Allure Of The Seas 2011

Deleted Scenes

2011-09-28T23:26:00.001-04:00

Today, was a special day. Why? Because today Yuanna decided that she would join me in the Blaze night club.

She said she’s never been clubbing with her “cousins” before and I think she wanted to the previous few nights, but was just too tired to do so. It wasn’t just Yuanna who went, of course her appendages went along with her as well, and so did the other “cousins” – Aileen, Karen, Ly, Alfred, and Quenton. So pretty much everyone else over the age of 18 aside from Eric was there. Since this was a 18+ venue, Derrek was not able to join, even if he wanted to.

I on the other hand pretty much went to Blaze every night, so needless to say, I had made some friends there, and of course some of my new friends were present in the club as well.

If you thought Quenton was funny during the day, wait till you see him at night and in the club, he is just as funny, but without words. Quenton doesn’t really dance, he’s one of the wall supporters, who stand by the wall and holds it up, but if you encourage him enough, he will step aside from the wall and ‘break it down’ for a few beats extract a couple of laughs out of you, then stop.

That night at the club there was this one nice looking Asian girl, and when I say nice, I don’t mean polite. I noticed that Quenton kept checking her out while she danced with two of her other female friends. No need to ask, I’m pretty sure he was interested in her and not her friends.

If it wasn’t for Alfred, I would have never been able to talk to the Doctor/Lawyer set, so I felt some ‘Pay It Forward’ attitude was required.

So, I’m standing by the bar with my new friend Allan, he turns to me and asks what I think about those two girls sitting behind us, I tell him that I think they’re okay, but what he actually meant was, “how old do you think they are?” I told him that you have to be at least 18 to get in here, but they’re probably around 20. Then he says ah screw it, let’s go talk to them, and before I was even able to react or object, he sits himself next to one of the two, which happened to be the taller but nicer looking one.

I was only able to do a quick hashtag followed by a WTF in my mind, before I quickly sat down next to the other one. I knew I had to go in with him, couldn’t let him go in alone like that. I had to distract the other one. So we sat down, did the usual small talk, what’s your name, where are you from? Oh, let me guess, you’re Asian, therefore you’re from Toronto right? (A vast majority of the ships Asian’s that week were from the Toronto area).

So anyways, we talk for a bit, then they say they have to go to the “washroom” , so we let them be. We hang around for a bit, exchanging the information that we got out of them. I can’t even remember their names to try and facebook stalk them, even if I wanted to. After that, we head on back to the dance floor.

Hey, I know you! You’re the cute Asian girl’s friend! So Allan and myself are dancing with the three of them, I look at Quenton and signal him on over, and he eventually comes over, followed by Alfred. So now it’s a 4:3 ratio.

The little Asian girl is wild! The way she dances is what defines her, I had no idea what her name was, so eventually I nicknamed her Firecracker. So, the Firecracker is to my right and Quenton is to my left, so now it’s my turn to fake the “washroom” move. I walk up to Quenton, pretend that I’m telling him I’m headed to the washroom, but in reality, I’m pushing him towards my spot.

I’m not too sure what happened between them two, but I recall Quenton telling me that he said she didn’t seem like she was that interested in him, due to the lack of conversation. Eventually 2AM hits and people start heading back to their rooms. Later on Allan tells me that he spoke to them and they’re gonna come out and party with us again on another night. #Nyce. Spoiler Alert: That never happens.

The next night was the Ice Games show, and sitting a couple of rows behind me was the two girls that I chatted with last night, but wait, where is the Firecracker? Since we were a few rows apart and she was with her family, it wasn’t appropriate for me to walk on over and say hi, but instead we exchanged smiles and waves. Dude I am so in there!

Sometime after the show, I’m followed by my shadow, Andrew, he is of course following me. So I take him to the game room to try and see if I can find anyone there to pawn him off to. I wasn’t able to find who I was looking for, but I was able to find someone else, Derrek, he was there with his friend Anna.

I asked them what they were doing there, making small talk, and Anna tells me that they were on the elevator when Derrek saw this girl, that he thought was cute and they just sort of followed her here….to the gameroom. I ask who it is, they point, I turn around and guess who I see? Firecracker!

So as I turn around, she looks up, so we exchange glances and I say Hi! She was there with her parents I think? There was only three of them and they were playing Mah Jong, so her mom asked if I knew how to play in Cantonese and I replied, sorry, I don’t know how to play. Then she just says, okay, then don’t bother us, with a hand flicking motion. I couldn’t help but laugh.

End Scene.

This next scene begins with me headed to my room to change, I turn a corner look up and guess who it is walking in front of me? It’s the Firecracker and her parents. I’m headed to my room, so technically I’m not following them! But I see them enter into a room that is across the hall from me and is like 2 doors down. #SmallWorld

I don’t think we ever saw her or her friends after that, so we weren’t able to exchange info, but here’s what we do know, she goes to Ryerson, she transferred out of a different program after taking it for about two years or so. So despite her childish physique and looks, we think that she’s around Quentons age. I wonder how Quenton’s quest is going…..

Allure of the Seas - Day 8 - Homeward Bound

2011-09-20T21:03:00.000-04:00

I got to bed around 4 in the morning, I wake up and it’sabout 6:30. Eric happens to be semi awake as well, so I ask him what the planfor this morning was, where we are suppose to meet etc. he tells me to meeteverybody on Deck 5 at around 8:30 and that others were going to meet up beforehand for breakfast.

F-that. I’m not making breakfast today, my body simply won’tlet me. So I sleep for another hour and a bit, wake up then pack my bags andget ready. I get down to our central meeting area, say hi to everyone, drop mybag off with them, then quickly head on over to the Park Café to have mySun-Dried Apricot & Craisin Flavoured Cream Cheese bagel spread on one sideand Smoke Salmon Flavoured Cream Cheese spread on the other side, with a sideof coffee.

Once that has been taken care of, I am a happy camper onceagain, and head on back downstairs to meet up with everyone. We all line up andwait to get off the ship, while we’re in line, I’m talking to other people, andit sounded like a whole bunch of them decided to pull an all nighter. WOW! Ihave to drive today, so no thank you!

We finally all make it past the checkout point and thensomeone from my group comes running up to me to inform me that they wouldn’tlet Karen off the ship because she didn’t settle her room bill and that Ericwent with her. Uh-oh, we’re already off the ship, so the only thing we can do,is stand to the side and wait.

Karen had used her Visa, they had informed her that theyweren’t able to make any charges to her card and that she would have a freecomplimentary phone call to her bank to find out why, but when she went up toguest services to try and fix it earlier on during the cruise, they told hereverything was fine, so she just left it at that. Turns out, they weren’treally able to charge her card; luckily she had another credit card on her. Bythe time Karen and Eric made it through the final checkout point, it wasprobably already 9:30 in the morning, and by the time we cleared customs andwalked through the doors back out into the hot Florida sun it was about 10AM.Perfect, just what I had calculated! Our flight wasn’t until 6PM that night, so we had quite abit of time to kill, luckily, this time was factored in before hand and we hadrented 3 vehicles so that we could drive ourselves places. I called the rentalcar company and they sent over two vans that would take us to their car rentalfacility, where we would conclude the paperwork.

Once that was all done, we proceeded to head on over to theGalleria Mall, I did some reading online, and people were highly suggestingthis one, so that is why we chose that particular mall, however, little did Iknow, that the shops weren’t open until noon, and it was only almost 11. So wehad a little over an hour to kill.

Ly and Derrek had an earlier flight than us, so they had tobe at the airport soon, so I dropped them off at the airport, while the othersjust slept in the car. When I came back, I walked inside the mall, and foundthat it was already a buzzing, well mostly the food court, which worked for mesince it offered comfortable seating, air conditioning and food!

There wasn’t much to do, at that time except eat. I went toa place that served chicken! Roasted chicken! They were offering half a chickenwith two sides for about $8 or I could skip the two sides and turn it into awhole chicken for $1 more, needless to say, I opted for the full chicken! But Iguess I wasn’t as hungry, as I thought I was, ‘cause I was only able to finishhalf the chicken, luckily there were others around to help me out.

After lunch we each went our separate ways and walked aroundthe mall until 2PM, then proceeded to head on back to the rental car facilityto drop the cars off and make our way over to the airport. Once we got there wesaw a lot of our fellow cruisers, just sitting there and waiting for thecheck-in gates to open.

Was the rental car a bad idea? Not necessarily. We talked toone family, they paid $25 per person for two hours, to have a cab take them toa mall and drop them off at the airport, the mall opened @ 11, so they only gotin about an hour of shopping time and were forced back to the airport.

We talked to others who also rented a car, and others whopaid about $15 per person to go to the mall as well, but didn’t have a timerestriction, so I’d say it works out about evenly.

After talking to everybody at the airport, we found out thatthe majority of the people went to Saw Grass Mills Mall, because it was thecloser one and that it opened at 11, ugh! If only we knew that everyone wouldbe going there, we would have went as well! Oh well!

The previous night, everyone in our party grabbed theirpassport information and did the online check-in stuff, I grabbed, Karen,Grandma’s, Eric and my own passport that very same night to do the onlinecheck-in as well. I checked in Karen and Grandma first, then proceeded to checkmyself and Eric in, but for some reason the system wouldn’t let me, it wasn’tan error message, it was just a message informing me that it couldn’t be donewithout providing any reason why.

So at the airport, when checking-in, I found out why, wewere put on the standby list, along with several other passengers from thecruise. So this was going to be fun, everyone else on the flight, while Ericand myself sat outside watching the TV screens and listening attentively to theannouncements to see if they called our names. I wasn’t worried though, I knewwe’d make it onto the flight, I even told Quenton that when I walk onto theflight start clapping and try to get everyone else to clap too. Also, if wedidn’t make the flight, then I knew we would be compensated, so I was secretlyhoping for Air Canada flight credits, but in the end, they called our names andwe made it onto the flight and were welcomed with a round of applause.

Of all the ports that we visited, Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico,I would have to say that Mexico was my most favorite port. Why? Because there Igot to use all the Spanish that I learnt over the years from watching TV, eventhough we got ripped off on the booze and food, it was still a greatexperience. Jamaica, I was there a couple years ago, and it was a prettysimilar experience. Haiti, we were just at the beach, and having a wild beachparty, so that wasn't too bad either.

All in all, I would say that this was an excellent andmemorable cruise, it wasn’t the most exciting one, but it was still very funand enjoyable, met a lot of great people, had some excellent food and got somewonderful and cherish able memories.

Allure of the Seas - Day 7 - Final Day @ Sea

2011-09-20T21:02:00.002-04:00

Today is the final full day at sea. Gah! There’s still somuch left to do and so little time to do it all! I still have to go on the zipline and I still have to do the stand up Flow Rider.

I think I woke up around 8:30 – 9 today, which was thelatest I’ve ever woken up on the cruise? Not really sure where everyone elseis, but I check the cruise compass, which tells us what events are going onwhere, and I notice that there’s a Backstage Tour. So I head on over to thePark Café to grab a coffee, and make my way over to the Amber Theatre, sit inthe audience and wait for the tour to begin.

They begin at 9:30 sharp, the “hosts” introduce themselvesand explain their involvement with the shows. Once that has concluded theybegin a question and answer period, a lot of the questions were really goodones. In short, I learned that it is true that some of the performers doperform on multiple shows, i.e. members of the Ocean Aria cast were part of theBlue Planet cast, and members of the Chicago cast were part of the Blue Planetcast. That for Blue Planet, when they had those 4 solo songs during the show,those were sung live, all the other songs were just a recording, of course theywill sometimes use a recording for the live songs as well, if the stars are notfeeling that well.

The performers are contracted and each contract varies, from6 months to about 9 months, currently with the production we saw, the castscontract is for 8 months, they usually move along as a group or a ‘family’,there is a rare situation where someone will leave and pursue otheropportunities. They practice on land for each show, then when they come onboardthey do actual rehearsals, however the rehearsals are done usually late atnight. It takes a very long time to set up for each show, because they have tochange the backgrounds, adjust the lighting and the camera work.

Once the Q&A period concluded, we broke up into twosmaller groups and were given a tour of the backstage; we got to see theircostumes, their change rooms and learnt that they only wash the costumes everyso often, but of course some people sweat more than others, so some are washedmore than others. RCI has a team of seamstresses that they employ, and thoseseamstresses pretty much get flown all around the world, wherever and wheneverthey are needed to alter or fix a costume for a show. The performers don’treally have an understudy, however since they’re all so well trained andexperienced, the majority of them can usually just pick up the missing piecesand continue or sub in if required. In terms of show accidents, there hasn’tbeen any mechanical errors yet, just human errors, but all were minor ones.

Once the backstage tour concluded some people left, and somepeople stayed, I was one of those who stayed, for those of us who stayed, theytook us up to their control tower where we got to see the very expensive 3Dprojector, we learned that they’re currently tinkering with adding 3D effectsinto the live shows. For example, during the Blue Planet show, when they turnthe whole theatre into an aquarium, they would use the 3D technology to makethe actual fishes float around. #Excited!

Once that tour concluded, I once again checked the cruisecompass and found out that there was going to be a Captain’s Corner, a verysimilar event, however this time, it would be the captain and his crew membersanswering questions about the ship. So I made my way over to the aqua theatreto attend that as well.

Once again, very interesting, there I learned that, theydon’t’ re-stock the food at every port of call, they only do it once, at thebeginning of their trip. Based on past experience, they are able to calculatehow much food they will require and they usually have just enough food foreveryone on board, with the remaining, discarded food that people leave behind,they grind that food, but no clue on what they do with it afterwards.

At night time or during the day, when the ship is set on‘cruise control’ it only requires about 3 people to man the boat. The boat hasstabilizers that can be put out if they’re traveling over rough waters, thishelps decrease the rocking of the boat, and also helps the performers duringshows.

Once that concluded, I met up with the rest of my cast overat the Park Café to enjoy our second lunch meal there. While there, I had twocups of the cream of mushroom soup and one of their famous salt bun roast beefsandwiches, I also had a cup of hot coffee sitting out there to cool down, and whileI left my table to go back inside to get my second cup of cream of mushroomsoup, I came out to find that everybody had left and more importantly my coffeethat I had worked so hard on cooling was taken away by the server.

I knew where we were all headed after, the Wipe Out Café formore food, but it just hurt that my coffee that I worked so hard on was takenaway, so I had to start the whole process over again.

After lunch, it was time to take it easy and do a lightactivity, as we had our second dodge ball tournament of the trip coming up @2PM. We made a minor roster change this time, we bounced Eric and replaced himwith a more active, younger, candidate, Derrek.

This time the competition was not a Round Robin like thelast time, this time it was strictly elimination, once your team lost, you weredone for. The Sitting Ducks were up first! I wanted to call our team “I LikeBalls”, however when I registered our team name, some stupid kids around uskept saying it over and over, kinda like mad gab, and laughing at me going, haha, he likes balls. Idiots! They said it so much in fact that theannouncer/host realized what was going on. By having this as my team name, everytime he would make an announcement looking for us, he would be on themicrophone declaring that he liked balls. So that got ruined and I just wentback to the default name of Sitting Ducks.

We were up against a team from New Jersey, I think it wasthe same team that we played during our first tournament but not too sure, longstory short, we lost. So our cruise Dodge ball record is 0 for 3.

I stayed along with some of the others and watched theremainder of the dodge ball tournament unfold, man, there were some shittyteams, we definitely could have taken those teams out, oh well, this will leavesomething to look forward to next time!

Once the tournament concluded, I went back to my room tochange, ‘cause I wanted to go on Flow Rider, I wanted to go on this thing sinceDay 1, but never got the chance, ‘cause the lineups were too long, they werestill long today, but I had absolutely no choice. So I toughed it out, I rodeit all the way up until it was time to go back and get ready for dinner.

But before that at 5:55PM in the Royal Promenade area, therewould be a “surprise” Flash Mob dance experience. It wasn’t really a surprise,since they announced the classes and right before the event started, they eventook over the PA system and announced that something was going to happen. Somuch for a genuine flash mob experience.

After that I quickly made my way over to dinner, andsurprisingly, I was only a couple of minutes late. Once again, we had our final2 hour dinner session and gave our waiters Gio and Dennis a standing ovationand round of applause.

After dinner Alfred and I were suppose to meet up with theDoctor/Lawyer set at one of the clubs, Dazzles and attend their Dancing ThroughThe Decades dance event. However, tonight was also the last night for theComedy show, and I wanted to do that more than meet up with them two. I raninto them on one of the main decks and told them that I was going to go watchthe comedy show instead, and that maybe I’ll see them around later.

It was a good decision, the comedy show was excellent! Theyhad two main comedians, the first guy was easily forgettable, he wasn’tremotely funny and I saw several people walk out, if it hadn’t been for otherstelling me about the comedy show and how the second guy, AJ Jamal, is muchbetter, I would have walked out too, but I hung in there and in the end it wasworth it. This guy was genuinely funny. Once the show concluded we left thecomedy club but stood right outside of it, he came out and started takingpictures with people who wanted one, and he sat down at a bench near us and wejust shot the breeze for a good half hour, we made him laugh, he made us laugh,it was all good. He even gave Quenton some career advice about becoming acomedian.

Once that session concluded, I told everyone that I wasgoing to go up to Dazzles and try to see if I could find Alfred and them, loand behold there they were right there, sitting, drinking and just chatting, soI joined them. We hung out for probably a good hour, before the partyconcluded, we were then going to move the party to another club, Blaze asthat’s where it was suppose to be the “it” spot, but Alfred and the Doctorwanted to go to the casino and play some roulette, but the Lawyer and myselfwanted to go to Blaze instead, we could have easily split up, but then the funand atmosphere would have been ruined, and we all knew it, so no one suggestedit.

So we all went back to our rooms to grab some money andheaded down to the Casino to play some roulette, and me to play some moreblackjack, with the Lawyer quietly standing there watching me play. None of uscame out on top, but it was a good time overall.

We only left ‘cause they closed down the casino, it wasalready 3AM in the morning, wayyy past the Doctor/Lawyer’s bedtime. Alfredstill wanted to go check out Blaze, but we didn’t think anybody would be downthere still, so we just called it a night, since we had to get up earlytomorrow morning to have breakfast and leave the ship.

Allure of the Seas - Day 6 - Viva Mexico

2011-09-19T09:51:00.000-04:00

Today, I woke up with one thought and one thought only. I need to breakup with Andrew! I'll tell him that I think we should start seeing other people and that it's me and not him, and hopefully he won't take it too hard and understand.

Breakfast would be in the Main Dining Room. Why? Because it’s an option and we’ve never eaten there for breakfast before. Same routine applied, eat breakfast, go back to our rooms to change and get ready, meet on Deck 5, then proceed to get off the ship together, and of course once we’re out there, take pictures and put on sunscreen. That was the schedule and I just accepted it.

