L.A. & Vegas

Farmers Market

Farmers Market

Hollywood

The Grove, just beside Farmers Market

Hollywood

Filming going on in front Hooters in Hollywood

Walt Disney Hall

The famous & weird statue at Ernst & Young Plaza, downtown L.A.

Downtown L.A. from Getty Center

Getty Center

Getty Center

So I went to the U.S. of a about a month ago, more precisely, I was in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.It was my first time in the U.S., and also first time outside of Asia in more than 20 years. I expected to see white men everywhere, but it was easier to spot Hispanics than white men in L.A. And I blended right in with them. I think I was even mistaken for a gang member at one point, but that's another story. The cashiers there speak to me in Spanish so I have to speak to them in English first to give them a head's up that I'm no Latino.

The climate is dry. Coming a country where the humidity is high, this became a problem. My lips started to crack, eyes became red, nose started to bleed and my skin became stretched. And at Venice beach, I thought it was spring, the weather isn't that hot as it is in Malaysia, the last thing on my mind was putting on sunscreen. But when I got back, my face was burned.

The cars over there actually stop for pedestrians. The respect that they give to pedestrians is surprising. The freeway surface isn't that good, compared to what we have in Malaysia. So Samy Vellu isn't 100% incompetent as I would like to think he is. And also, you can turn right on a red light. The reason for that is because their roads are all in a grid. So it's very orderly. You can't do that in Malaysia.

The people are friendlier than I thought they would be. Bus and cab drivers always greet you. You don't always get that here. The public transport system is very good in L.A. The Metro rail and buses all publish their routes online, so it's very easy to plan your journey. The only problem is with the non-Metro buses and also on less popular routes where the buses aren't as frequent.

But one thing that bugged me the most is this culture of "tips". They expect tips for the slightest of things. WTF is up with that? Why can't they just do their damn job. Don't extort people out of their money. Even cab fares need tips. This tip thing is needs to go away.

Maybe I wasn't at the right place at the right time, but in L.A. I expected to see a hot chick at every corner but that wasn't the case. But the percentage does increase as you get closer to the coast line. But in Downtown, not so much. And downtown L.A isn't as busy as I thought it would be. And it's quite small. You can explore the whole downtown area on foot, which I did.

Other than Downtown, I also went on a tour that took me around Hollywood and Beverly Hills. I thought I saw Stan Lee, or at least somebody that looked like him at the Farmers Market. The next I visited the Getty Center. Then on the day after that, my plan was to do the beaches. Take the rail down to Long Beach, then go back up a bit and do a triple of Redondo, Manhattan and Hermosa beaches. But by the time I was finished with Redondo, it was already late, so I didn't get to Hermosa or Manhattan beach.

Long Beach

Redondo Beach

Next, I did a double of Venice and Santa Monica. The first thing that I noticed about Venice/Santa Monica beach is how wide it is. The amount of sand you have to wade through just to get to the water, it's like a 3 minute walk in the sand. This is where da girls at.

Venice Beach

Baywatch on Venice Beach.

Venice Beach

Santa Monica Beach

Santa Monica Beach

It's Hot

And in Vegas, there wasn't much travelling to do becsue the hotel was right there on the strip, so I had time to really watch tv there. I switched through the late night talk shows that they have there. There's Leno and Conan on NBC, and there's Letterman and Craig Ferguson on CBS. Of the 4, I actually like Craig Ferguson the best. Craig Ferguson is Drew Carey's boss, Mr. Wick, from the Drew Carey Show. His talk show is actually very funny. He doesn't have a sidekick to pick things up if the shows gets slow, because it doesn't. It's a one man show, and still he manages to beat the others in funniness. When Letterman calls it quits, he should get Letterman's slot.

Vegas reaches it's peak on Fridays and Saturdays. People start coming in droves on Friday afternoon. They do whatever they went there to do, then leave on Sunday, and go to work on Monday. So it's nice to go for a walk on weekdays when its not as crowded.

The dancing fountains at the Bellagio is reason enough to go to Vegas. And the best part is it's free. It is easily one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. It starts at sunset every night, but they turn it off if it's too windy.

And there's quite a big population of Muslims in Vegas. There are even mosques there, but not on the strip. So, halal food in Vegas isn't a problem. There are halal restaurants and even halal grocery stores. My mom bought some chicken and rice to cook. While there, there was this halal restaurant that served Philly Steak. At first I thought it was a steak as in one big piece of meat, but a Philly Steak is actually a sandwich. What?! I expected a steak and they gave me a damn sandwich?! But the sandwich is actually good. It's filled with little slices of meat with melted cheese together with sliced mushroom, and it's really really good. I wish they had it here in Malaysia.

And I also went to see Ka, a Cirque Du Soleil production. I've always wanted too see a Cirque Du Soleil show ever since I saw a documentary about them on tv. The show was okay, it had it's moments. It was the only Cirque show on discount at the time. Ka is more about the props, stage and special effects and a bit lacking in the actual circus acrobatics stuff, compared to other Cirque shows.

Vegas Strip

Vegas Strip

The newly opened Trump International in Vegas

Encore,Wynn and Palazzo on the Vegas strip

Bellagio Casino

Bellagio dancing fountains.

Protest against income tax in Vegas. It seems that there's no law requiring individuals to pay income tax. It's only for businesses.

Barstow Station. We took the Greyhound to travel between L.A. and Vegas. Barstow Station is somewhere in between.

I can go on writing a lot more about my trip but this is already the longest post on the blog. And it took me a long time to make this post. So it ends here. Plus, nobody reads my blog anyway. The reason I'm late in posting this is because I was waiting to finish editing all the photos that I took on my trip, but there just too many of them. So I'll attach the few good ones that I took, the rest of them will be on Flickr when I've finished editing all of them.