

Then late Friday night, I went with Michelle and some of her family to Las Vegas to help out at a Chinese concert at the MGM Grand. We got to Vegas pretty late on Friday so we just went to sleep after we arrived. Since the show wasn't until Sunday, we had all of Saturday to ourselves. After sleeping in until around noon, we went downstairs to eat lunch at the Grand Wok. The good thing about this trip was that I didn't have to pay for food or the room because MGM pays for it as part of the concert deal. This way i don't feel bad about ordering expensive food or eating certain things. I ate a tuna roll and shrimp salad. After lunch, we spent a good part of the day driving Michelle's grandmother and great uncle around. We took them to the Bellagio and to the Fashion Show Mall. In the afternoon, Michelle and I gambled a little and ate at Wolfgang Puck Cafe. We had bruschetta and spinach and cheese dip. I drank a watermelon martini that was the color of swamp water. It wasn't very good. I can't remember what we did after that, but I know we ate again at the Studio Cafe. Mich and I shared an apple crumble a la mode, which was really yummy. That night there was a production meeting that we had to attend. I felt like a complete dolt because I don't speak mandarin. Afterwards, we went to Studio 54. On Sunday, we spent all day getting ready for the show with rehearsals and sound checks that we had to attend. It was really cool being able to see what it is like behind the scenes and what it takes to put on a big concert. The concert was held in an arena sized venue but only half of the seats were opened up. Another thing, Ada Choi can't sing worth crap. We got about a 45 minute break to eat before the show. So we ran down to the studio cafe and rushed through our meal. During the show, I just sat on the left wing acting as security in case something happened like if Emil Chau left the stage and went into the audience. Next, there was an after party at Pearl. It was really annoying because a bunch of middle-aged women who were already eating at the resturant saw Ada Choi and Emil Chau and went into our section of the resturant trying to get autographs and pictures. One lady was especially rude because she kept poking her head in even after she got her pictures. A bunch of the crew hung out in the casino after the dinner. We were just wandering around the casino and drinking. We found out the Emil Chau was hanging out at one of the casino bars, so we went over there. It was really funny because he was totally drunk. He kept saying the most random things and singing "We are the world." But he was cool too because he bought everyone drinks and was really nice to everyone. I also got to talk to some of the other people who were helping out and found out some of them were pretty cool too. One of the guys is from queens so we're gonna hang out with him when we get to new york. At around 6 am, there were only about five of us left at the bar because Emil and his entourage already left. We decided to call it a night.

On Monday morning, I woke up with the biggest headache. I guess I drank a lot more than usual but i totally didn't feel it during the night. I slept until around noon. Michelle was expecting Mike Yim and Greg Mah to come up to Vegas and we were going to go back to la with them. After they called, we got ready and went downstairs to look for them. Mike wasn't getting reception on his phone, so we wandering around trying to find them. Finally, we found them and decided to go shopping at an outlet mall. The mall didn't have any good stores so we didn't stay there very long. We went back to the hotel and ate at Grand Wok. We couldn't think of anything to do so we decided to leave for la early. On the drive back, we stopped by the outlet mall in Primm and then continued to la. That drive back to la was so painful. Mike and Greg kept wanting to play all of these stupid games to pass the time. We didn't have any music to listen to and there was so much traffic. I never wanted to get out of the car so badly. Finally we got to Michelle's aunt's house and picked up her car. She drove me back to her house where my car was. Right as I was leaving Michelle's house, there was an earthquake. I made me a little uneasy driving back by myself but it was okay. Overall, the trip was pretty fun. It definitely had some really memorable moments like drunk Emil.

I didn't really do anything on Tuesday, but I got another one of my wisdom teeth out yesterday. The surgery was really fast and Dr. Wu sewed me up really quickly, but then she tried to put the pieces of teeth back together and realized that there was still some pieces left inside my mouth. So she unsewed me and went to work again. There were actually 3 tiny pieces that had broken off but she got them all out. I feel worse than I did last week even though the swelling isn't as bad.