Once we got into the port there was a lot of shopping to be done, but we didn’t bother with it now, since we knew it’d be there still when we came back.

We stood around for a bit and tried to decide on what we were going to do, there was the Forum Shops that the cruise line was recommending for some good shopping, but after talking to my group, discovered that they weren’t really interested in shopping. Go figure! Okay, so the beach it is then!

We walk towards the cab, I see a guy hold up a sign that reads he can offer rides for 14 people, we had a group of 15, Ly was off doing his own fishing excursion, I approach the guy to find out if he’s willing to take 15 people, he told him that we wanted to go to the beach area, he suggested a place that was about 15 minutes away, (every time one a Mexican, gave me a estimated time, I would add 10 minutes to it, no, it’s not a racial thing, it’s just that I think they shorten the time frame for you to get you to go with them, since you’re working on precious time). He said that for $40 it would include a round trip ride to the beach, entrance to the beach, and snorkel equipment would be included, this sounded like a pretty good deal, except one thing, the cost per person. I think we talked him down to about $30 per person, but still felt that it was just too much. At that point everyone in my group became an expert negotiator, and several people were shouting out different things and all trying to talk to him at once trying to get him to lower the price down, so I just simply walked away.

It wasn’t that I was upset or anything, I just felt that you guys got this and could handle it, I’ll go talk to another Mexican and see what he can do for us and compare. So I walk a little further up and talk to a bloke, I tell him that we want to go to a specific beach, the one the other driver recommended before, just so we would be comparing apples to apples, and he goes, why do you want to go there? That beach is full of rocks, it’s a great scuba diving spot, but not the best beach spot, he then suggests the Palancar Beach. Say’s that it’s a lot better, 5 minutes further though, but same deal, $20 per person, round trip ride, entrance into the beach and snorkel and kayaking would be included! Who knows he could have been working for that beach.

$20 per person sound alright, but the good part is that now we can negotiate and get it even lower, at this point I’m rejoined by my entire group, and we’re all listening attentively to the new information, I guess negotiations with the other guy didn’t go so well?

We talk to Alex, the tour operator guy and try to get him to drop the price down to $15, he said no he couldn’t do it, after some back and forth attempts at haggling, he said okay, he’ll do it for $120 for each van, since there was 15 of us, we would require two vans, some quick math tells us that it works out to $16 per person, okay so $1 higher than our projected mark, but okay, we’ll bite. Done!

So he walks us over to his two drivers and introduces us, coincidentally one of the drivers is also named Alex. He was a nice talkative guy, telling us about the area, asked us if there was any other places we wanted to go, such as shopping, a free tequila factory tour, or to visit some Mayan ruins. Did you say FREE tequila? DONE! I’ll take the Shopping and Tequila for $1,000 Alex! We had charted these two vans for about 4-5 hours, so it was definitely doable.

Once we got to the beach, the first thing they have us do, is to take a group photo of all of us with Sombrero’s on our heads, of course we all knew that they would try to sell us the pictures in the end. After that we get in and notice that it’s a rather small, private and secluded beach and not the cleanest. Not being clean as in the sand not being that pure white sand and the water not being clear ocean blue. But whatever, we’re here, let’s make the most of it.

So we easily find a spot to lay our stuff down. I walk to towards the restaurant and one of the servers ask Can I help you? I simply reply, Cerveza! He says sure and begins to tell me what they have. In the end, I once again order the bucket of Cerveza’s, two Corona’s, two SOL, two Dos Equis, and throw on two bottles of water on top, and we start a tab!

Alex tells us that whenever we are ready for snorkeling or kayaking, just to tell him about it and he’ll set it up for us. Okay, but first let’s play with Wilson. Who’s Wilson? Wilson is a volleyball, did you not watch Castaway?

The volleyball court is small and the sand is sort of rocky, but it’s still playable and okay. We play volleyball probably for about an hour and a bit until I get tired and walk away and go sit with the adults and drink my beers. Shortly after I’m joined by the rest of the group and they tell me they’re ready to go snorkeling! Awesome, I’ll go tell Alex to set it up!

How many of us were there? Alfred, Karen, Sharon, Yuju, Derrek and myself. They sat us down in a little hut asked us what size shoes we wore for our flippers, gave us our goggles and introduced us to our tour guide, no word of a lie, his name was Pedro. Walked us over to a nice spot on the beach, where we were introduced to our underwater photographer, and once again no word of a lie, his name was Alejandro. Gave us life vests that we had to blow up ourselves, told us to put our flippers on and to march backwards, he even brought along a floating mat, just in case one of us gets tired.

So we all swim out there, and every time he sees something worth mentioning he’ll point and tell us to look down, i.e. fish, reef, starfish. He even dove down and brought up a starfish for us to touch and view. We were probably out there for about an entire hour, and this whole time, neither Pedro or Alejandro had life vests on, they were treading water the whole time, and they must have been more active than we were, diving back up and down to take pictures and grabbing starfishes. Incredible!

So after about an hour, we finally make our way back to the beach and return all the equipment.

There was no actual added cost to having a tour guide, all we needed to do was to just tip the guy at the end. I go to my bag to grab my wallet to give the guy a 20. Oh shit! Where’s my wallet? I look through my bag again and can’t find it. I then feel my pockets, oh phew it’s there. Wait a minute, if it’s there and I just came back from swimming, that must mean……SHIT! I had close to $300 in there too, none of the bills were ripped or anything, but needless to say, they were all soaking wet.

At that time it didn’t occur to me to use up all my wet money first, I was just planning to go back to my room, let them all dry out then exchange them in the casino, so Alfred tipped the guy the $20.

We still have few hours to go before we return to the ship, but we’ve all worked up an appetite, so we order lunch. Holy smokes! Lunch was expensive. Right from the get go when I ordered those beers and they wanted $3 a beer, I knew this place was a rip-off, but what can you do? We don’t know our way around Mexico, and we don’t know where to find those great beer prices.

How expensive was lunch? Let’s just say the prices were comparable to what you have to pay in North America. It was almost $10 USD for a plate of three tacos, and of course they give you salsa chips to go with your meal etc. So we ordered a few plates of different stuff, beef tacos, fish tacos, chicken and beef quesadilla’s, chicken fingers. In the end our food bill came out to $129USD. Can you believe that? Lunch in Mexico cost $130 USD! Insane!

Under the direction of the parentals, I paid them with my washed but legit money, they gladly accepted it. Before we left, we also purchased a few copies of the souvenir photo that we took before we entered the place, and of course, paid them with the wet money as well.

So off we go to have a quick tour of the Tequila Factory, where we learn about how Tequila is made and of course sample free Tequila! It’s a small factory in a little village, I suspect that it’s one of the local brands that produce their own and the stuff is mostly sold locally or to tourists like ourselves. At the end of the quick 15 minute tour, we’re given sample cups and we get to sample a variety of different tequila’s, starting off with the lighter and fruitier stuff, then moving on to a chocolate flavored one, a coffee flavored one, and finally on to the good stuff, where it is just pure tequila, we even learn how to enjoy tequila, by inhaling through our noses and exhaling through our mouths.

I don’t think any one of us got drunk off the very limited tequila that we had, but after looking through the pictures, they might have suggested otherwise.

Okay, back into the car for some quick shopping in town as our time was coming to an end. We get dropped off at a high tourist location that the moment you get out of the car, they offer you refreshments, water or booze depending on your choice, and they also give you a free bracelet too. They really know how to lure the tourists in. Everyone just goes on in their merry own way and we just walk around for a bit. I walk and walk, then I stumble upon a store that sells beer. How much for a SOL? $2? Damn, we paid three earlier, okay I’ll take one.

We walk around and I finish my beer, okay, time to pile back in the car and head back to the port for some more shopping and then back on to the ship. While we were walking around on the ports, several times, I had Mexican vendors shout out the word: Pacquiao to me. They'd just go: Pacquioa. Pacquioa. In return, i'd go, no, De La Hoya, and they would just laugh. They must have thought I was Philipino. Dammit, this happened to me the last time, I was on a cruise too!

Time to get ready for dinner and start our nightly 2 hour meal. After dinner, we made our way over to the Amber Theatre to watch Blue Planet, right from the get go, it didn’t look like it would be as spectacular as Ocean Aria or Chicago, so I didn’t even fight my urge to sleep, I just let the sleep come naturally, however every now and again, I would be awoken by applause or a loud bang and I would watch the show. Of all the shows that we watched on the ship, this one was my least favorite one, I just felt that the choreography was a bit amateurish compared to the others and that it was lacking some severe production value. Even though, it had it's own unique and memorable moments.

Finally, the show is over! You know what this means, time for our nightly rendezvous with the Doctor/Lawyer set. But wait what’s this? Only the Lawyer showed up, the Doctor is too tired to hang out? What is this rotating shifts? We spend about 5 minutes standing up talking to the Lawyer, where she quickly updates us on her day, and then says, okay, she’s gonna take off as well. Oh wells.

Today, was Day 6, and having only about 4-5 hours of sleep each night, I was really frustrated today, maybe it was the fact that we got blown off by the Doctor/Lawyer set, maybe it was the fact that I missed out on two events (Mosaic and the Love Quest Show) because I had to baby sit Andrew or maybe I was just simply tired. Either or, I was irritated and had a short nerve, so I didn’t really want to talk to anyone, just in case something would set me off and I snapped at them.

So when we were all sitting at the Bow & Stern having drinks, I chose to sit by myself. Of all the times that I’ve purchased alcoholic beverages on this ship, or heard stories, not once have I ever been carded, but this waitress over at the Bow & Stern bar, decided to card everyone and everyone just complied. I tried to sneak my drink order in and asked for a Corona, but when she asked me for ID, I said forget it. To me this was an absolute insane request. Why? Because we’re all carrying our room cards, which acts as our identification while on the ship, they have different card types and different card codes to distinguish how old you are, plus when they swipe your card in their system, all your info pops up, age, picture, name, etc. So why on earth would you need to see another piece of ID?

Because I couldn’t get my drink from that bar, I just simply walked away, and walked over to another bar, ordered my Corona, and walked back over to where everyone else was. Later I’m sitting there and my Corona is finished and she comes up to me and asks me if I want another one. Yeah, no thanks sweetheart.

What happens when you drink? You need to pee. So I go to the restroom and on my way back, I find a tag along, who is it? It's Andrew. We're walking back towards the group, even though I had no intention of rejoining the group at that time because of my new +1. We walk by the rising tide bar and I see some people, look over in our direction and wave, so I turn to Andrew and say, hey, do you know them? Turns out, they're his family members, his parents, his younger cousins, his uncles etc, they were all having a good time without him!

After Andrew turned around, I noticed that his dad gave me a thumbs up! I have to admit, that thumbs up did hurt a little. To me, it signified that Andrew did have some sort of disability, and didn't have a lot of friends, so I know I set out with one objective and that was to break up with him, but after that incident, I just couldn't find it in my heart to do it.

So we headed on over to Sorrento's where everyone else was gathered, everyone else being our new cruise friends, and we all made the collective decision to go check out the after hours party and party there till we’re all tired and head for bed.

Allure of the Seas - Day 5 - Picture. Picture. Pictures!

2011-09-16T11:31:00.000-04:00

Today, I think I woke up at around 9, had breakfast by myself at the Park Café and then did some exploring of the ship by myself, yes, it’s Day 5 and there is still more exploring to be done!

Afterwards, I think I headed down to the casino because they had double slot points between 9 and 11 am. My intention was to take about $100 camp myself in front of the Video Blackjack machine and play during their promo period to earn points for “free” stuff. Well that didn’t go so well, I ran into my aunt and my Grandma at the casino, hung out with them for the better part of the hour and watched my Grandma play penny slots.

She kept winning the bonus games, which made the game pretty fun! At one point, she ran out of credits, so she inserted another $5 into the machine, however, once you insert more money into the machine, for some reason her previous play settings of $0.01 per line at 40 lines plus the bonus play feature wasn’t remembered, so I was “smart” and told her to hit MAX BET. Whoops! That one little push cost her $4.50. I wish I could have told you that the machine saved my ass by letting her hit the jackpot or at least something, but nope, there was no such luck.

I felt bad, ‘cause under my direction and guidance, I cost her that $5, so I took $5 of my own money and inserted it into the machine for her, yano, to repay her for my mistake. Nothing come of that $5 as well, so we walked away.

As we were walking away, I looked @ my watch and it was only 10:45, so I sat down at the video blackjack machine, played $1 a hand and played until the remaining 15 minutes of the double point promo concluded, and made sure that I cashed out at $5 ahead, to recoup my previous $5 loss.

After this session concluded, I went back up to the higher decks and bumped into Aileen and Quenton, they asked where I was headed, I told them I was headed to the Aqua Theatre to sign up for the Men’s International Belly Flop Competition. As we were going there, I told them of my plan that my intention was not to sign myself up, but to sign Ly up instead. When I got up to register the guy asked me where I was from, what my height was, all easy questions, up until he asked how much I weighed. I was puzzled for a minute, I didn’t know how much Ly weighed, then the guy suggested that I looked about 175, so I said, yeah, that sounds about right!

After this, we all headed up to the Wind Jammer Market place for our buffet lunch, we’ve eaten there for breakfast quite a few times, but never once for lunch yet. The lunch options and food, wasn’t that great. I only had a plate, then left with Alfred and Quenton over to the Wipeout Café where they served, burgers, hot dogs, and tacos! We wanted to try their tacos! It wasn’t too bad. nothing spectacular.

After lunch it was time for the Men’s International Belly Flop Competition, the plan about Ly being signed up was unveiled during lunch. However, when it came time to head on up to the stage, even though they made several announcements over the PA system looking for him, he never went up.

Once the competition had concluded, Ly and I headed down to the Casino for their Blackjack Tournament. I had entered a blackjack tournament on my previous cruise and felt that it was pretty fun, although short lived. There was no exception this time, $20 to enter, you get 500 chips, after 7 hands, the 7 people with the highest scores gets to make it to the final table where they play for the cash prizes.

I can’t seem to win any hands in a blackjack tournament so I can never make the board. After losing out on my first attempt, I decided to try it again, but this time with a more aggressive strategy, since there were people already on the board, and I knew I needed a certain amount in order to make the cut, but to no avail, I did not make the board.

Ly however, made the board on his first attempt with a chip count of 800. They were still accepting entries for people trying to qualify for the next half hour, so needless to say it was still a nail biting experience. In the end, his score wasn’t bumped and he was able to make it to the final table, where he busted out within a few short hands.

After my casino adventure for the day had concluded, I needed to get out and get some sun, since I probably spent about a good 4 hours in the casino that day. I went back up to my room to change to go ride on the flow rider, but when I got there, the line was packed, so I decided against it. So I wanted to go do some rock climbing instead, and to do rock climbing, I needed the proper foot wear, so back to my room to change, which was all the way across the ship!

By the time I got to the rock climbing wall, a good 45 minutes had elapsed since I last left Ly in the casino, and much to my surprise, he was there at the rock climbing wall as well, with Sharon.

After rock climbing, I was headed back to my room to shower and change for dinner, since tonight was formal night number two, and you know what that means! More professional photos!

As I was riding the elevator back to my room, the elevator stopped at the 6^th floor, which is where the gym was, I had only previously taken a quick tour of the gym, however, it seemed like I was experiencing a calling, since the elevator just stopped at the 6^th floor and no one got on or off, so I quickly hopped off, and spent a quick 10-15minutes in the gym.

After that, I finally went back to my room to shower and change, the time was probably only about quarter after 4 right now, and dinner, as usual, was not until 6PM. However, the parentals wanted professional photos to be done so we were all told to be ready and meet them at 4:45 to begin our photo session.

Holy! We spent the entire hour and 15 minutes taking photos, then finally made it to the Main Dining Room for our dinner, tonight was Lobster night, so pretty much all you can eat lobster, some people had two lobsters and a select few even went up as far as three lobsters!

Okay, dinner’s done, now what? Free time? Nope! You guessed wrong, more pictures! Dubai had booked another photo shoot session for 8:45, so we couldn’t go off on our merry ways. So we probably ended up spending about a good three hours just standing around and taking photos that day, before and after dinner, which made it seem like a 5 hour dinner session. You know you’ve spent enough time taking pictures that day when both Yuanna and Yuju are tired of taking photos!

Once photos were finally done, some of us went back to our rooms to change, i.e. Me. While others kept their attire. Next up on the agenda was to go watch the Ice Games! Ice Show. In this show, they take the classic board game of Monopoly and bring it to “life” on stage. Of course they create their own version of it, so instead of the typical Monopoly properties, they have you “land” on restaurants/shops that are part of the ship.

After the ice show, it’s time for Mosaic, they’re a five man vocal collaboration group where they “sing” but they don’t use any instruments except for their vocal cords. However, this show is not for Alfred and I, since we have setup a rendezvous with the Doctor/Lawyer set up in the game room.

So we head there only to discover that the Doctor showed up and the Lawyer is too tired to hang out. But whatever, we still hang out and try to talk about our day and what we have planned for tomorrow in Mexico. There’s the fear of running into Andrew, both in Alfred and my head, so Alfred comes up with the great idea of trying to move the conversation over to a bar area, hoping that Andrew won’t look there.

So we leave the game room and come across a fancy Champagne & Martini Bar. Shortly after we sit down, I see Derrek and his friend Anna walk by, so I tell my group that I have to go to the bathroom to be excused. Reason being is that I wanted to find Anna’s sister, Lan and Linh, ‘cause we were sitting in a pretty exposed area of the bar and I knew that Andrew would find us sooner or later. So I needed a backup plan.

They tell me that they haven’t seen them around yet, so they don’t know, damn, so I proceed to walk to the Sorrento’s Pizza place, ‘cause that’s where usually the group of people gather, hoping to run into them there. I run across some people, but not the people whom I’m looking for. Oh well, back to the Martini bar I go.

I get back there, try to rejoin the conversation, this is when I learn that the Doctor is from Shanghai and the Lawyer is from WuHan, a province in China? Shortly after I join them, I’m joined by my shadow, Andrew. Dammit! I knew he would find me. So I try to engage him into a light conversation, still hoping that the Doctor doesn’t notice how awkward he is, dammit, this isn’t working. Hey Andrew, let’s go for a walk to find others. I head back over to Sorrento’s Pizza place where I had seen others and stand there with them for a bit. That’s when Allan notices the scheming look that I have on my face and he knows I’m up to something, so I tell him what’s going on and what my plan is. Luckily he fully understands the situation. Phew! So he starts talking to Andrew, and tells him that Mosaic is playing and they do really good beat boxing, since Andrew is from New Jersey and likes that kind of stuff as well, so somehow Andrew goes there by himself to check out the show, and I thank Allan for his help and head on back over to the Martini bar.

