When you first arrive in Las Vegas, it’s like losing your virginity: heaps of neon, people everywhere, a half-size replica of the Eiffel Tower… OK, so results may vary when it comes to first times but our point is that you’re entering hallowed ground. This is, after all, the funnest place on Earth. The only issue we have with Sin City is that our stay was limited to three days, which meant REM sleep took a backseat to interesting life choices and embarrassing conversations with exotic dancers.
DAY ONE
$100 MIILLON NIGHTCLUB, $280 MASSAGE & A $182 STEAK
The first thing you notice about Vegas is how immense it is. Last year it copped almost 40 million visitors and reaped $6 billion in casino revenue. Maybe it has something to do with the fact the place contains six of the world’s 10 largest hotels. We’re staying in the 11th-largest, Aria, which is renowned for its huge, tech- savvy rooms that greet guests by automatically drawing the curtains and turning on the electronics upon entry.
The big question is: once you’ve checked in to your hotel, what’s the first thing you do in Vegas? The correct answer, in this instance, is: get a five-star, $280 massage at the Mandarin Oriental, arguably the most opulent non-gaming casino in the city. It actually turns out to be a great start to our frenetic schedule, as we’d spent the seven days prior boozing our way through LA as if our liver were a sworn enemy (more on that debauchery next month).
As it’s only a short stroll from our hotel we decide to take the main Strip, where we are instantly bombarded by pushy handbill distributors (aka card-slappers, for the noise they make to try and attract attention) handing out pamphlets and glossy cards advertising, “girls direct to you in 20 minutes”.
Then there are the pushers who try to stop you by promoting a nightclub they allegedly have VIP entry passes for that day. One guy gets all up in our face with, “You guys wanna go to a nightclub?” We ignore him and continue walking before he follows with a quick, almost whispered, mumble, “Strip club, suck a titty?” It’s the funniest thing we’ve heard in Vegas so far until the guy agitatedly pacing behind us on his mobile phone blurts, “These guys are really pissing me off. I don’t want to go to no f–king nightclub or strip club.”
We arrive at the Mandarin.
Upon entering the luxury spa we’re greeted by an overly nice, easy-on-the-eyes hostess who tells us to take off our shoes, hands us a pair of comfy slippers, and explains our “journey” begins with this “shoe exchange” – as it will rid us of our worries, since most of them stem from the feet. Who knew? We don’t have the heart to tell her one major worry was stemming from deep within our alcohol-saturated bowels and hand over our shoes.
Spread over two massive floors, the spa is modelled on the “exotic luxury of 1930s Shanghai”. After a tour of the state-of-the-art facilities (including 17 treatment rooms, a vitality pool, and steam rooms) we feel we’re centuries away from the Great Depression and have instead entered the Matrix.
As we sip our calming tea tonic, relaxing on the waiting lounges overlooking the Strip, we do our best not to fall asleep before our treatments. For Dan, it’s the Tao of Man – a therapeutic massage for active men (stop laughing); Santi takes The High Roller – therapy concentrating on the back and face using volcanic stones and aromatic oils (OK, now you can laugh). Our 90-minute session is pretty special in that it would not only soothe the beaten body of an athlete but also someone who’s spent the past few days consuming liquor as if it were an athletic pursuit.
Next stop is a few floors up at Twist by Pierre Gagnaire for some Forbes-Five-Star-award-winning French cuisine. Now, to say this restaurant would seal the deal with a lady friend is like saying Mount Everest is kinda high. If the glass staircase leading up to a gigantic suspended wine loft doesn’t get her, maybe the freaky lighting of 300 gold globes looking as if they’re floating across the ceiling) will do the job. If she’s still unimpressed, tell her to look out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the priceless Vegas view. But in the case of two lonely men like us, we order the $182 Japanese Wagyu steak and are ready to abandon our clothes for a piece of this high-end bovine action.
After dinner we both agree it’d be remiss of us to stop acting like we run this shit, so it’s off to Hakkasan nightclub at MGM Grand.
Here are some things about Hakkasan to consider: it cost more than $100 million to build; it counts Calvin Harris and Tiësto among its resident DJs; and said DJs can reportedly earn up to $300,000 for one show. The dance music scene is gargantuan in Sin City. Describing a clubbing experience is pretty futile, so take those facts on board and please also consider that the female clubgoers are VERY hot, it is VERY loud, and it’s VERY busy. In spite of its size, d-floor space is at a premium the later it gets, so getting there before 11pm is a good move. A foolish move would be leaving the club at 2am, cabbing it to one of Vegas’s premium gentlemen’s clubs (Crazy Horse III), and drunkenly dopping a few grand on drinks and multiple lapdances. By 5am, and with $10 to our names, we miraculously remember that in a few hours we actually have a date with a couple of planes similar to those from the Red Bull Air Race series. F–k.
For the full feature and images grab the January 2014 issue of MAXIM.
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