Atrocity Tourism, Part 3: The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas NV

In 2014, when I left my last job in Saudi, I flew into Vietnam to have a couple of weeks of holiday and see some friends there. Trying to find a cheap-ish one way ticket home, the best I could manage was a one-way flight into Las Vegas, Nevada.

I decided to stay a couple days, and when Expedia offered me a 2 day stay at the Hard Rock Hotel for $100, I jumped at it. What fun!

Of course, I had just turned 45 then. Old enough, right? But I thought it would be fun to check it out, especially at "Pool Party!" season was just ending.

Well, I was wrong.

It wasn't fun at all, and I wasn't even CLOSE to being the oldest, or the oldest-looking person there.

I arrived in the morning at about 10:00am, so I took a nap to ease my jet lag and then had lunch. It turned out I had to pay extra to use the pool and sports club, based on the $50 a night I was paying, but that's pretty typical, I guess. 

I went to the pool, where the pool party was just getting started at 3 or 4 pm. I'd been away from America for a while, but the first thing that always strikes me is how heterogeneous our society is; people are every shade of the rainbow.

 But then the other thing strikes me: my god, why does everybody look so weird? 

I mean, of course, in small town America, one is struck by the fatness. And it's not just fatness, bodies are actually changing into distinctly not-typically-human-looking shapes from the metabolic syndrome caused by all the soda people consume. 

But the other side of that coin is America's cult of health, fitness and plastic surgery, and in Vegas at the Hard Rock, I saw plenty of that. And they are ALSO starting to look not-typically-human. 

Most of the dudes were enormous, clearly jacked up on roids, covered with dopey tattos, wearing all that MMA / Tapout / Affliction crap smeared with logos, just in case you didn't notice how tough they were. And most of these guys were not in their 20s. A LARGE number of them appeared to be in their 40s. Or maybe they just appeared older from their sunlamp-damaged skin. 

Half the women had duck lips and fake tits, which didn't do much to distract one from their advancing years, gunts, brittle dyed hair, and tiny little eyes. The other half were girls you might have though were decent looking enough if you saw them dressed, but in bikinis and bright light, their huge cellulite-covered asses, cheap hair exensions, and awful tattoos could not be covered. 

(Although I'm aware big asses are a thing now, cellulite is never in style. Is it?)

I always notice how tiny white American women's faces are. Little face squished onto big heads, in most cases. 

Still, the room itself was pretty nice, with a great view: 

Attempts to go onto the Las Vegas strip itself revealed to me that the casinos are now mainly glitzy malls with a small area for gambling in the back. I was neon-light-flashed into a near epileptic seizure and the crowds were tremendous, all crowded into narrow walkways twisting around and above the street. 

I went back to the Hard Rock and lost $100 at the casino. Andrew Dice Clay was playing a show in the bar there, which I might have enjoyed, but I figured I could watch him just as well on YouTube for free.

So I did that.