So once again, I try to rejoin the conversation and boy is it a depressing conversation, Alfred is talking about all of his past failed relationships and how the next one he’s going into is going to be “the one” and he has learned that the Doctor’s current boyfriend is “the one”. So this is a pretty boring conversation, and shortly after I’m rejoined by Andrew once again! What is up with this guy?

I thought you were suppose to be at the Mosaic show? He says yeah, he was there for a bit, but it wasn’t anything special. So I take him out of the Martini bar, and I say, hey, let’s go check out the Card room and see if anyone is in there. So we go, nope, no one we know is there, just Derrek and Anna hanging out once again. So we head on back out over to Sorrento’s to see who is there now. My sole objective of the night was to pawn Andrew off to Linh and Lan. Why those two? Because they usually have a big posse hanging around them, and I knew that if I were able to find them, he would latch onto them instead.

So we’re back @ Sorrento’s and Allan gives me a big WTF look, like why are you back here, but he fully understands, still no Lan and Linh, so I say to Andrew, let’s go check out Mosaic, I wanted to see it too, might as well try to catch the last bit of it. And the last bit of it, I did catch. We walked in and they were singing their very last verse and after that it was applause and we just left.

Alright, back to Sorrento’s we go, might as well just stand there with a group of people that I can stand and relate to, but oh, wait, what do we have here? Lan and Linh, no kidding, I walk right up to them, right past their posse, without acknowledging any of them, and I give Lan a hug. I have never been so happy to see her before.

They both were like WTF are you doing? Why did you bring him here? Of course I had to play dumb and say that I had no idea that they would be here and that he would stick on to them like fly on shit. I don’t know exactly what happened, but all I know is that my plan worked out nicely, as I was talking to them, Andrew was nowhere to be found, he was walking around with the remainder of her posse.

So when they were distracted mid sentence in a conversation of their own, I just ducked out and went back to the Martini bar. I was probably able to join the last 10-15 minutes of the conversation, before the Doctor informed us that she was getting pretty tired, no kidding, you think you’re tired? I’ve been walking back and forth this entire ship for the past hour, baby sitting Andrew and you’re tired? Okay, so we say our goodbyes and set up another meet time tomorrow night.

By this time, the others had finished watching the Mosaic show and I was just briefing them on my nightly events.

So we're all standing by Sorrento's Pizza Place, if you haven't figured it out yet, this is the place to be, kinda like the main hallway in your high school where everyone hangs out. Well hey, look who it is? It's the Doctor. Turns out, after we left the bar, she went for a glass of water and was just heading back to her room, but since we were all standing there, she stood there with us and chatted for a bit longer.

The others knew what to do, they faded into the background, found seats and just watched. So it's Alfred and I, standing there with the Doctor and we're conversing. We're standing, we're exposed, want to guess what happens next? Yup! You guessed it! Andrew shows up out of no where. Great! More baby sitting!

So I ask him, hey where are the others? (Others referring to Linh/Lan and their posse) He tells me that he doesn't know, they went off to do something. At this point, Quenton can't take any more of this, so he gets up from his seat, approached Andrew from behind, puts both hands on his shoulders and says 'Come with me, we need to talk', very assertively, might I add. Kinda like a bouncer tossing a guy.

So they go off and have their chat, five minutes later Quenton comes back, safe, and without Andrew. Alright! Way to go Quenton. Ten minutes more pass by and I feel someone standing next to me. I'm too scared to look, I don't even have to look and I already know who it is, it's Andrew. He turns to me and says, Quenton said you were busy, you don't look very busy. Facepalm!

I was at a loss for words at that moment. So I just continued to make some sort of small talk with him, while Alfred was talking to the Doctor. Next thing I know, Sharon and YuJu come up to Andrew and myself and introduce themselves to Andrew. That was a bitter sweet moment for me. I thought it was cute how they came up to try and help out, looks like everyone was trying to do their fair share. It was also hard to accept at the time because it felt like the group was pimping off Sharon and Yuju.

So I know how this works, they distract him, by bringing him over to the table where everyone else is sitting. Really guys? I mean, I know you're trying to help out, but introducing him to the group as a whole, is that really the best idea? I mean now he'll never leave!

I don't really know what happens next or what they talk about, but all I remember is that once we're done talking with the Doctor, which was probably about another ten minutes later, I turned around and Andrew was no where to be found....

Allure of the Seas - Day 4 - Breakfast At Tiffany’s

2011-09-15T09:14:00.001-04:00

Okay, well Tiffany wasn’t around, so we went to Johnny’s instead. Once again the plan was to meet for breakfast before getting off the ship, since the gangway to get off for Jamaica wouldn’t be open till about 10:30.

I woke up, looked @ the clock, shit! It’s already 8:30. We’re supposed to meet @ Wind Jammer at 9 for breakfast. Wait a minute. Wind Jammer again? I’ve already eaten breakfast there twice! How about having breakfast @ Johnny Rocket’s instead? Breakfast is free there; only lunch and dinner do they want a cover charge.

So I call up Aileen and Quenton, luckily they pick up and agree with the revised location change, we decide to divide and conquer, split up the phone calls and we’ll each call a bunch of people to tell them about the changes. After a few quick phone calls, neither one of us has much success in contacting people about the plan change. Oh well, off we go still.

I hop in the shower for a quick rinse, and make my way over there, some of the others (Aileen, Quenton, Karen, Ly and Eric) are already there and have ordered, I’m informed that the kitchen will close at 9:30 which is in 5 minutes, so I quickly order my orange juice, coffee, pancakes and bacon strips.

About 10 minutes into our meal, Alfred and YuJu show up, Alfred’s already eaten, but YuJu hasn’t, we tell her to quickly check the kitchen, but nope, they’re closed, so off to Wind Jammer she goes. Suckah!

We then make our way back to our respective rooms to get ready, I learned my lesson this time, to not get ready before breakfast, plus, I wouldn’t have had time anyways.

We finally make it off the ship and it’s probably about 11 by now, and what do you know? We have to stop and apply sunscreen on, do you people never learn? So as they apply sunscreen on, I quickly wander around the port for a bit, just browsing and taking it all in. I find an information booth and I inquire about Dunns River Falls, as some had expressed interest in doing it, the lady at the booth tells me that a round trip cab ride will be $35, and admission and water shoe rental will be about another $40, so all in all about $75.

So I go back to the group and report my findings to them. Too much is going on, nobody is listening to me. After probably about a half an hour later, we finally all split up and part ways. Alfred, Yuanna, YuJu, Sharon, Quenton, Karen and Eric all make their way to the taxi stand to hire a cab that will take them to Dunns River Falls. Long story short, they were able to negotiate and get it down to $40 per person.

The adults, said that they would just stay within the port quarters, do their own thing and explore, in the end they ended up hiring a taxi van to drive them around town for $30 each, when they could have easily hopped on a trolley, for $15 each, I guess they wanted the added benefit of AC.

Meanwhile, Ly, Aileen, Derrek and I, hoped on a bus, that would take us to Doctor’s Cave for some snorkeling. This bus carried other passengers and would be making several stops along the way. We were informed that it was $20 for the ride and $5 for admission into the beach area, since none of us had any small bills, we voted that Ly would pay first and then we would pay him back. As we were getting off the bus, Ly handed Dion (our tour guide) a $100 bill, and told her that it was for all four of us, little did we know that, we were only suppose to hand her the cab fare and that the admission fare was separate. So when we got up to the gates, we had to pay $5 again. We thought that we were suppose to pay Dion the admission fee as well since, the people who got off at the previous stop, paid her and she came back with wristbands. Either we did it wrong or she ripped us off. Either way, we’re out five bucks, each!

So after paying admission, we walk in, and see that it’s a nice beach area, much nicer than the one we visited in Haiti, no rocks in the water. Within walking a couple feet on the sand, I’m approached by a girl, a working girl, no, not that kind of working girl, she’s a waitress, and she’s trying to sell me drinks. So I inquire about the Jamaican beer Red Stripe, I think it worked out to like $3 a bottle if purchased individually, but $2.50 a bottle if I purchased a bucket of 6. Not much of a deal, but still, that’s a no brainer, hit me! I’ll take the bucket and a bottle of water for the youngin. She delivers too!

So we find a nice spot on the beach, we make our way over to the lifeguard tower, we rent snorkel gear, $5 each, and begin to make our way into the water. I’m sitting at the beach with our stuff, waiting to collect delivery on my goods, when the three of them come running back. What’s the matter? The water is too deep; we can’t make it out there. We’ll need to rent life jackets. That’ll be another $5.

Okay, so we rent life jackets. And off we go again, into the water. I’m in the water, trying to get the hang of this, I look up and the others are already 200 feet away from me, how is that even possible? I just got my head wet. I accidentally took in one big gulp of salt water and was like this is it, forget it, I’m going back to the beach to drink!

So, I go back, drink about 1.5 bottles of beer, then make my way out to the water and try again. This time I calmed my breathing down and was able to make it out much further, further to where the reef and the fish were. At one point while we’re out there, a girl comes up to us and asks if that big shadow underneath is a shark, Ly tells her no, that it’s just a reef, and she goes okay good. So I tell her, if it was, we probably wouldn’t be able to save her. I don’t think she got it. I don’t think you got it either. See, we were floating around out there with life jackets on, her, on the other hand didn’t have one and was just swimming around freely, hence she is a much better swimmer than we are. I thought her swimming skills were pretty impressive.

So after probably a good hour of snorkeling we head back to the beach return our equipment and walk our way over to the restaurant area to find some food. Our bus was suppose to come pick us back up in about an hour, so we had a bit of time. What do we want to eat? Jamaican patties of course! I opt for the beef one, others had chicken, some even had both! After enjoying some nice Jamaican food we go back outside and wait for our bus to arrive.

Back on the bus, we’re all still feeling upset that we each tipped our tour guide $5 each, when we could have probably just tipped her $5 for all of us, so we decided to make her ‘work for it’. Not by dancing, but by singing, we asked her to sing a couple of songs, and then asked her to tell us some information about her home country, once we ran out of material, we just sat quietly until we got back to the port.

Of course when we got back to the port, it wasn’t time to head back onto the ship just yet, although it probably would have been a good idea if you wanted to ride the Flow Rider with little lineup. We still had some shopping to do. So we walked around the little shops, shopping for some hand carved souvenirs. Ly bought a crab, whose legs can be taken off and put back on, so kind of like a transformer figurine. He also bought a turtle that looked like it was high, based on it’s eyes, and later on went back to the same stall to buy another crab, to make it a pair.

After we were done shopping, I had bumped into Ray from the ship, and he told me that he spent about 2 hours at an Internet café, from then on, my mission was to find the Internet café! So we walked outside of the port, by ourselves. Gasps! And asked around for an internet café, within a couple hundred meters of stepping out of the gate, we were offered drugs, but they weren’t hassling us or anything, a simple not thanks with a wave was sufficient. Eventually we got to a gas station, where we asked the attendant, who told us it was just up the street, while here Derrek paid $1 for a bottle of pop.

We got to the internet café, I asked the girl behind the counter how much for an hour…of internet, sicko. And she told me four dallas, so I paid the four dollars and we each took turns going on the internet checking our emails and such. While I was waiting for the others to finish, I noticed that they had a fridge with Red Stripe in it, so I asked her how much and she told me $2, awesome! I’ll take one!

I suspect that if we wandered even further into town, Red Stripe would have been $1, but we didn’t have the time or the desire to do so. Once this was all done, we wandered back into the port, as we were walking back, Derrek stepped in some sort of sewage and had to use the Jamaican branded Wata to wash his feet off.

Shortly after that, we ran into the others, and of course immediately swapped success stories, we learnt that the others also had patties and Red Stripe, however they paid $3 and $5, respectively. We only paid $2 for each patty and $2.50 for each red stripe. (Pssst. On the Cruise they only charge you $4.75 for Red Stripe, but then you gotta pay 15% tip as well).

The other’s just got back and were gonna wander around the markets for some more, while the rest of us just headed back onto the ship.

I think I just headed back to my room to shower, and get ready for tonight's 2 hour feast as well. Of course, when I was ready, I swung by the casino and found out that it was closed during this port. Oh well, so I probably just walked around for a bit until it was time for dinner.

During dinner a sort of trivia battle had somehow emerged, it was like our Tour Guides graduated from the same Tour Guide School, and were told to provide us with certain facts, and we were quizzing each other and trying to outdo each other with our newly acquire Jamaican knowledge.

After dinner we probably just hung around for a bit until the Battle of The Sexes show began. The first challenge, asked for about 4-5 volunteers from each sex, and they were each given a card with a number on it. The host would ask a question and the answer would be in the form of a number, if you’re holding onto that number, you would have to run out and arrange yourselves in that order of the number in order to win.

The next challenge after that was to have a representative from each sex stand there, while members of your sex blew up balloons and stuffed your shirt with as many as possible. The guys won this challenge, easily!

The task after that was a Family Feud challenge, where, once again a representative from each sex would come up. Representing the males this time was our very own Alfred. Since there was no buzzer, you had to make the noise of your favorite animal, the lady chose a Dog as her favorite animal, and when the question was posed to Alfred, he said Car. Errrr…, they said animal, but I guess he was just doing it to be funny.

Once the noises were settled, they were given the question: What is dry, but becomes wet when used? They each had to give their own answer first, and afterwards they would then be able to poll the audience. After polling the audience the first chance to answer was given to Alfred, when asked the question, he responded with sponge. I think sponge was the correct answer and it made it onto the board, so now he was given another shot at answering the question, and what does he say for his second answer? Sponge! WTF? All the males in the room were in an uproar, I was talking to a guy up on the balcony as this was happening, but I didn’t want to tell him that I knew Alfred. I think the host even asked him if he was sure and he said yes, then the host proceeded to say: Will sponge be up there twice? Nope! I don’t recall what the next answer he gave was or whether it was correct or not, but I think the males won this challenge. From that moment on, Alfred was known as the Double Sponge Guy.

The next challenge, they had a chair set out on each side, the objective was to get as many people touching the chair as possible, of course girls on one chair, guys on the other chair. Since the guys were all strong and mighty, they lifted the chair up high, and I thought for sure they would win the task, given all the extra room underneath it, but much to my surprise, the guys lost that challenge by a count of one. I guess because the girls are smaller in size, so they can fit more people around there, they even had one or two girls standing on the chair.

After that was another round of family feud, and after that was the final round where you had to use the volunteer to help you pop a balloon and each balloon had to be popped in a different position. It was very entertaining to watch and it was also very nerve wracking. The ladies went first, and they encountered some difficulties with one of the balloons, it was blown up too small, so it wouldn’t pop, and I thought for sure the guys had this in the bag.

Then when it was the guys turn, we were doing fine, all up until the very last guy, he couldn’t tie his friggin balloon and cost us a lot of time, at that point it was very nerve wracking to watch. But in the end the guys managed to triumph and win the “trophy”.

Okay, enough of that, time for bed kids! Alfred and I have to go meet the Doctor and Lawyer set for drinks on the Rising Tide Bar. The Rising Tide Bar is a small bar that every half an hour goes up and down between 2-3 decks, kinda neat. Since we all wanted to experience this bar, we decided to meet up there rather than our usual card room meeting place. So from there, we just sat and talked about our days and stuff. Then we all pretty much just call it a night.

Allure of the Seas - Day 3 - Where My Haitian's At?

2011-09-14T11:49:00.000-04:00

Today, we’re docking in Haiti, so what was the plan? Wake up @ 7, be changed and ready to go, meet up @ Wind Jammer with everyone for breakfast @ 7:30?

Okay, so we manage to get the breakfast part right, but hello? We said changed and ready to go. So we all sit there and wait for others to finish eating while others go back to their rooms to change, and while we wait, we eat some more, hey we’re at a buffet.

We finally make it out of the restaurant and meet on Deck 5. Even though its 9AM, the elevators to get to the gangway are still pretty full, I guess that’s what you get when you sail at full capacity? So some of us decide to take the stairs and others decide to take the elevator. Little did we know that you can get off at either the second floor or the third floor, so needless to say, we were waiting on two different floors. Eventually we realized that we were waiting for awhile, so we decided to look, lo and behold, some of us were already outside waiting.

So we all finally get out, pull out our cameras, take pictures and videos documenting the whole process, walk along the docks for about 10 minutes, reach the island, then we stop again. What for? Some of us need to apply sunscreen. I guess sunscreen wasn’t part of the ‘be ready’ statement, or maybe they just didn’t think it would be sunny outside.

It probably takes us another 15-20 minutes to walk till we find an acceptable place with nice shade on it, we have a Haitian working for us, he lays out some sun chairs for us and we tip him five dollars and thank him for his time.

After we’re all settled in, we go play in the salt water for a bit, Sharon comes back with two rafts, a game of tag is ensued. We play that for a bit until everyone is tired, get out of the water, go walk around for a bit, have some lunch, then explore around some more. The beach was nice, however the water area was full of rocks, so you had to walk very carefully. We later found the Crown & Anchor Society are of the beach (Crown & Anchor Society = More Privileged Members $$) and by the looks of it, their beach was a lot nicer.

At 1PM there was a volleyball competition that we wanted to take part of, but I guess we showed up too late, and were directed to the other court. We played a few games, for a good hour or so. This is where the joke about Alfred blocking a girl and when he sends a girl to go get the ball for him originates. When the ball goes out of bounds, it goes out of bounds! And into a very rocky area, Alfred ran to go get the ball, but then I guess the ground was too hot or too rocky, or both! And he ran back, that’s when a girl, decided to show him how it’s done and ran after the ball.

After a tiring hour and a half of volleyball, we headed back to our chairs. I think we went exploring some more? Not sure where everyone else was, but it was Quenton, Alfred, YuJu and I exploring the markets. This is the part where Alfred puts sunscreen on his face, but doesn’t apply it properly, and has sunscreen all over his face; he even causes one of the Haitian market vendors to laugh at him.

Quenton, Alfred and I are standing outside of the market, while YuJu is inside the market, a vendor waves Quenton over by saying: My friend, I got something for you. Being the nice guy that he is, he complies and follows the vendor about 400 feet into his stall where he is trying to sell Quenton paintings. Meanwhile other vendors are trying to wave Alfred and myself over, but we just simply stay put and decline the invitations.

Finally, YuJu is out of the market and we all begin to make our way over to Quenton to rescue him. I knew he’d be safe ‘cause he didn’t’ have any money on him. As we’re walking these guys are trying really hard to get us to go inside their little stalls to shop for some stuff, at one point, the guy even switches to Mandarin and goes ‘Nee How’ to YuJu. Brrrrrap!

