At San Francisco airport, the queue for immigration is packed with mainly people of Asian descent – Malaysians, Singaporeans, Indonesians, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Koreans and Indians.
Maybe it’s the timing – I have flown in direct from Singapore – and the flights at this time of the morning are all from Asia. But this is my third time through this airport in two weeks and it’s been a similar experience.
On the Virgin America flight to Las Vegas – note to self, connecting from SIA to Virgin America is not ideal, you have to change terminals which means you have to lug your suitcase all the way, United is the better option – I was kept awake by a young boy speaking (actually he was shouting) Hainanese dialect to his parents.
At first, I thought it was Spanish, expecting that to be the de facto foreign language in the West Coast but when I tuned in more closely, I realised it was my native dialect spoken on Hainan Island in China. Turned out the parents were from Hainan, the father is working in San Francisco, they’ve been in the US three years and the mother told me they were determined their son retained the Hainanese dialect, which is a fast disappearing language outside Hainan.
At Bellagio, whose lobby is more like a train station than a hotel lobby, I walked past a huge crowd of Indonesians, all dressed up the nines, for a cocktail evening as part of the conference they were attending. I felt like I was in Jakarta, inhaling the smell of kretek and hearing Bahasa Indonesia spoken en masse.
For this Christmas, Bellagio has gone mad on polar bears. The hugest white bears of the stuffed variety that I’ve ever seen frolic in the lake and snow, alongside penquins and everything else you associate with Christmas. It’s like they’ve thrown the entire Christmas fantasy into the space and visitors, again predominantly from Asia, are soaking it all up.
At the Bellagio Fountains, for the hourly water and lights show, you have to defend yourself from hundreds of selfie-stick-wielding tourists from, yes, Asia.
It felt surreal – I had flown nearly 24 hours to be still in Asia? But step outside the Bellagio onto the Las Vegas Strip, and there’s no doubt where you are. Everything is bigger, brighter and louder and well, anything goes.
Neon signs so huge and bright they could light up the entire Bhutan I reckon. Jennifer Lopez competes with Celine Dion for diva-dom. On the strip, I run into cowboys (the annual National Rodeo competition is in town), a Pokemon Go monster on crutches, showgirls in gun-slinging G-strings, a God-fearing man predicting the end of the world to people who are ready to party till then, a Minion not doing much but looking cute and Elvis Presley still loving me tender.
In the cool winter breeze, I inhale the smell of marijuana, not kretek. “Is that what it smells like?” my Singaporean friend asks me. “How do you know?” Some questions are not worth answering.
Bellagio Fountains playing out in front of Eiffel Tower
Buskers from drummers to graffiti artists and singers compete for attention amid the thumping beats of music blaring from bars and restaurants lining the strip. We duck into Paris Las Vegas where we sit underneath Eiffel Tower, sipping cocktails and looking up at a blue sky with fluffy clouds. I am not sure whether it’s night or day but in Las Vegas, it doesn’t matter. This land is made for jetlag.
It’s also made for gamblers, no matter what the literature tells you that Las Vegas today is more than gambling, that it’s also entertainment and dining. The chink-chink of jackpot machines is the backing soundtrack to this city that’s made its fortunes on other people’s and now relies on Asia, particularly China, for its future fortunes.
I am here to attend the Expedia Partners Conference kicking off tomorrow, I am told it’s a record attendance, 4,000-plus delegates. Expedia is celebrating its 20th anniversary with this show to top all shows and so it’s fitting it’s in Las Vegas, the show capital of America.
Amid all the neon signs vying for my attention, my eye picks out one which has come to mean a very different thing at this moment of America’s history – Trump International Hotel, which belongs to the new president-elect, who tweets what he feels, has his own personal jet which is bigger and better than Air Force One and makes phone calls to whoever he wishes at any time.
It’s all so Las Vegas.