One guy sees that I’m wearing my Jamaican necklace and goes, I’ve got something you’ve never seen before, and tries to sell me more necklaces, I tell him I’m good and stroll on by.

We do a quick lap around the market, run into the others, and head back to the beach together.

There is a water playground right behind us, I make a beeline for it, to rinse myself off of the sand and salt water and soon everyone follows suit. After probably spending about half an hour playing on the playground, we make our way back onto the ship.

The intention was to go hit the pool and ride the flowrider while others were still occupied at the beach. I don’t know what everyone else did or what I did once we got back on the ship, but I just remember walking by the flowrider machine and apparently everyone had the same idea as me and the line was just packed! I think I just went back to my room to shower and get ready for dinner and to hit the casino before dinner.

The plan was to meet Ly by the 8th floor elevators around 4:45PM. We made that plan around 4:15PM. However, as I was walking towards the elevator from the pool area, and as soon as I turned the corner, and elderly looking Asian woman saw me, and immediately spoke Mandarin to me, asking me where she could find hot water. My Mandarin is not great, but I could understand her, plus in one hand she had a cup with some tea leaves and in her other hand she was holding a slice of pizza.

Getting to the hot water was easy, all you had to do was walk straight, but here comes the challenge, how do you say that in Mandarin? I just kept repeating "You want hot water?" and then just pointed in the general direction, hoping that she knew what I was talking about, but nope! So after several finger pointing attempts, I said, okay, let me help you, follow me. So I guided her to the 8th floor Park Cafe and pointed her to the hot water container, filled up the cup with tea leaves for her, turn around and she has another cup in front of me. I guess she wants that one filled with hot water as well. Okay. There. That's done. Then she pulls out a small water bottle out of her purse and wants more water, might as well right? Done. Wait, that makes, one bottle, in your purse, two cups of hot water and a slice of pizza, how are you going to carry it?

Another quest? Fine. I will help you once again. So I help her carry the two cups of hot water to her room, set it down on the floor as she opens her door and I say my goodbye, and as I'm leaving she thanks me in Cantonese. Facepalm!

It never even occurred to me to try and say what I was trying to say earlier in Cantonese, but by the sound of it at the end, it didn't really sound like she spoke Cantonese, just a few key phrases. I looked at my watch and go shit, I only have 15 minutes to shower and meet Ly by the elevators, I hurry, but I make it!

After our standard 2 hour dinner we headed over to the skating rink to register for skating, each skating session was only 30 minutes long, with a few minutes here and there for clean up and stuff, and each session would only house a max of 50 people. I have no idea how they manage to keep the ice in that area from melting, since the room was not cold at all, and it's such a small rink that I doubt they would have a Zamboni on board. I did notice that there were a lot of dents and marks in the ice though.

While on the ice, several of us brought our camera's with us, to take pictures while we skated. We started posing and snapping pictures randomly, then about ten minutes into the session, we hear over the speakerphone, that cameras are not allowed. #SoMuchForThat

Another large group that was skating with us, had the terrific idea of starting a congo line, or a train on ice, if you will. They probably skated around for about a lap and half before we once again heard over the microphone that congo lines are not allowed. #SoMuchForThat

Several of us agreed that we were going to do the congo line at the very end of the session, since it would already be the end of our session and they wouldn't be able to kick us off. So when that final minute approached, Allan, started the line, and I tacked on, we skated for about half a lap, I looked over my shoulder and it didn't seem like anyone else was joining us and it felt kind of homo so I let go. #SoMuchForThat

I had to have met Andrew before this day, because I remember seeing him as we were headed to the lineup, I saw him and did a quick spin around. Later on during the skate, I saw him sitting in the crowd, just watching me……

Who is Andrew you ask? He was just this 18 year old brown kid who took a liking to me and just kept following me around. I have no idea where he came from, all I know is that one day he just showed up and kept following me around, like I was his BFF. What was wrong with him? I don’t know exactly, I know he was awkward, was very quiet and would just follow you around.

After skating, we headed back up to the game room. Normally, I’d be against it and not go, ‘cause there was so much else to do on this ship, but I ran into a couple of nice people last night and was secretly hoping to run into them again.

We walk in and lo and behold, there they are sitting right there, so Alfred and I just plop ourselves down on the couple of spare chairs and begin conversing. We talk about our day, what we did, what they did etc, play the game for a bit, then tell them that we were gonna go watch the Love and Marriage show and asked if they wanted to go watch too. The ladies, yes Alfred included, went back up to their respective rooms to grab a sweater because they were worried that it was going to be cold, and then we agreed to meet up again, right outside the door.

Our Cruise Director Allan Brooks, was the host of the show and he made the show! Of course you had to have willing participating couples to go up and play their game, but you need a good host to play off their responses and make good jokes out of it.

After the show I think we all decided to head on back up to the card room to play a quick round of Mad Gab, since we all really liked that game. We start talking and playing for about 10 minutes and guess who just shows up out of the blue? Andrew, he just invites himself in, and sits on down, and just sort of quietly observes and makes little comments here and there just to let us know he’s still around. Comments such as: Oh, that was a good one. Oh, I almost had that one. He also tried to tell me that I was a really good skater......awkward.......

I don’t think we ever really introduced him to the Doctor and Lawyer couple. I think this is the night when we found out what the two girls occupations were, one was a Doctor in training and the other was aspiring to be a lawyer. I had to be briefly filled in on the details later because I was “talking” to Andrew. I didn’t want him talking to those two girls, just in case they discovered how awkward he was and he ruined it for us.

Shortly after the game of Mad Gab, the Doctor and Lawyer returned to their quarters, yes, from then on, they were known as the Doctor and Lawyer set. Why? Because we couldn’t remember their names.

After they left, I was still stuck talking to Andrew and Alfred had moved on back to the other tables where all the spectators were sitting and went over his thesis paper on what a small world this is, later more commonly known as his ‘What Are The Chances’ paper.

Allure of the Seas - Day 2 - Relax. You're on Vacation!

2011-09-11T17:51:00.001-04:00

Relax? Are you kidding me? I’m on vacation! I only sleep fora few hours each night I’m on vacation. Went to bed late last night, woke upearly, only got around 4-5 hours of sleep, and this was pretty much the sameroutine each night.

Since we didn’t get a chance to eat at the Windjammer buffetyesterday, we all decided that we would meet there and eat breakfast together.Then some of us just split up into groups and wandered around some more untillunch, remember it’s a really big cruise ship!

Met up for lunch again at the Park Café, then once was thatover and done with, he all headed on over to the Aqua Theatre to watch theWorld’s Sexiest Man Competition. They had contestants and judges from all overthe world! In the end, not one but two champions were crowned!

After the competition was over, they were holding a MichaelJackson Line Dance class, some weren’t interested and some were, so we partedways once again. We were there for about 45 minutes and did three differenteasy routines to three different MJ songs.

After that was finished, I headed down over to the RoyalPromenade for the Flash Mob Dance class, I was only able to stay for about 20minutes of the class though, as I had to go get changed for a Dodge ballTournament @ 4. I didn’t even know that were was going to be a dodge balltournament today, until I ran into some new people last night who were tryingto recruit for their own team and told me about it. From that moment on, it wasthe event that I was looking forward to the most throughout the day.

Several teams signed up, I had Ly, Quenton, Aileen, Alfredand Eric on my team, and we were called Sitting Ducks. It was a round robintype of tournament, which meant you got to play more than once and you had towin a certain number of games before moving on to the next round. Long storyshort, we played two games and lost them both, which meant that we wereeliminated from the tournament. Needless to say, it was extremely devastatingfor us, given all our dodge ball experience.

By the time that experience finished it was probably quarterafter five, so I probably just went back to my room to shower and change up fordinner, as tonight was a formal night and we were to look our bestest! Nolobster tonight, but they did have lobster bisque!

After our standard two hour dinner we were all hangingaround the stairwell, trying to figure out what to do and taking pictures, whenAlfred or someone wanted a group picture of all of us. A girl walked by andAlfred missed the opportunity of asking her to take a picture for all of us, heexpressed his regret by saying “damn, okay, next pretty girl that walks by”,then when she walked by again, I pointed her out to Alfred and that’s when hepopped the question of asking her to take a picture of all of us.

After that, some of us split and some of us lined up to takeprofessional photos in our formal wear. By the time that was finished, I had toget quickly back to my room to change into casual attire for the OceanAriashow, which was outside, so it was pretty humid. If you don’t show up on timeto claim your reserved seats, they give it away. Makes sense. Well I didn’tmake it in time, after changing, so I had to go upstairs to the higher leveland stand there to enjoy the show. No complaints though. It was a really goodshow! There was some high dives, some aerobatic movements, a combination of high dive and aerobatic movements, you get the picture.

After some more wandering around, we somehow ended up in thecard/game room. Someone probably wanted to play wolf. I had a headache thatnight, so after sitting down and playing one very long game of chess with Quenton, which lasted an hour, Iwas surprised to find out that my headache had went away! Once that game wasfinally finished, I walked over to the other table, where the others were justquietly doing Sudoku or answering some trivia questions.

This is when Alfred asked me if one of those two girlsbehind us was the one who took the picture for us; I told him yes it was. Thatwas when he just strutted himself over, asked her if she was the one who tookthe picture for us, introduced himself and asked if him and his friend couldsit down and join them in the board game that they were about to play, Mad Gab.So we sat down and introduced ourselves, and turns out none of us had any ideahow to play the game Mad Gab, so we talked about random stuff, like some of theshows we’ve seen, our experiences thus far, plans for tomorrow’s excursionsetc, and eventually we got to reading the box and learning how to play thegame.

Turns out the game is pretty fun. It’s probably around midnight and they tell us that they’re gonnaturn in, since they have a full day of excursions ahead of them tomorrow, so wesay our goodbyes and hope to see them again sometime.

Then we probably just went back to the other table andupdated everyone on what happened over there. I don’t think we went to sleeptill two, so we probably just hung out and wandered around some more. I can’tremember where and when exactly when I met Andrew, but it was probably thisvery night.

Allure of the Seas - Day 1 - Getting Into the Swing of Things

2011-09-11T17:13:00.000-04:00

It’s 5AM and my phone goes off, who’s texting me this early?I better get up and check, it might be important. Oh it’s only Ly. Turns out heleft his cruise information package on his table, which contained his cruiseboarding pass. Seems like every trip he likes to start it off with an excitingsituation, “lost” wallet, rubber gloved @ security, laundry washed passport,and now forgetting his boarding pass.

But don’t worry, we managed to get a hold of his cruisepackage and reunite him with it in Florida, talk about exceptional customerservice!

So we arrive in Florida, reunite with Ly and Derrek becausethey had different flights, and all 16 of us are going to take cabs over toPort Everglades. I ask and find out that they are willing to take 4 people percab, and it’ll cost $15 each ride, to wait for mini-vans would have been muchlonger and we didn’t have that much time to wait, since we needed to board thecruise ship before they closed their gates. So along with the Taxi CabAuthority person there, we assemble people into groups of four and pile theminto cabs and instruct the drivers to take them to Port Everglades to board theAllure of the Seas cruise ship.

I ensure that everyone else has made their way into a taxiand headed to the port before, Ly, Derrek and Myself board the last taxi andhead there ourselves, 7 minutes into the ride, the driver tells us to take outour ID, as they are going to check it. Oh shit! I have Karen, Eric and myGrandma’s passports. Oops! I wonder how they’re going to make it through the gate.Luckily when I reunite with them later on, they told me that they still hadtheir driver’s licenses or ID’s with them. Phew!

Our cab ride cost $12.90 and I gave the driver $15 andthanked him for his time. I get out of the cab and talked to DuBai. He wasasking me how much my cab ride was, I said $15 like they told us at theairport, he said his cost him $30. WTF? Turns out, when the Taxi Authorityperson at the airport told him it was $15, he gave him $15, thinking that hewas suppose to pay him for the ride. Uh, no sir. You just tipped him $15, forall of us! You still have to pay your driver. Faceplam!

So that’s over and done with, let’s make our way over tosecurity and into the long line ups to register our payment methods andcheck-in. Hey, wait a minute, for a 6,300 passenger cruise ship sailing atcapacity, where are all the long lineups? Oh that’s right! We’re so late thateveryone else must have already boarded. Well we weren’t that late, but we werepretty late, it seemed like we were the last ones boarding, ‘cause while westood there to wait for everyone to finish registration, there really wasn’tanyone else who passed us. Oh well, we still made it!

We board the ship, stand around the middle of the ship forabout ten minutes, absorbing it all in, then agree on plan that we’re all goingto go to our rooms to drop our carryon’s off, head over to the WindjammerMarketplace for their buffet before meeting back up at 5:30 and then headingoff to dinner at 6.

By the time we managed to find our rooms, take a quickglance at everyone else’s room, and find the buffet, we realize that it’sclosed down, due to a mandatory Guest Assembly Drill. So we all march hungry,over to the Amber Theatre, which is where the drill was being held, and findseats. Little did we know that you have assigned stations that you’re supposedto report to, so we just sat down at the first available section, and waited,only later did we realize that we were in the wrong section, so we all got upand moved, when you enter a section, they scan your card, however it didn’tregister that we weren’t in the wrong section, or maybe the attendant didn’tcare. So later when we were in the correct section, our cards were scanned,however, a couple days later, I checked my in room messages and it said that myroommate, Eric and I never showed up to the mandatory drill and asked us towatch the safety video.

Once the drill was done we still had about an hour andfifteen minutes before dinner, so we were free to roam around the ship. Iwandered all the way up to the fifteenth floor to where the pools were andfound the flow rider machines, which I was most excited about trying. I evenpacked my swimwear in my carry on, so that I could ride it the first day!However, with the limited time remaining and lack of energy, I just stood thereand watched for a bit.

Finally, it’s time to get ready for dinner! We were allfamished, since most of us didn’t eat anything except for the bakery buns andsandwiches we brought, which were consumed in the morning. Each night ourdinner was at 6PM and we were to eat in the Main Dining Room, and we hadassigned tables and waiters. Of course we were free to forgo the nightly dinnerreservations and eat elsewhere, but why would we do that, since the food wasexceptional!

Each night, dinner was insane! We would each order severaldifferent appetizers, several different main courses and several differentdeserts, for ourselves! Of course, sometimes those dishes would be shared. Andeach night, we would utilize the full two hours of our dining time, even goingover by several minutes, sometimes we even left some of the deserts behind ortook it with us, ‘cause we were over our allotted time and didn’t want to makeit difficult for our wonderful servers.

After dinner, we continued our exploration until it was timefor our 9PM of Chicago, The Broadway musical comedy, rated R. It was a prettygood show, although the theatre got kind of chilly after awhile, they managedto keep me entertained, I never did watch the Chicago movie, so it was a bithard to follow along, I suspect that I would have enjoyed the musical much morehad I seen the movie first.

After the show, I walked around, and I think this is where Ibumped into the Thai’s and they were hanging around some new people and I gotintroduced to them as well. I believe this is where I first used my cruise nameof JoJo. Oh no wait. During dinner our waiter asked us for our names, to becomemore personal and to help him mark down what we ordered and that was the firsttime that I used my name of JoJo on this cruise ship.

Bromance - The Extended Edition

2010-12-01T22:05:00.001-05:00

I forgot to include some things in my last post, so hence the reason for the 'Extended Edition'

There were a few things on my to do list when I visited Vegas this time:

• Visit Spearmint Rhino's
• Go Clubbing
• Watch the Volcano show @ Mirage
• Watch the Bellagio fountain show
• Watch the Pirate show @ TI
• Get propositioned by a hooker
• Proposition that hooker to proposition Bryan
• Go to The Gun Store

I only managed to complete a couple of things on this list, so I guess there is plenty for me to look forward to the next time I go.

I only managed to visit Rhino's and The Gun Store.

Of all the times I've been to Vegas (3) I've never really been propositioned by a hooker, I just wanted to be, just for the experience and the story. I read on the boards that if you hang out by the Video Poker bars long enough, that one will proposition you. This never happened to me!

There were a couple of girls that were just sitting by the video poker bar @ P.Ho while I was playing for my comped drinks, I looked over, smiled at them and exchanged glances, but nothing! I guess they weren't hookers.

There was this one girl sitting by the VP bar over @ Encore, who was just sitting there for a long time and kept playing with her phone (waiting for a call, Miss?) I sat down, played for a bit, but nothing!

Maybe, I need some more training on my eye to tell me who is a working girl and who isn't! Some of the girls are dressed up really nice and look really hot, who am I to say that they are working? I give almost everyone the benefit of the doubt that they are simply just tourists like Bryan and myself there to have a good time, until I see some noticeable signs.

There were a couple girls wearing really skimpy clothing, high heels, who were walking around like they were looking for someone, maybe they were on the hunt, maybe they lost their bfs.

I do have a working girl story to share though!

So Bryan and myself were headed back to our room in the Encore, once again utilizing the secret Suite entrance, we get to the front lobby, we see one of the receptionist leave her post and direct an attractive girl wearing high heels, a skirt, a tight Ed Hardy top, probably carrying a brand name clutch, towards where the elevators are located. Okay, nothing to it right? She's lost.

We get to the elevators with her the lost girl asks "Is this the button for the elevator? I didn't want to press the fire alarm button by accident". Okay, so she's confused, we'll press the button for her, nothing to it.

We all get in the elevator, she's checks a text on her phone, drops her hand with the cell phone, so it's hanging by her side, thank goodness for large sized screens these days! The text reads something along the lines of "Come up to Room 2713". So, she's reading a text, nothing to it, right? Wait a minute! OMG, she's a h00k3r? Hot girl, skimpy clothing, clueless on where the elevator is, scared to push the wrong button to call security, gets a suspicious text to a room number?!!!!!!!

At that point all I could think of and really wanted to blurt out was "How Much?" I probably couldn't afford it, but I just really wanted to know. All I could muster out was; "Is this you?" when we got to her floor.

In retrospect, I should have played it cool and said "So.....you got any friends?". That's it, that's my working girl story, or the closest thing I have to it.

Hidden Gem: People look really hard for 3:2 Blackjack @ $10 minimum tables; well I noticed that there were plenty of those kinds of tables available @ the Encore. Some of them were even empty; it was really easy to get a seat, sometimes even a table for yourself. Just stray away from the hotel check in desk if you're looking to have a table to yourself.

There are $10 tables with 3:2 payouts at other hotels as well; however they're all usually very crowded and full of onlookers. I found that it's very quiet @ the Encore, which is a good thing.

There could be a lot of factors in play here, day of the week, too far up the strip from anything else, time of the day, however if someone is looking for a good place to practice their game, I'd recommend Encore.

Bromance - Day 4 - Go Big Or Go Home!

2010-11-21T19:02:00.014-05:00

Today’s entry starts off a little earlier than usual. At about 5:30AM in the morning, I am awoken by Bryan. He crawls out of bed, fully clothed, thank God, and stands in the pathway that separates our two queen sized beds. I thought he wanted to get an early start to the day since this was our last day, so I said to him “Seriously Bro?” Then he begins to mumble something and mumbles another sentence, I’m only able to make out that he says “I gave him the wrong address” and he looks pretty flustered. Then he tells me to forget about it and just heads to the washroom.

Awkward! So I don’t mention anything until later on.

As we were coming back from the OG yesterday, I asked the cabbie to point out where the Peppermill was, so that we could head there for breakfast tomorrow, turns out it’s only a 10 minute walk from the Encore, easily doable!

I wake up this morning, shower , change and get all pampered up ready to head out, usually I’ll wait for Bryan and head out together, however since he was so tired yesterday, I told him to sleep in. I head downstairs, find our Blackjack machines, only to find a couple of old guys sitting there playing Keno? WTF is ken-know? So I don’t think much of it at the time and choose a different machine, thinking the other machine might have better luck. Nope, I blow throw my $100 pretty quickly. Should have taken it as a sign and just waited it out. Then I try to win it back by hitting the tables playing $10/$15 a hand, that doesn’t go so well. So now I’m down $200, time to face the music and head on back up. Bryan’s all ready to go!

We walk on over to the Peppermill for breakfast, we each order the same thing and I cover breakfast since Bryan had earned us a free dinner from yesterday’s play. The food was a couple dollars higher than what we’re use to paying for breakfast, but it wasn’t that bad, neither of us were able to finish the 3 pancakes that came with our 3 eggs, 2 strips of bacon and 2 sausages.

After breakfast we headed on over to the Riviera since it was just a couple of blocks away. We go in, I direct him towards the Player’s Desk and he signs up, the lineup is really long and slow moving, just like the last time I was there. I think he only got a deck of cards and a small amount worth of slot play, needless to say, we were outta there in no time!

Across the street was Circus Circus, we’ve heard so many great things about this place, that we had to check it out. We get in and notice that the place is almost empty, dark and smells! Gross! I want to get out of there right away, however they have a rather interesting promo going on. Instead of the usual $10 for $15 worth of chips, you get to do it twice! $30 for $40 worth of chips? I just couldn’t pass that up. Waited in line for about 20 minutes before I finally made my way to the player’s desk.

The cool thing about this place is that some of the slots still drop coins; maybe I’ll head over to Slots-O-Fun next time and give it a whirl. I want to play, but they only have one pit open, that only allows for 1 small roulette table, and 2 blackjack tables, all of which are full of people playing on them. So we circle and hover for a bit, finally get some standing room for the roulette games, so we play a bit. I use my ones and cover all of the numbers in the third section, luckily I hit the #24, so I’m able to make off with even money right about now. We stand and play a bit more, playing colors, thirds etc.

Finally decide to walk over to the blackjack table to use another match play, turn that into money, and then quickly get the heck outta there! That place sucked the living daylights out of us!

By the end of it all even though we were both +money, we were already dead tired, even though we had only woken up a few hours ago. So we decided to cab it to TI to explore the other side of the strip.

Once we get there, we do a quick pass through TI, make our way over to the Mirage, look for the nude pool and the Secret Garden, then mosey on over to the Forum Shops inside Caesars. Amazing! That place is huge! It’s like a hidden mall, we get there too late for the Atlantis show and only catch the last couple of flames, it’d be an entire hour before it shows again, we don’t want to wait that long.

OMG! Something is wrong! We don’t have any energy and we don’t have any alcohol in us! Quick! Let’s stop by the bar top, play some video BJ and get free beers! 2 Red Bulls please, you can’t do Red Bull? But can do Rockstar instead? Fine, we’ll settle! Now that we have energy we need beer! 2 beers please! I think Bryan loses his buy in here and I manage to cash out @ even money, it wasn’t easy though.

After that we start walking on the overpass and head on over to Bellagio. Wait, what’s this? Brand Name sunglasses for sale? Only $10 a pair, and 2 for $15? Bryan! We have to get them; these sunglasses just fell off the truck, who knows how long they’ll be available for. So after spending about 15 minutes looking, we finally settle on two pairs (I need two pairs….insert Nelly’s Air Force One Song). Eh Muchacho! $13 dollars for two! Silence…….I’ll take that as a yes. Done!

So now we be rockin’ shades, poppin’ bottles, sipping sizurp, we be ballin!

So we make our way over to the Bellagio, walk around the observatory, snap some photos, begin making our way across the fountain to the City Centre, that’s when I notice that it’s rather warm out @ 2PM today. I know we’re supposed to do something when it’s warm out in Vegas, but what is it…..oh wait, I know! Hit da pool! I figure if we hurry we can still catch the last bit of the sun and maybe get in a good solid hour of pool time! So we hoof it over to Paris to get a cab. OMG construction there has the entrance/exit @ a stand still. Guests must be livid there trying to get in & out. So we quickly head on over to Bally’s to catch a cab back to our hotel.

Quickly head on up, change, grab and head on back down to the pool. It was warm but still not warm enough for everyone to be out enjoying the nice warm weather. I guess the fact that we’re Canadian helps?

So I’m just laying there on my beach chair catching some Z’s. Phelps over there is getting his 90 laps in. While I was laying there, I could totally tell whenever someone walked by and they blocked the sun for a second or so, because I could feel the instant change in temperature, weird

I would have totally ordered a couple of drinks and charged them to the room; however it was kind of chilly for ice cold beers. Next time!

So after the pool, we go back to the room to change and begin to head out back to the City Centre, where we last left off.

Us: City Centre please

Cabbie: Do you want me to take the back roads or the freeway? (mentions something about getting back on Tropicana Ave)

Us: (OMG. Is he trying to long haul us? With the freeway crap?). The back roads are fine.

So he drives us right past the City Centre and we end up between New York New York & Monte Carlo. We both thought that he had still long hauled us and “missed” the City Centre entrance and brought us right to the end of the strip, so we were a bit displeased.

Us: You can drop us off here, it’s fine, we’ll walk it.

Cabbie: Okay, that’ll be $12.50

Us: Here’s $15, I’ll take $2.00 back

Cabbie: You guys staying @ the Encore?

Us: Yeah?

Cabbie: And you’re only tipping 50 cents?

Us: Yeah, you’re right, I’ll take a dollar back then.

Turns out there was no direct entrance that we could see to the City Centre due to construction of the Cosmopolitan.

So, since we’re at the end of the strip we explore NYNY first. We get in walk around, oh look! A giant slot machine. We line up, each take out a dollar and give it a spin. I thought about pulling out $3 and putting it to max bet and trying to go for the progressive, but after watching so many people spin it and not hit a thing, I decided against it.

After that, I was feeling a bit hungry, so we went up to Nathan’s for some Chili Cheese Fries. Delish!

Then we headed back down, totally skipped Monte Carlo and went straight for Arai/City Centre. Man, that place looks nyce! The Aria casino area looked pretty full, everything was so nice and new!

Finish looking around there, head on over to the Mandarin Oriental. Walk in, wait chairs and an elevator that’s it? Where is the lobby? What? It’s a sky lobby? 23^rd floor? Okay!

OMG. Is that a chair in the elevator for the long ride up? WOW! Ding! OMG. Is this place ever so dark! I can’t even tell if the receptionist @ the front desk is hot or not. Oh well, time to check out their washroom, oohhh ahh, everything in here is so nice. Oh look! Nicely rolled up hand towels. You’re gonna take one? Seriously bro? Okay, go ahead, I won’t tell.

We then head on over to the Crystals place and walk around inside, this place is pretty big, empty, a lot of the stores are still under construction and have yet to be opened. I wonder what this place looks like during the summer.

Oh? What’s the building over there? That’s the Cosmopolitan? Its scheduled to open December 15^th? Maybe I’ll come back in January 2011 and check it out then. So we begin to make our way back to the Encore, but due to construction the overpass leads up to Planet Hollywood, as we’re walking by, we see the giant slot machine that you can spin each day. So we line up to spin it. Mr. Slots over there spins it and gets $10 worth of free play. I on the other hand only win a free appetizer; with an entrée purchase @ P.F. Changs. No thanks.

So Bryan first has to go line up @ the Player’s reward desk to redeem the coupon he got outside for another coupon, then he had to take that other coupon to the Cashier which is on the other side of the casino, only to have the cashier give him another coupon that he can insert into the slot machine? Holy!

While he’s in line @ the Player’s desk, I’m just standing there watching this couple play this giant Deal or No Deal machine. It’s not the slot one, where you only get to play the game once you get to a bonus stage; it’s just simply the game. I wanted to play it, but it didn’t seem like they were going to leave that machine any time soon. Oh wells. Something to do on my next trip!

Finally, he’s done! So we both sit ourselves down @ the Multi-Black jack machine playing $0.25 a hand, 7 hands at a time. I input $5, I think. I get to about $15 at one point, look over and it doesn’t seem like he’s ready to cash out yet, so I continue playing, next think you know, all my money is gone. So I just sit there and watch him play for a bit, then when he has about $15-$20 he cashes out too.

I think we then make our way over to a VP Bar top to get some comped drinks while playing $1 / hand BJ. We ask for Red Bull, they provide, look @ the receipt it says Red Bull Vodka. It was awesome! Bryan loses his buy in pretty quick once again, wtf? I get another MGD, play until even money then cash out.

We leave P.Ho and continue to make our way back to our destination, we do a quick stop by Carnival court, watch a flare drink get made, stand around for a song, then we’re on our way again.

We finally make it back to the hotel, but before we go use our comp @ the buffet, let’s see what kind of food the Society Café is serving as well. Judging by it’s name, I thought it would serve café type foods and have sandwiches @ best. Little did we know that it was actually one of their high end restaurants. They served steak, seafood, the whole nine yards. Who would’ve guessed, a high end restaurant @ the Encore.

We can use our comp here? Are you sure? You’re positive right? (The buffet is valued @ $50 yet if we eat here the bill is probably going to be close to $200, how is that fair?). Ah well screw it, if they can’t comp us everything, we’ll just charge it to the room, and then talk to a host about taking it off afterwards. I mean, he did put in quite a bit of coin to earn those comps!

So what are you limiting us to order from? Are you serious? We each can have one appetizer, one non-alocholic drink, one main entrée and one desert? Stop it, please, Mr. Wynn, you’re spoiling us. (Previous to this Bryan had already declared that Encore was also his favorite hotel as well).

We accidentally get a hold of a breakfast menu, on it I see that there is a vanilla milkshake, its $8 though, however they should comp this drink since its non-alcoholic. The waitress goes to ask the head chef, and he says yes, it’s not breakfast but he’ll make it for me. Great, now I’m blushing!

So I’ll have that, the Iceberg Wedges, and the Caramelized Sea Scallops. Bryan will have a glass of red wine, the Jumbo Lump Crab & Asparagus and Bone-In Cowboy Ribeye. They bring us some Whole Grain Mustard Butter with Pretzel Sticks to start off and everything about the service and food was top notch.

Desert time comes; I see some Patron infused drink. Patron? I can’t afford that stuff, $12? I order it, and forget that alcoholic drinks aren’t included. But before I ordered it, I asked the waitress how it tasted and she told me that it’s really good, you can hardly taste the patron. So I gave it a go.

Bryan had the XXXL Chocolate cake. My drink comes; I take a couple of sips of it and eugh! This is gross, you can clearly taste the alcohol, it’s too strong for me to enjoy right now, I’m too stuffed, I can’t drink it all. So the waitress comes by, asks how it is, I tell her, then she goes, well she can go ask the manager to see if they can take it off. Off she goes, she comes back with great news, manager said yes. Awesome. She then goes on to tell me that I can still order desert ‘cause technically I haven’t ordered anything yet, so I end up getting a strawberry cheesecake to go.

Bryan only managed to finish about half of his 14 layered chocolate cake. However, dinner was great; we were there for who knows how long, but neither of us complained since our bodies needed the rest. Dinner came out to about $150 before tip. Needless to say, the waitress got a nice tip!

So we make our way back to the room, we stop by to see the casino host. I wanted to see if they could work their magic and “forget” the glass of wine we just ordered since alcoholic drinks weren’t included in the comp. So we get there, we talk to her, explain our situation, she picks up the phone begins to work her magic and goes “uhhh, there’s no charge here. I don’t see anything” we go “Oh! We just ate there about 10 minutes ago, maybe it hasn’t gone through yet” “Oh wait, I see it now, yeah, take it off” Yeah baby! Take it off! Wait what? Oh, you mean the charge, oops, me blushing again. So now the charge is off and we trot happily back to our room.

So this was our last night of freedom and since we had a 7AM flight, this meant we had to be at the airport @ 6AM, so this meant no strip club tonight. Sorry! So you may have noticed that I haven’t done much gambling this trip. I mean I had little sessions here and there, not for long period of time though.

My idea was to save up all of my gambling till the very last day, and just gamble a little each day throughout the trip, to try and just make enough spending money. That way, if I lost all of my money on the last day, it wouldn’t have ruined the trip for me, ‘cause you know the feeling of losing money sucks!

I still had about $140 of the $150 free credit that I was given for my stay. So I went over to my favorite slot machine the Spin & Win machine. It was a quarter machine with a 3 coin max bet. I liked this machine because we had played on it previously and we just kept hitting the bonus and it kept us entertained for quite some time. At one point I told Bryan that if we hit the 1,000 coin bonus payout he would get half and if we hit the $3,000 progressive, he would get a third of it. Sad to say that neither of those events occurred, I mean we couldn’t even line up 2 of the 3 symbols required to hit the progressive.

After that I moved on over to the $1 VP progressive machine to empty out the rest of my free credit on it. I mean $5/hand that free credit finished rather quickly. I had my Jacks or Better cheat sheet on me of course, only until half way through; I realized the card was not to be used for progressives. I assume that for progressive you just try to go for the Royal more often than normal. Needless to say, I’m still without my first Royal.

After this, I think we floated back and forth for a bit between that Spin & Win slot machine and Video BJ, we even went back to play a bar top VP machine. We found one by the bar that had a larger than normal screen, this one was meant to accommodate two people. So we each put in $20, for a $40 buy in and played $5 a hand on Bryan’s card. He was gunning for that 1,000 points to get that free 1 night stay. So when they review his play, hopefully he’ll look like the baller he was mistaken for down @ Freemont!

At one point we brought out total up to $200, it was just so easy, we would turn 2 pairs into full houses, and we’d turn 4 card flushes into 5 card flushes, a pair into trips. It was unbelievably easy. So needless to say we didn’t stop when we were on a high note and lost the $40 buy in.

We even created our own system of “celebrating”. When we would hit a:

Jacks or Better pair – we’d just sigh out loud

2 Pair – We’d say “two pair” but in a saddened tone

3 of a kind – We’d fist pump, no each other (MTV inspired)

Flush – We’d high 5 each other

Anything higher than a flush deserved 2 high 5’s!

I know I know, very bromancy! We’d even double check each other’s work, I’d be responsible for the deal button and he’d be responsible for the hold button, that way if I didn’t agree or if he missed something I wouldn’t hit the deal button. Hey! After a few drinks and @ that time during the day, it’s a good idea okay!

I looked @ my watch after that and it was probably almost 1AM, the plan was to stay up until about 3AM, head back to the room, catch a couple hour of Z’s and then off we go!

1AM? Okay, time to buckle down and start gambling, I buy in for $200 @ a $10 table, Bryan joins me with 20 bucks. I’m up about a hundred and he’s also up to about a hundred as well. Not bad. Time to call it quits? NO!

Dealers have their tables and they go on break every so often. Our table belonged to Iris. We liked her, she’d give us money, then her replacement, Steve, would take all our money. I’m serious. Iris would give me a bunch of money, then Steve would dwindle me back down to my last bet, then Iris would come back and give me back all of my money. It got to one point that if Iris wasn’t there, we wouldn’t play.

Steve reminded us of Jet Li. The Jet Li in Hollywood movies, because he spoke like him, he had that hint of arrogance when he spoke. So Bryan’s down to his last $10, and he’s holding on to it, for when Iris returns. Jet Li goes, “what are you gonna do with that $10? You know I’m just gonna take it, just bet it!” So Bryan does, he loses that hand, right after he loses that hand. Jet Li goes “ATM right behind you” ROFL!

So Iris comes back from break, time to step it up $25 a hand please. Also the table minimum has also been raised to $50 a hand, but we were grandfathered so we could play $10 a hand if we wanted to. I’m up to about maybe $500, then Steve comes back, he breaks my bank and brings me back down to $350. He then says, okay, one more hand, if you lose, cash out and go home. Done! So I lose it, so I colour up and leave….the table. Ain’t no way I’m going home, I’m still down $300!

So I walk around for a bit, try a different table, lose about a hundred there, no luck. OMG. Iris is back, I grab all of my chips and quickly run on back to her. So then we begin our little dance all over again. I look @ my watch. OMG It’s 4:30AM, we’re suppose to be up in 45 minutes, oh well so much for sleep!

So I play a bit more, I’m down to my last $60. I tell her that I’m going to bet it all, if I lose, then I’m done. If I win, then we’ll see. So lucky enough, I win it, now I’m sitting with $120. Iris, what should I do? What? You want me to bet it all in one hand? Okay Iris, I trust you! Bam! $240 just like that! She jokingly said that I should bet it again, but both of us knew that wasn’t going to happen. So I hand Bryan the $200 and tell him to not let me bet that, and I break my bets into two $20 hands. I win the next one, dammit! If I won, I would have been back up to even money for this trip. Oh well!

I end up losing the $40 and colour up. At this point I am really tempted to go back up to my room, grab the rest of my money, go back down look for Iris and play $100 a hand to either go big or go home. Needless to say I just went home!

We head on back up to the room, pack, shower, change and get ready to wait for 5:30 before we hail a cab. Bryan is dead tired, I kept telling him to go back up to the room to sleep, but he refused to. It’s about 5AM right now, he’s crashed on the bed, I’m sitting on the bed, and it’s getting too comfortable. It’s 5:15AM right now, so I move on over to the couch to sit, next thing I know I wake up and its 5:45. Oh shit! Clap! Bryan we gotta go, its 5:45. So we head downstairs, hail a cab. Luckily the suite has its own set of doors so we don’t wait too long for a cab.

Airport please! Strip or back roads? (What no highway option?) Back roads should be fastest, so back roads! First honest cab driver I’ve seen the entire trip. He gets the full twenty!

By the end of it all, I’m only down $400 from this trip; I see it as spending $100 each day for the 4 days that I was there. So not bad at all. I definitely spent more than $400 while I was there. I mean the comps alone on my end were just over a grand!

I’m getting old, I think next time I’ll have to slow it down a bit, stay for a longer period of time so I don’t have to cram so much all in one day, and maybe get more rest? Naw, who am I kidding! You only live once!

Notes:

· No time share folks this time around. Where did they all go? Both of my previous trips were around this time as well, don’t tell me they went into hibernation.

· No annoying time share people, but they’ve been replaced by Guided Tour folks.

· Sign-up bonuses and perks have gone down the tubes!

Bromance - Day 3 - On To The Next One!

2010-11-16T19:53:00.011-05:00

So the next day we wake up pretty early once again and I can tell that Bryan is still pretty bummed about losing that brown envelope and getting hustled by that stripper last night, so I decide to try and cheer him up by taking him to Denny’s and then off to Freemont later for some more free stuff and bonus money! Free money usually cheers people up! We make our way over to the Denny’s attached to the Casino Royale for breakfast, man that place is packed! It takes about 15 minutes or so before we’re seated. We sit, we order, we eat, we pay, we leave.

Man, it’s windy and cold today! I didn’t bring a light jacket with me today cause the weather was so nice out yesterday. So we decide to head back to the room so that I can grab a light jacket. But not before we stop by the Walgreens that’s on our way to buy a drink for later thirst quenching.

We make it back to the hotel and of course we utilize the secret suite entrance. There are two entrances to the rooms in Encore, the Suite entrance and the Resort Tower entrance. During my last visit, I had no idea the Suite Entrance even existed, so every time, I would walk behind the little café, past the gift shop in order to get to the elevators and then back across to my room. However this time, Bryan discovered the secret Suite Entrance just further down from the Café. See told you he was good @ video games. You need to have a suite card to gain access to the entrance, however every time we walk up, we’d just pull out our wallets to reach for the card and the attendee would just simply open the door welcoming us.

This entrance, had its own everything, it’s own attendee with its own set of doors, it’s own front desk, it’s own bell desk, it’s own concierge, and it’s own exit. Needless to say, we utilized that entrance every time there out, cause it led us to our room much faster.

Anyways, we get back up to the room, drop the drink off, grab my sweater and off we go to the secret exit to haul a taxi. Freemont Experience please! I think the ride cost us a little under $15. Freemont was not that busy that early Monday afternoon, which I guess is a good thing for us ‘cause we were going to casino hop and sign up for their Player’s Cards.

First stop the Fitzgerald! It was rather a long line up, because I guess they had the best signup bonus on Freemont. You got $3 in free slot play, you enter a draw and you get a ‘Get Out of A Bad Hand Card’. The name speaks for itself. You pull out this card when you’re playing blackjack and you have a bad hand, hand it over to the dealer, the dealer takes the card and you take your money back. Max bet of $25. You can only redeem a card once every 24 hours.

So we both lose our $3 slot credit pretty quickly, not hitting a thing, playing max bet on a 3 coin $0.25 machine. Then head on over to a blackjack table, sit down, hand our IDs and players card over to the dealer/pit boss for rating, as soon as that’s done, we each pull out $25 to start the betting. As soon as the money is on the table, the dealer screams over his shoulder to the pit boss, “we’ve got some high rollers over here” he was serious too, this leads the pit boss to come over and watch us play. High rollers? Us? Naw, couldn’t be, I mean only yesterday we were playing $0.25 a hand on video blackjack and now we’ve migrated to $25 a hand at the tables? Uh oh!

So we each win the first hand off the bat and then we are able to play a couple more hands with our initial buy in, meanwhile the dealer is making small talk with us, asks us if we’re stay at the Fitz with them? I tell them no, we’re staying @ Imperial Palace. I didn’t want to tell them that we’re staying @ the Encore and were only here for their freebies. He bought it. After a couple more hands, I’m dealt a 12 and Bryan has a 16, while the dealer is showing a face card, so I play stupid and ask the dealer if now would be a good time to use the card, he says yes, we use it and then bounce. I tell him that this was our first casino stop and we’re gonna go explore the rest of Freemont first.

So we both left that place with some +money in our pockets. Not bad. Not bad @ all. So, on to the next one!

The Four Queens. Here they had a giant slot machine that we could spin, if we hit 4 Queens we got a big prize, I don’t recall what the prize was, but needless to say neither of us hit it. We signed up, we each got a deck of playing cards, then they had the give them $10 they give us $15 in promo chips again, so we did that. This time I took that promo chip and used it on Roulette. I looked @ the screen it was showing black for 5 times now, so I decided to ride it by betting on black, it hit, took my winnings and then bet it on black again, it hit, took the winnings, tried to ride it again, it hit red, I lost. Oh well there goes my chips, at least I got more than my money back. They also had another promo where if you got 10 points they would give you $10 worth of free slot play, at this time Bryan thought that 10 points would be rather difficult since we would likely have to cycle through $100 to get it. Okay straight to the cashier, then onto the next one!

Next up was the Golden Nugget. I’ve seen this place on TV and heard many great things about this place, it doesn’t look that bad. By signing up we once again get to spin a giant slot machine, Bryan was able to capitalize and get $5 worth of free play, while I got nothing, but I think the sign up came with $5 free play anyways, but neither of us was able to turn that into real cash. Oh well, on to the next one!

OMG. It’s Binion’s. This is where the WSOP started? By signing up for their card, we got a $10 match play. Finally! I’ve been craving for one here! I don’t think we got any slot credit here, but they did have a promo where if we got 10 point then we would be able to swipe our card through their machine which would do a spin and we would have the chance of winning slot credits and various other prizes. We used our $10 match play on blackjack first. I think we both won that hand, so it was a simple hit and run. Then we migrated over to the video blackjack machines to earn our 10 points, starting @ $0.25 a hand, then migrating to $0.50, I eventually stepped it up to $1.00 a hand to get the 10 points in no time. Well, what do you know, I guess I am a high roller! We head on over to the machine to do our swipe, I only manage to win a free drink, alright I guess. Take it to the bar, trade it in for a beer. Not bad. Bryan wins the same thing, trades his slip in for a Rum & Coke. Almost done here, @ Binion’s they currently have a million dollars laying around in a plastic case, that you can take a picture with, so we each go lineup and take our pictures with it. Free souvenir photo, not bad. But, on to the next one!

Club 1906, which is the Golden Gate Casino, haven’t heard much about it, it’s rather a much smaller place than the other’s we’ve been to today, in order to sign up for their player’s card, we have to fill in registration forms. I guess they haven’t upgraded their technology yet. On the form it asks for an anniversary date, I turned to Bryan and asked him what our anniversary date was and he didn’t know either, bah! Once you finish signing up, all you need to do is achieve 10 points for $5 worth of free slot credits once again. Easy enough right? That’s what I thought until I started walking around the whole place, OMG they have nothing here but slot machines, no video poker and no video blackjack machines? How on earth am I going to earn those 10 points then, luckily, we came across a bar top and it had video blackjack on it. Okay here we go. Bam! In no time we achieved our 10 points and got the $5 free slot credit. We exchanged it then we went to go blow it all on slot machines. I don’t know why we do that, work so hard to get that free money, just to go blow it all away on silly slots, why not put it back into the video blackjack machine and bet $5 a hand, you can easily double it up right? Oh well, I guess I’ll do that next time. For now, it’s on to the next one! Oh wait, we’re at the end, there’s no more.

Now what? Remember back @ the 4 Queens we had that 10 point promo again, that we gave up? Let’s go back and achieve that. Done. So we head back, come across that giant slot machine again, lo and behold it’s a different attendant now, so we line up and spin it again, still nothing. Okay no harm done. We plunk ourselves in front of a couple of machines and away we go. Once again we achieve those points in no time. Finally drink service! My beer of choice this trip was MGD, Bryan’s was Heineken. Okay, that’s done. On to the next one.

Hey wait a minute, what’s this? Glitter Gulch? Sound funs, no cover? Go on, I’m listening, 10 girls on a Monday afternoon? I am so there! I wanted to go in and see what the Monday 5M shift looked like, but Bryan was hesitant. Somehow I managed to convince him, I don’t think it took much though, only maybe a couple of “c’mon man, don’t be such a bloody wanker” and he caved. The girl at the door tells us no cover, so no cover, we get in the waitress tells us that it’s a 2 drink minimum, and she seemed pretty persistent about it too. I look around and they have no bloody patrons, only a couple of girls dancing alone on stage with nobody watching. A 2 drink minimum? That’s about $20 a person. Dammit that’s $40 from me; there goes my lap dance money for Bryan. Forget it then, we’re leaving. So we left.

Little did Bryan know that if we successfully got in, he would have gotten a lap dance from one of the girls on the Monday 5PM shift. Lucky bastard!

I don’t get it. You have 0 patrons in there, two people walk in, why force a 2 drink minimum on them? I would have been okay with just a one drink minimum. Maybe next time I’ll try to negotiate and say I’ll do one drink, or just have one drink and then leave, but then again, the waitress did already have 4 glasses in her hand ready to go. So maybe that won’t work.

Okay, let’s get out of here, oh wait, what’s that? Main Street Station? I’ve heard about you! Okay, let’s try going there. Aww no signup bonuses? Okay, let’s go visit your friend El Cortez, sign up there, and then if nothing is good then we’ll grab a cab from there. Nothing is good, so we head on over to the valet and ask Tony to grab us a cab, we sit and wait, time goes by, an X number of people die from smoking, and we wait, we ask Tony again, he said he called, and that usually cabs are here really quickly, we wait some more, we probably waited what seemed like 30 minutes, still no cab, forget it Tony, if you can’t deliver we’re not handing out the goods, ($2 tip). So we decided to walk it back towards the strip, and try to flag a cab along the way, I mean it’s Las Vegas how hard can it be to flag a cab?

So we walk for about half an hour then all of a sudden Bryan starts laughing. What? What is it? He spots Olympic Garden, another strip club? In Las Vegas? Who could have guessed! We stand there for a good 2 minutes arguing about where we should go in or not. He wants to go back to the room to drop off all the stuff we got from Freemont first, I tell him if we do that, we’re gonna have to cab it back, which is just more money and time. Neither of which we got. So in the end he caves, willingly, so easy!

We get in, show our IDs, the girl asks us how we got here, uhhh we walked. Okay, no cover then! Perfect! It’s Monday night football! Whoo! One side of the room where all the screens are is where everybody is sitting and watching, the other side where the stage is, the area is dead. Okay we choose the dead side. We sit and just relax for about 10 minutes; we’re tired from all the walking we did. Two girls approach us, asks us to go for dances with them, we easily oblige! The only funny thing that happened here was that Bryan once again got another shitty lap dance, he said the girl just sat there, barely moved and that she thought he was thirty! HA!

Okay, at least we can now easily get a cab. Can you believe that there were no available cabs headed back to the strip? We saw cabs but they all had passengers in them. How do people from Freemont get back to the Strip. Bus?

So now we’re back @ the hotel and after exposing Bryan to all the Video Blackjack and showing him that earning comp points is a very easy thing to do. So I sit him down @ a $1 video blackjack machine and tell him to start earning us dinner! For new member sign ups @ the Wynncore, just earn 150 points and you’ll have enough for a free buffet. I of course feed a hundred dollar bill into the machine as well and join him. I also need to earn between 750 and 1,000 points for my free buffet. He starts off by playing $1 a hand, then moves on to $2 a hand. I think I’m playing $5 a hand at this point, and I double my money in no time and cash out. Then I just sit there for awhile and watch him play.

Shortly after sitting there for awhile, I realize that we should once again divide and conquer. I tell him that I’m going to head on up to the room and shower, and that he was doing a good job and that he should keep up the good work. After I shower, I head on back to the front desk to ask them about the M Resort. I told them that I heard a rumor that there was a complimentary shuttle that would take us there and back and wondered if they knew anything about it. The girl at the front desk, Victoria was a cute Asian girl, she didn’t have all the info but knew some stuff, like there was an outlet mall nearby and that they had a really good buffet there, that served really good seafood, you know typical girl stuff. She didn’t know when the busses left and arrived, so she directed me to speak to the concierge.

He made some quick phone calls and found the info for me, but if you go, you have to spend a good couple hours there, otherwise you’d have to cab it back. I also told him that I was going to go pick up Le Reve tickets and he offered to print them for me. After he printed them he thought it was weird that the tickets were free, so he started to do some digging, and then noticed that my room was free too. Uh-oh. So he made some quick phone calls to try and clear some things up. In my mind I was like “mind your business that’s all, mind your business; don’t worry about how I got comped. You’re gonna mess everything up” In the end he said okay, now I understand. But I was just hoping that he didn’t mess anything up and I wouldn’t see a bill for $1,000 @ the end of my stay.

As he’s printing the tickets for me Bryan comes strolling in through the Suite Entrance with a big smile on his face, he tells me that he was up to $400 at one time, easily earned the 150 points and next thing he knew, he was close to 500 points. So he strived for that. Now he gets another dinner for free. Perfect. I guess I don’t have to work that hard then. So he heads up to go shower and change, after that we make our way to the buffet.

When we get to the cashier, he compliments the cashier lady on the super fast inputting computer skills; I think he was hitting on her?

Dinner was great, I tried the salmon, the prime rib, the dumplings, the shrimp, the snow crabs, the desert, the coffee. Coffee was needed because after dinner we were going to see Le Reve. And I don’t care how entertaining a show is, once you sit down for more than 15 minutes, your body starts to get used to it and you begin to fall asleep and enter a Le Reve state. Ha! Get it?

Overall, I thought that the show was superbly done. At times, I found myself wondering how they can hold their breath for such a long period of time, how they jump off such high platforms and not land on each other. Even I found myself struggling to stay awake at certain times.

Of all the Cirque shows that I’ve seen in Vegas, I would rank the following from most enjoyed to least enjoyed: Le Reve, KA, Zumanity, & Mystere.

Now that the show is done, it’s almost time for the Strip Club! Another one? Yes, another one! But before we go, we need to make some quick coin for it first! What other promising way than, Video Blackjack! So we each got back to our respective machines and slip in a hundo each, bam! Bryan starts off with $2 a credit at one credit. I start off with $1 a credit but at 5 credits. I need to make up some lost time talking to Victoria, I think that by playing at this 2.5X rate, I’ll have caught up to Bryan in no time. Sneeky guy. I look over and he’s playing $2 a credit @ 4 credits, that’s $8 a hand. Baller! The guy @ the Fitz was right, we were high rollers. Oh well, slow and steady wins the race then. I hit my mark of $200 and I cash out, I watch Bryan play for a bit, till he’s done, then we head on back up to the room and I phone treasures and ask them to send over a limo once again.

Same thing, take care of the driver and he’ll take care of the rest. It’s a short trip once again. Tip the driver $15 this time. They waive us in, no cover, no drink minimum. We find a seat by the stage. I order a drink, Bryan stalls on the drink, says that they said no drink minimum. They said, no you need to buy a drink, he says he’ll order one later. I go up to the bar, hand him $20 in exchange for a rubber band full of one’s! Yes! Tonight is going to be a good one!

Today was a special day, it was exactly one month since I had my birthday and it is exactly one month till its Bryan’s birthday. Of course in Vegas it’s everyone’s birthday. However, I decided to make that night about him. Of course I didn’t tell him till much later.

We sat by the side stage and the girls there did 2 song sets, and every time a new girl would come on, I’d wait till the second song, then make eye contact with her. As she would slowly make her way towards us, I would take out the dollar bill, fold it in half and place it in front of Bryan, by that time it would already be too late for him to refuse. Some of the girls would perform tricks, some of the others would just simply ask him to slip it in, while others simply motor-boated him.

After about 3 or 4 girls he finally caught on to what I was doing and began refusing it, by quickly pulling down the dollar bill, however sometimes he would be too late and wouldn’t be able to pull it down in time, and the girl would still wander on over. Even though his verbal expressions was saying no, as soon as she walked on over, his mouth would hang low, giving him that droopy dog expression and he would slide his beer to the side to make room for her.

There was this one girl who was pretty tall, she walked on over to us and must have seen that Bryan had two dollars in his hand, while I had a dollar in mine. She turns to us and says “where is the love?” Then demanded that Bryan give her a dollar: give me a dollar. Since that worked so effectively, she demanded another one from him: Give me another. Then turned to me and said: Now, you, give me a dollar. To which I did. She just took the bills and left, what a waste!

I don’t remember when, but at one point I started telling the girls that it was Bryan’s birthday. One of them turned to him and said: It’s your birthday? To which he denied, then she called him a liar, and wished him a happy birthday! You lucky dog!

To try and make up for the regret that happened @ Rhino’s, I bought him a dance from the best looking Asian girl around, sorry, I tried!

While he was inside getting his grove on, two guys showed up and sat by the stage as well, it didn’t look like they knew each other, since they were sitting at opposite sides of the stage. It looked like these guys had quite a bit of ones on them. One guy reminded me of the guy from Borat, the other guy was just a typical larger sized guy. The Borat guy would raise his hand in the air, open it and let about 6 – 8 dollar bills fall out of his hand. I thought for sure that would have gotten their attention, but they just chose to ignore it. Weird. So I decided to try an experiment. I took out a dollar bill and placed it in front of me, and she came over. Interesting….

Later on the Borat character went to sit with the other dude, iono, maybe he wasn’t feeling the love and decided to settle? He tried his tactic over there as well, dropping several dollar bills, but this girl who was a different girl ignored him as well. So I tried my tactic again and place the dollar bill in front of Bryan and it worked again. Huh!

Anyways, after I used up my last dollar bill, we decided to leave ‘cause Bryan was beginning to look like a Zombie and based on my performance @ the shooting range, there was no way I would be able to effectively destroy him with a firearm.

Bromance - Day 2 - An Expensive Lesson

2010-11-14T14:30:00.012-05:00

After what feels like 8 hours of rest, I wake up only to realize that it’s only been 4 hours since I went to sleep. WTF? It’s only been 4 hours? It feels like I slept for an eternity. Okay, I’ll sleep for a couple more hours then. After those couple of hours fly by, I hop in the shower for a quick rinse to wake myself up. As I emerge from the shower, fully clothed! Bryan says to me: I know you just showered, but it’s a really nice day out, wanna hit the pool?

When I went in to shower, the blinds were still closed, so I had no idea what the outside looked like, he was right, it was really nice out, and there were a handful of people already lounging around by the pool. I say, sure let’s go for it, who knows what the weather will be like tomorrow and we don’t have to check out till 11 anyways. Wait a minute! What are we going to wear? We don’t have our luggage! Oh well there goes that idea.

Now because of the delayed flight, our baggage was delayed as well, because of that, we weren’t able to go clubbing and now we’re not going to be able to enjoy the nice pool weather either? Someone @ Delta is going to get a very carefully worded letter of complaint!

So we both pack up our belongings, I brought my blue backpack with me, the one I always bring whenever I’m travelling, so I can fit my stuff in it no problem. However, Bryan brought a man purse along, so it can only fit so many items. So I had to carry his newly purchased “souvenirs” as well. Great. Now my bag blue backpack looks like an overstuffed Smartie! Oh well, @ least the stuff wasn’t heavy.

So we check out and begin to look for breakfast, that is when I notice that there is a food court in the upstairs section of Excalibur, so we decide to head on up there to see what we can find, since neither of us really want to waste time looking for another place to eat. After a quick lap around the food court, we both settle on breakfast @ McDonalds. I order the Sausage McMuffin combo, with a medium coffee and Bryan orders the Breakfast Burrito combo with a large coffee. Bryan picks up the tab on this one. After we’re done eating, I notice that the coffee is still piping hot, too hot to drink even. I mean it’s been like 15 minutes since they poured it and it’s still that hot? Impressive! Only because we were sitting down, If I was driving and trying to drink it, It would have been a different choice of words.

After we eat breakfast, we head back down to the lobby to find the Concierge (I still have no idea how the Concierge works, are we suppose to tip them after we ask them for help?), to inquire where and how to get to the gun store, she pulls out a brochure that they have and on it, it marks that it’s approximately 3.2 miles from the MGM. So we’re like, it’s a nice day, we’re young, shouldn’t be that hard of a walk. So we plan to walk it as oppose to cabbing it. We also planned to stop by once again for the Player’s Card @ The Tropicana & Hooter’s since they were closed the night before.

We get to the Tropicana and locate the player’s desk, I explain to Bryan how their ‘Slot Promo’ works, where you give them $20 they give you $50 in slot credits, only to be used one select machines, then if you don’t win, you get to choose a souvenir. He signs up for their players card, only to find out that the only sign-up bonus they’re offering right now is reimbursement on your slot losses. No instant slot credits? No buffet coupons? No match plays? Boring! On to Hooter’s we go then!

We get to Hooter’s, he signs up, and they give him his $100 slot credit, once again only able to play it on certain machines. I told him that when I signed up we got coupons, a pen, show tickets and $200 worth of slot credits and those credits lasted me a good 2 hours, and by the end of it, I was bored out of my mind from all the button mashing. He blew through his $100 in less than 2 minutes. FAIL! Once again, no food coupons? No match plays? No show tickets? Double Fail!

So we begin to make our way down Tropicana Ave and head towards the Gun Store. It’s only a 3.2 Mile walk, it’s a nice day out. We walk, we walk, we walk. Mind you @ this time we’re still carrying all of our stuff and wearing our Sweaters, but it’s still doable. We walk and walk and walk some more only to make it to the Thomas & Mack Centre. OMG. We’re only here? Although to tell you the truth we actually had no idea where ‘here’ is in relation to ‘there’ (the Gun Store). We see a waiver a little further up, and quickly hoof it up there double time to ask him how much further the gun store is? He tells us that it’s probably about another 3 miles. Another 3 miles? I could have sworn we just covered that distance. Okay, no more wasting time, let’s cross the street and flag down a taxi.

So flag down a cabbie and hop in, he tells us that we probably had another 5 miles. 5 Miles to go? The brochure lied! Thank goodness we decided to cab it instead! (After coming home from my trip, I googled the distance walked (1.2 miles) and the Gun Store was actually 3.2 miles out.) The cab ride seemed like a really long one though. I’m still not sure how The Gun Store is only 3.2 miles away from the MGM it seems double the length! I mean the cab back to the MGM cost us almost $10 bucks! Something’s off here, I just can’t seem to figure out what!

We walk into the store and clearly look like a couple of tourists who have never been there and don’t know what we’re doing, we stand around for a minute, absorbing it all in. OMFG! We’re gonna get to shoot real guns! Once it’s our turn to choose what we want, they have us sign in first, then tell them what packages we want to shoot. I opt to go with the Gun Store Package, which allows me to shoot a H/K MP5 SMG w/50 Rds, Semi- Automatic Rifle w/10 Rds, 12ga Shotgun w/5 Rds, and receive Three Targets, along with a T-Shirt. Bryan opts to go with the Coalition Package, which allowed him to shoot a M249 SAW w/40 Rds, M16 Rifle w/25 Rds, M9 Pistol w/20 Rds, and receive Three Targets, along with a T-Shirt as well. They hand us our ammo and ask us to pick our 3 targets from a wall of 20 targets.

We wait in an extremely long lineup; however the line up seems to be moving pretty quickly, oddly enough, considering how everyone seems to be crammed inside that little room. Finally, it’s our turn; march on up to the equipment rack, put safety goggles on and earmuffs. They lead us into the room, take our ammo, take our targets, one at a time of course, bring us a gun, load it for us, and show us how to shoot it, how to aim and off we go!

I thought that firing a gun for the very first time in my life would be a lot more exciting and that I would be a lot more nervous, but surprisingly, it wasn’t. The gun felt very comfortable in my hand, I wasn’t nervous to pull the trigger, I didn’t spray. I think I handled it like a pro….except for the fact that I missed most of my targets and then when I did hit the paper, I hit the wrong target. I shot the dog instead. At the end of it, the instructor was giving me grief for hitting the friendly dog. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t like German Shepherds.

Plus, the instructor was weird anyways. She found out that we were Canadian, so she asked us if we ate baby seals. Bryan tells her that we don’t have baby seals where we’re from, they’re more up North, so she goes, ‘oh I know’ ‘If you study enough Geometry, you know where things are’. AWKWARD!!! We could tell that those were jokes, but they weren’t funny, well not to us anyways, we couldn’t even muster out a fake laugh.

So before we leave we pick up our T-shirts that were included in the package. Note: We did not choose the same T-Shirt unlike the Walgreens incident. We went outside to try and hail a taxi, there was no way we were gonna make the same rookie mistake and walk it all the way back. We stood around for maybe 10 minutes for a taxi, we were told that this was a tourist hot spot and that there would always be cabs floating around, this was not the case!

We got off @ MGM and began working our way up the strip, since our luggage that day was being delivered to our next hotel, The Encore. We head on in, explore the MGM for a bit, make our way over to the Rainforest Café and the ‘pond’ area and where the washrooms are. I come out of the washroom first, so I go grab a seat by the fake crocodile sitting in the ‘river’. I notice that this middle aged man sits down as well, he looks left, looks right, rolls up his sleeve, checks his blindspots again and sticks his hand into the water to fish for change, grabs some of it, pulls his hand out of the water, lets it dry off for a bit, then stuffs the change into his pocket. Bryan comes out of the washroom so I vacate my spot and we head to the door, but not before I tell him to watch that man and see what he does. Surely enough, the man gets up, takes my seat and does the same thing again. So Bryan quickly snaps a candid photo of the man. I wonder what would happen if you get caught doing this.

After that incident and from all the laughing, we’re both feeling a bit parched. There is a souvenir shop right across from that exit, we head in, and we each grab a beer. We make our way over to the checkout counter, we say both beers are to be purchased together, she rings in one beer, asks for the money, we remind her that the beers are together she says okay, and still asks us for the same amount. Bryan was going to try again, but I’m standing next to him and I’m going ‘shh shh shh’ as in just let it slide, so after some hesitation he gives in and just hands her the money for one beer. My beer is a twist off, his cap needs to be pried off, we ask her if she can open it for us, she says no, but tells us that there is a bottle opener for sale by the door, and to just put it back when we’re done with it. What a lovely lady!

We head out and begin making our way up the strip. We do a quick entry and exit into the M&M store, only to discover that neither of us really has an interest in visiting that store. We head on over to the Tix4Tonight booth to see what they have. We walk in and this cute girl comes up to us trying to give us some info. I tell her that we’re looking for a good show (but so is everyone else who walks through that door. I don’t think anyone ever comes in and goes “You know what, I’m looking for a shitty show today, can you recommend one?” I think I’ll try that next time!) She immediately and enthusiastically recommends Crazy Horse over by the Riviera. She tells us that it’s a really good show, and that if her as a girl can appreciate and enjoy it, then us couple of guys are bound to enjoy it as well. I tell her that, the show is cool with me, but that Bryan plays for the other team and likes guys. She says its okay, here in Vegas we don’t judge (That’s true. We only ridicule you in our TR’s after we come back). So Bryan is trying to decide what to watch, and I’m making small talk with this cute Cuban girl, I don’t really remember what I was saying at that point, I already had maybe 3 sips of beer in me. Crazy, I know! He wasn’t able to decide on a show, so we just left empty handed once again.

We continue making our way up the strip, there’s a small magic show going on right outside the Harley Davidson Cafe, we watch for a couple of minutes, it’s not a good show, we’re bored so we move on. We both marvel @ Aria & The Crystals shopping Centre from the outside, snap a bunch of daytime photos, typical touristy stuff. Last time I went, it wasn’t completed yet.

From there we head on over to the Miracle Mile Shops, do a quick run through of that mall. Head on in to the Planet Hollywood Player’s Card area, read the sign, it informs us that there is only a $5 Slot credit being given away. That’s it? I know Vegas isn’t doing well, but skimping out on the slot credit is not the way to go! You need to give us more slot credit so that we can see how fun your machines are, so that we are willing to pump in more money into your machines! I tell him that $5 is nothing, it’s owned by Harrah’s now, we’ll be passing up a bunch of Harrah’s property on our way up to the Encore, we’ll check out the Player’s Cards from them and see if they have anything better.

Right now it’s 2PM and check-in is @ 3PM, and I’m getting tired from carrying all the stuff and all the walking, so I suggest that we just skip the going in and outs of the casinos and just make our way up the strip to check-in then we can make our way back down once we’re rested. Luckily, he agreed. I mean, we’re still enjoying the sights of Vegas, by just walking up the strip.

After what seems like eternity of walking, we finally make it the Encore for check-in. We utilize the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. I line up at the front desk with the sea of other people waiting to check-in since it’s 3PM right now, while he goes looking for the bell hop to see if they have our bags. I pick the shortest looking line, and as you know, that does not always work out. Turns out the couple in front of us had so many questions, they kept asking for this and that, asking about this and that. Sheesh! The line-up to my left was already 2 persons ahead of me by the time I got to the desk. She must have heard me complaining to Bryan and saying that ‘we’re gonna time attack it and make this the fastest check-in possible’ ‘cause she turned around, flashed a million dollar smile and apologized for taking up so much of our time. I of course returned that smile with a million dollar smile of my own and said it was okay. No point in getting upset, they were almost done anyways.

We check-in, no $20 trick, ‘cause we’re already staying there in an upgraded comp, it’s the Encore, doubt $20 would have even been enough, or worked. Head up to the room, snap the mandatory bed, washroom, TV, and room pics. But none of this happens before we get to the room and Bryan frantically rips open his suitcase emptying out all of his contents looking for his little brown envelope. But nope, it was nowhere to be found!

We make dinner reservations for 7PM @ Envy Steakhouse, the plan was to use a restaurant.com coupon. It was probably around 3:30-4:00PM right now, I felt a little famished so I inquired if he would be up for a little snack. He said, he’s always up for food. So we headed on over to the Fashion Show Mall to the food court area and had ourselves some Mexican food. After that he utilized the ATM conveniently located in the mall to pull out some money. We figured that the ATM fees in the mall would be less than the hotel ones. Sure enough, this proved to be true!

Now that, that is all out of the way, first casino stop? The Venetian! We get in, make our way to the Player’s Card desk, inquire about their signup bonus, the lady tells us that there is no current promotion being given for new member signups, however they do have slot attendants who are walking around and randomly giving away vouchers for $25 slot credits, but you’d have to be real lucky to get one. Go figure, luck is required in Vegas! So then we ask her about the ‘refer a friend’ promo. The promo is pretty much what it sounds like, have an existing member bring a new member to sign up and you’ll both get $25 worth of slot credits. Perfect! We are just the kind of people you’re looking for!

We both sign up. I take Bryan over to a bank of Video Blackjack machines, hand him my ‘cheat sheet’ for Blackjack, set him up for $0.25 per hand and away he goes! So this is where he learns how to properly play Blackjack, he’s played before, but not with basic strategy. I think we were there for about half an hour before we used up the slot credits and not once did we see a cocktail waitress to order a drink. The place was pretty dead on a Sunday afternoon as well. Afternoon nap maybe?

We head on over to the Palazzo area, explore there, and then make our way back towards the Harrah’s properties checking out the various casinos around there. No Total Rewards card sign up here, the bonuses just weren’t happening! After exploring the various Harrah’s property and seeing them offer 6:5 blackjack, the excitement just wasn’t happening. So we both collectively agreed that the Venetian was the place to be. We get in find a $10/$15 table for blackjack, I buy in for $200, and he buys in for $100. I think he walked away with a small bit of profit or he just broke even. I on the other hand was down about $125 or so. So I said screw it, find me a different table, a $25 / hand table. I get to a table that is in the middle of a new shuffle, perfect, just what I like! The dealer’s name is David, he’s shuffling, there’s a lady sitting in the anchor spot, just waiting, and I guess it took him too long to shuffle, cause she got up in a huff and stormed away. I turn to David and go “I don’t think she likes you man” He replied with “I don’t give a damn!” This got us cracking, so much to the fact that I could have swore I saw a little smile from David himself. Anyways, as soon as he’s done shuffling, I plunk down and quickly turn whatever chips I had left on me at that time into a pure $200 profit. It didn’t take much to pull me away from the table with a quick $200 profit because we were already cutting it close to our dinner reservation for 7 and we were gonna head to Spearmint Rhino’s afterwards, so I wanted to be able to blow that $200 there and not have a worry.

So we head back to the room, shower and change, head downstairs hail a cab, we hop in, I tell the cabbie “Envy Steakhouse please” He starts pulling away, then stops and asks “Do you guys want the shortest and fastest route?” This question caught the both of us off guard? WHAT? What kind of question is that? No, I want you to long haul my ass! We’ll those were the kind of comments that were going through my head when he asked. I said, yes shortest and fastest route. He then asked if we just came from there, I said yes, he asked if I remembered how much it cost me, I told him less than $10 including tip. I thought he was still going to try to long haul my ass! He said no, that can’t be. I understood his comment as, no it can’t be that cheap. Bryan on the other hand however understood it as; no it can’t be that much. Oh well! In the end the ride came to $8 with tip!

We get in Envy is dark and dead, same as last time. No drinks, no appetizers, no desert, just the main course. We each just order our own individual steaks, the food wasn’t that great. They brought out a side with three different kinds of salt for you to use on your food, little did we know though, that everything else would be full of salt and extremely salty! The steak! The veggies! The mashed potatoes! By the end of the night, even the water started tasting salty. If our waitress had bothered coming back around to ask how everything was, I would have told her the food was too salty, but no, she never came around again.

It’s probably 8:30 by now; it’s still too early for the strip club. Bryan heard many great things regarding Planet Hollywood, I suspected that it had something to do with the deal-ertainers, now that it was night time; it was the perfect time to go. So we get in, head to the Player’s Desk to sign him up for a card, since we visited the other Harrah’s properties and it didn’t seem like they were giving him anything. He got his $5 in slot credit, a coupon book. I quickly flipped through the coupon book, no match plays, and no free souvenirs? Just food coupons? What is this a Harrah’s property? Oh wait, it is. We make our way over to the slot machines to use up the free credit, he plunks himself down in front of a Penny machine, hits the max bet, nothing, hits the max bet again, some stuff happens but we’re not sure what. It looks like the machine froze, nothing is moving, nothing is happening. I tell him to hit the service button and have someone come take a look at it, although there is probably only a dollar left in the machine. Meanwhile, I’m on the machine next to him, I put in my $10 and hit max bet, less than a minute, I’m done my buy in, nothing comes to light.

Shortly after a slot attendant comes by, we tell them that the machine doesn’t seem to be working, they try to enter a code, look up at the upper game screen and go, it’s a touch screen bonus round, you need to pick cards until you match 3 of them. I swear that screen wasn’t available before. So nonetheless, Bryan does as he’s told, he picks 3 of the same, and surprise! He gets 25 free spins. So we stand there, watching the machine spin itself, then when he dwindles down to almost no more free spins, what do you know? He hits it again and gains another 20 or so free spins. Long story short, we sat there for a good 10 minutes watching the machine spin itself, by the end of it all he won about 7,200 credits, which to me on a penny machine is huge, especially when it was off a $5 free slot play promo.

Little did we know that you could just hit the button and the credits would be added to your balance immediately, we just sat there for another good five minutes waiting for the machine to transfer the credits over to the balance. OMG we were gonna be there forever, until I told him to try and hit a button, to see if it’ll skip that whole scene. To our surprise, it worked! So he cashed out with about $75 in pure profit.

We floated around the blackjack area trying to find a spot to play, but they were all full and plus they were 6:5’s we weren’t gonna play that. We both agreed that once again, The Venetian was the place to be, so we headed on back over there. All I remember from here is that I gave them back the $200 I had taken away from them earlier, probably in blackjack. Luckily we went back to the room earlier on in the night and I emptied out my wallet, otherwise, I probably would have sunk in more money trying to chase. I open up my wallet and there’s $40 left. Perfect. Chip change for $40 please, outside. I bet $20 on black, it hits. I try it again, it fails. I try playing the thirds, nothing hits, I try black again, and it fails. Oh well there goes another $40.

Time to head on over to Spearhmint Rhino’s! We head back to the room to grab more money and change; I call them to send over a limo for us. I read that the limo ride is free and will take care of the $40 cover. All you have to do is take care of the driver. Done! So we head on downstairs to the front to meet our driver, he rolls up, it’s an actual limo! Cool. I get to ride in a limo for free? Awesome! It’s a short ride over from the Encore to Rhino’s, we get out, I tip the driver a $20. A male host leads us in, he explains how this works, says that they’re busy tonight, it’s gonna be a long wait for a table, but you know if we take care of him, he can bump us up on this list, if you know what I mean. He wanted $50. So I agreed. Mind you, Bryan has very little strip club experience and has never had a lap dance, so I had to make this right! Five minutes later, we’re in. The host asks us what kind of girls we like, I tell him I prefer blondes, Bryan has no preference, anything that walks really.

So we sit down and 30 seconds later two girls show up out of nowhere. Mine’s a blonde, she sits down, we start talking and she’s saying all the right things, and when I mean she’s saying all the right things, I’m not kidding. It’s not the usual, you’re so cute, I love your hair, I love your watch etc. She asks where I’m from, I say Toronto, she’s says ‘like Drake?’ OMG I love Drake, I’m like me too! So we hit it off and start talking about Drake’s concert last night, and the after party, and how she met Drake, then a flo-rida song comes on, and she goes OMG I hate Flo-Rida. OMG me too! Meanwhile, Bryan’s girl is constantly pestering me about going to the back room with her and Bryan. I’m like WTF? What did he tell her he was interested in? I wasn’t sure if he was serious, or if it was just an excuse to get her off of him. In the end I told his girl that I’d buy him a lap dance, yano, since he never had one and all, and she wanted it inside where there was more ‘privacy’, but I said nope, out here, take it or leave it. So she agreed and performed one out there.

Meanwhile, my girl is trying to get me to go into the back room with her as well, typical prices 3 songs for $100 or 6 songs for $200. I told her that I would take one from her out here, but she said no, I said take it or leave it, and she left! Oh well.

So Bryan’s dance is done, she comes up to me to collect the money, I give it to her, she takes Bryan’s hand and leads him towards the back. I’m thinking wow; he must have really liked it and now wants to go to the back, good for him. Three songs later, he comes back with his belt in his hand and a big FML face on him. I’m like what happened? You got her pregnant? He’s like, no. I just got scammed. WHAT? Apparently, after the three songs, she asked him how he wanted to pay, he was all confused because he thought I paid for the dance outside, ‘cause he saw me hand her the money. He didn’t bring enough money with him for this, so he had to use his credit card. They only sell chips in denominations of $20, the stripper wanted a tip, and also the cashier wanted a tip, the bank wanted a tip as well, but in the form of a charge. So in the end that 3 song set he did cost him a lot of money!

Meanwhile, I’m out here, cycling through girls. I land a blonde that I’m not really feeling, she goes what’s wrong, you like Asians? I say, yeah I do, so okay, not a problem she leaves and next thing you know, we’re being harassed by Asians. They must have a code or a system that alerts them to preferences. I cycle through a few Asians including one who said she was 30, which probably means 35 in real life. Sorry that’s not for me hun. I finally land another blonde, once again, this blonde says all the “right things” she tells me I’m cute, she loves my cologne, loves the shirt that I’m wearing etc. you know, the typical stuff.

She tells me that she’s gonna let me in on a secret, I have a feeling what the secret is going to be. I tell her that I can’t keep secrets, but I’ll try just for her sake J. She tells me that she’s gonna doube it and give me six songs for a hundred as opposed to the three for a hundred just ‘cause she really “likes” me. I’m like sure hunny, that’s just too good to be true, what’s the catch, she says that there is no catch, that I can even leave my wallet with my buddy if I’m worried. What’s going on in my mind right now is not ‘OMG I’m gonna get 6 songs for $100’. It’s ‘I wonder how this scam ends’. So in the end I agree. You know what they say, curiosity killed the cat, but satisfactory brought it back. I just had to know!

We go in, she tells the bouncer it’s 3 for a hundred. My guess is that the club gets a cut at the end of the night, so they’re always going to tell them it’s a 3 song set. First two songs are alright, third song rolls along and I’m feeling tired. Who knew that by just sitting there one could be so tired. I guess my body got comfortable with the cushioned seat and thought it was a bed? I mean I have been up all day today. Either that or they were playing rock songs and I don’t like rock music. After she finishes the fourth song, she asks me if I want to go for more or if I wanted to stop. I didn’t care that she was only on the 4^th song; I guess that was the scam? Or she lost count? I was just so bored/tired I just wanted to GTFO. So I paid her and left.

I come back outside to the seat only to find Bryan talking to a nice looking Asian girl, I thought she was Taiwanese. She was wearing a nice white dress, long black hair and to top it all off, nice braces! Wow! So I sat down at my seat and asked if I was intruding on anything and if they wanted me to leave them alone, the girl was nice enough to say no, she didn’t say yes, I want to do nasty things to your friend. So I ask her for her name, she tells me it’s Tila. I’m thinking Tila Tequila, so I go ‘oh, how original’, she admits it’s just a stage name. Turns out she’s from LA. 90% of them are from LA. Where abouts in LA? K-Town? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, you’re Korean? How rare is that? So I pretend that I don’t know what she’s talking about? K-Town? And give her a stupid look, she’s like you know Korea Town. OH! Just checking!

I had just come out from a dance, and haven’t been hyped up enough yet for another one, and Bryan was still hurting over all the money he paid for those three dances, so neither of us got a dance from her. Turns out that missed opportunity would be the biggest regret both of us endured during this trip.

So we leave the club hop in a taxi and the driver immediately asks us "Asian massage guys?" We're like uh, no thanks, just to the Encore is fine.

Bromance - Day 1 - What A Way To Start A Trip!

2010-11-11T21:00:00.009-05:00

Since you all pretty much know how this trip began, I’ll start the story off by recalling the first memorable memory.

So, we’re sitting at the gate waiting for the plane to arrive, we’re informed that it’s slightly delayed, it should be here in the next 15 minutes or so and that we should be able to board shortly after they clean up the seats. They ensure us that all the connecting flights at this point will be able to be completed. We’re just sitting there not really doing anything, I’m listening to my MP3 Player, and he’s on his new fancy phone playing his games. I decide to lean my head back on the chair and get some shut eye, my eyes are closed for maybe two minutes at most, yet I have an eerie feeling going on inside my head, it’s going “Someone’s watching you!”. So I pop my head back up and there he is, Bryan is just staring at me, silently watching me sleep. OMG! Awkward! I can only imagine what was going on through his head @ that time.

In the interest of not ruining my trip, I decide not to inquire further about it; I will just pretend that never happened.

After we board the plane and some light conversation, I find out that he doesn’t sleep on planes; he can’t, for some reason. Then all of a sudden he goes frantically rifling through his bag, not once, but twice. I was unable to fathom a reason at the time as to what he was looking for. It seemed like he misplaced something really important though, but the look on his face seemed like he was about to cry. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what he was looking for, so I asked “is everything okay?” that’s when he told me that he lost his brown envelope.

We get to the Detroit airport and I’m starved! So before we board on the next plane, we make a quick stop @ McDonald’s and we each grab a Big Mac combo to inhale on the plane. He inhales all of his food in no time, ‘man that guy’s fast!’ About half way into the flight, he wakes me up because he has to go potty, so I have to disturb the guy sitting next to me, as I was sitting in the middle. As Bryan leaves, the guy makes small talk with me, asks me if we’re going for work or for fun, I tell him fun. Then ask him the same question, he says he’s going for work, he’s got a conference, and it’s on Power Engineering. Huh! I have no idea what Power Engineer does. But would you look @ that, I learnt about another profession on another trip to Vegas. Vegas is very knowledgeable!

We arrive safely, only a few people at the upper rows clap, I was expecting more excitement that people would stand up, shout hoorays, say stupid shit, because I certainly was ready to do it too, but nobody did it. Too bad, maybe next time. Next time? Yes, there will be a next time!

We de-board and have to take the tram to the baggage carousel, I’ve been here twice before, but I can’t seem to recall having to take the tram to the baggage claim, I must be getting old. We stop @ Carousel 7 and wait, and wait, and wait some more. I didn’t even realize there were only a few people left until I started bringing myself back to reality, that’s when we went to the lost baggage to file a claim.
Long story short, our flight was delayed, so our bags didn’t make the connection, the lady opening up the claim said that we could go buy some necessities and then send the bill over to head office and we’ll get reimbursed for it. We wanted some guidelines on what we could buy, and how much we could spend. She mentioned a $75 Kenneth Cole shirt, that they might reimburse you $50 for it. But in reality she didn’t know. So we decided that once we got back to the hotel we’ll call head office and inquire.

Enough of the prologue let’s get this show on the road already! I have no idea what time it is at this point, probably 10PM Vegas time? Still early right? Plus we get an extra hour too, due to daylight savings.

We hail a cab, hop in and I say “Excalibur please, no tunnel!” The cabbie laughs.
Cabbie: No tunnel eh? Boy you’d have to be real creative to get to the Excalibur via tunnel. Yeah, I guess you could.

Bryan: Yeah, we just wanted to cover our bases, yano.

Cabbie: You guys Canadian? I thought so, that tunnel thing is only a Canadian thing, I tell yah, 90% of my passengers who ask for no tunnel are Canadians. Not all of us are crooks yano, I just don’t get it, why go all out of your way just to make a buck!
I’m not sure if he was an actual stand up guy, or he was just saying that ‘cause we knew to ask him to not take the tunnel. For those of you who don’t know, there are two ways to get onto the strip from the Airport, one is via the Freeway, where you have to go through a tunnel, this is the longer way, costs about $5 more, and the other way is to just go down Tropicana.

We get to the hotel, he gets out of his cab and begins to open up his trunk, force of habit? We kindly remind him that we don’t have luggage, I give him around $15 for the ride, I think.

We get to the front desk for check-in, time to try the $20 trick (The $20 trick is where you wedge a $20 bill between your ID & Credit Card, to bribe the person checking you in to give you an upgrade to your room). I hand over all of my information, she takes it and says let’s see, and goes “Oh, they already upgraded you, no need” and hands me the $20 back. I wanted to tip her a $5 spot, but then realized she didn’t even do anything! Since she wasn't able to upgrade us, I asked her if the porn in my room could be disabled, she replied by saying "No, sorry, we only have normal porn". Ha ha! I love that joke!

We tell her that they lost our luggage and asked if there was any place in the hotel or around here that we could buy some necessities? She tells us that there is a store in the lobby over there! Awesome!

We get up to the room, drop our things off, use the washroom, and call head office. The guy from head office wasn’t able to tell us what spending limit we had either. I guess no one really knew, otherwise everyone would max out on it.
This room was suppose to be a newly renovated Widescreen room. It was just like the room I had @ the Paris hotel, nothing too fancy, oh well something to look forward to tomorrow.

We find the store do a quick look around, they don’t have what we need. We go to the front desk again and ask a lady there, about where is the closest Wal-Green’s so that we can buy some stuff. She tells us that it’s down the street from the MGM. Oh cool! We know where the MGM is, we saw it as we were coming in! But wait, she didn’t tell us which direction. North, East, South, West? Ah well, we’ll ask again, once we make it to MGM.

We get to MGM and start making our way up the strip, looking for that Wal-Green’s, still nothing in sight, so we ask again since I wanted to make sure we were headed in the correct direction, we still haven’t eaten at this point yet! We finally get there, probably spend about 30 minutes going through the store, looking for all the things we needed to buy, toothbrush, toothpaste, underwear, socks, shirt, sweatpants, 99 cent Arizona Iced tea, spicy Cheetos. We each ended up spending about $50 there.

We quickly head back to the hotel to drop our things off, then quickly head on back out to go find that legendary In-N-Out Burger. We can easily spot it, but it’s on the other side of the freeway? How on earth are we going to get across that? I read on the internet that some where there is a sidewalk that leads us to a crossing on the sidewalk. Luckily Bryan is l33t @ video games and was able to find the hidden pathway.

We head in, holy cow! The lineup is long! It’s probably 1am right now, and all the drunks are piling in, we wait in line and place our orders. Holy cow! These burgers are good! What do they put in them? They’ve got a slight crunch to them; I suspect that the secret to the burger is fresh toppings, lettuce and tomatoes.

We head on out and make our way back to the strip. No word of a lie, as we’re standing at the intersection waiting to cross a random black guy strolls along shouting “HEY YOU WANT COCAINE? TRY BEFORE YOU BUY, FREE SAMPLE. COCAINE, MAN." We just ignored him and laughed about it afterward.

The original plan was to go clubbing after eating @ the burger joint, but since they lost our luggage and our clothes were in there, that plan went to shit.

We then head on over to the Hooters hotel to try and find some $3 blackjack for Bryan since he’s a newbie and all, and needs to build up his comfort zone. They have 2 $3 tables going on, and of course they’re all full, we walk around for a bit more, only to discover that the waitresses are all really saggy looking and that the players desk is closed. So we head out and head on over to the Tropicana. They just remodeled the place, so the place looks pretty clean and neat. The floors are milky colored, so they have a very bright atmosphere to it. Of course being 2AM right now, the Players Desk is also closed, oh well. I didn’t have any of my players cards on me, as they were all in my luggage, but I said what the heck, let’s sit down and show the newbie how it’s done. Played for a bit, not too long and walked away up a bit. I just wanted some spending money, so it wasn’t hard to walk away. After that we just headed back to the hotel for some rest. It was going to be a long day tomorrow.

Some Notes:

The giant slot machine that they have outside of the Tropicana, is no longer there, so now you can’t spin it and get a free deck of cards.
Jerry McCambridge is no longer performing @ Hooter's, not sure if he's even still in Vegas, didn't see any billboards
The place where I once got $0.25 chicken wings is no longer @ Hooter's. I think it was called Dan Marino's.

White Hot Party

2010-03-24T22:08:00.000-04:00

The next night, was the NCL White Hot Party. So naturally you’re suppose to wear white, it was just a coincidence that I had on a white outfit during the day. So, I run into my uncles and aunts sitting outside with some beers and a bottle of red wine. They invite me to sit down and have a beer with them, to which I politely accept. I just sit back and observe the conversation.

They’re trying to convince one of the wives to let their husband go with them to the party tonight. However the wife is worried that the husband will do something wrong. I wanted to chime in and say, relax we’re on a boat, this isn’t government where you have a bunch of old single Viet ladies dancing around for your attention, this cruise is filled with drunk adolescents. But then again you knew know what might happen, so I kept my mouth shut.

In the end she said he could go, but she brought her kids along with her, she said she wanted to let them “experience” it, since we were on a ship and probably international waters, kids were allowed in. They didn’t stay very long, not even the husband.

So my uncle went up to buy booze for everyone, which was 6 bottles (they had a deal all week long, buy 5 get 1 free). He said that some chick approached him and said that if he gave her one bottle she would give him a kiss. He said that if she was pretty he might have done it, but she was ugly so he said no thanks. Or so he claims, since his wife was there. Later on in the night, my aunt orders shots of tequila for her and her friends. Ballin!

They don’t stay very long after that since the party seems to be dying down a bit, I go out to the dance floor and find my Taiwanese friends and hang out with them. They tell me they’re going to go check out the after party and I tell them I’ll see them there in a bit, to which I do.

It’s getting late and I’m getting tired, hungry and thirsty. So I make my way over to the one true 24h restaurant – Blue Lagoon. (We have a 24h Blue Lagoon here as well, however it’s a rug and tug, just saying). So I’m in my white dress shirt, standing by the podium waiting to be seated, when these two drunks girl come up to me and ask for a table. I start off by handing them a couple of menus and ask them if they’ve decided on what they would like to get yet. They recite their order and say they know what they want, the problem is that no one has come up to their table and taken their orders yet.

At this point in time, I’ve run out of bullshit material. So I turn to one of the girls and ask them the following “Did you notice how my English is significantly better than some of the others here?” and she goes “OMG, I was just thinking that!” I reply with “Then what makes you think that I work here?” You should have seen the look on their cherry faces. It went from being a drunken cherry to drunken cherry cola.

So that was embarrassing for the both of us, they return to their table, meanwhile, I’m still standing there waiting for my table, and not even 30 seconds pass by, two more girls walk up to me and ask for a table. WTF!? This time I just get straight to the point and go “okay, what makes you think I work here?” and you could tell they’re embarrassed and trying to come up with something on the spot other than the fact that I look Filipino. They reply with “I don’t know, you’re wearing white and you’re standing there.” Fair enough, I guess. The waiter comes up and asks them how many and they say two. I say hold up you just stole my table, make that three! So we just end up eating with each other.

The next time I run into any of the 4 girls, you can tell they’re still slightly embarrassed and just kind of turn away, trying to avoid eye contact.

Multiple Personality Disorder

2010-03-24T22:05:00.001-04:00

I played various characters throughout this trip. In the mornings, I would play the loving brother and have breakfast with my younger brother, after that I would play the responsible friend and go hang out with Yvonne and Doris and have lunch with them. Sometimes we’d hang out into the wee afternoons, other times, I’d pretend that I was the 18 year old and go hang out with the crew of Asians, which were usually found in the card room.

I sometimes would go to the Casino and play the perfect Grandchild and hang out with my grandma there and teach her how to play slots.

When dinner time came around, I would play the perfect child and go have dinner with my folks, after that I resume my duties as the 18 year old and go hang out in the card room with either Yvonne or the “crew”. 11PM was Yvonne’s bedtime, so once 11 rolled around both her and her sister would disappear into their room. However, once 11:30 rolled around for me, that’s when the over 21 in me would roll out. I would head on over to Bliss Lounge, it was the on ship club at night and a 4 lane bowling alley at night.

I would stay there and party until 3 am, to which I would then return back to my lower bunk and sleep until 8:30-9.

I went to Bliss one night with my uncle, just to check it out and we each had a couple of beers, he said he was tired and returned to his room, little did he know that I stayed till 3.

The next night, I couldn’t find him, so I went there by myself, lo and behold; he was there with his friends. They didn’t stay very long either; however that was not the case for me.

I think by the third night, I had made my marks. I spotted a group of 6 Asians, 3 guys and 3 girls, they looked to be Mandarin speakers. The 6 of them would just dance around in a circle, been there done that, these guys are just friends. I need to find my way in! I notice that one of the guys is quite flamboyant and mark his as the gay one. So how do I get myself into their group? Easy! I talk to the gay one! I don’t remember what I said, but next thing I know, he’s introducing me to his group of friends. Perfect, I’m in! I don’t stay too long, just in case I don’t ‘fit in’, it’s confirmed they speak Mandarin and are Taiwanese. Better Taiwanese than Mainlanders….I think.

Cruisin

2010-03-24T22:02:00.002-04:00

For those of you who haven’t been cruising before, it’s like the most amazing thing in the world. Why? Because it’s like a “solution” to poverty.

You take your giant cruise ship, sail it to a country, say the Philippines and you go to the citizens there, claiming that you have the opportunity of a life time for 1,000 people. You will give them a job, pay them, give them free room and board, let them travel the world AND teach them English. Heck, I’m a middle class citizen and even that sound tempting. You then sail your ship over to another country, say India and do the exact same thing.

Once you find your cheap source, you pay them very little, but in USD, and keep them on the ship for as long as you can and keep them isolated from the outside world. You tell them that if you work hard enough, they will be promoted, which is true. In turn, they will see all this wonderful opportunity that you’re presenting them with and see that you’re promoting them from within and they will all work very very hard for you.

I don’t think you even need to get them new citizen ships, ‘cause your company is registered in the UK, your ship is on international waters the majority of the time and even when you do dock, it’s just to refuel and replenish supplies, your workers won’t even have the opportunity to leave the ship to explore!

On your ship, make sure you charge people for alcohol, but not too much otherwise they won’t buy much, a little higher than regular bar prices and slightly lower than strip club prices, offer mediocre but free food, make sure that there is a happening club that goes into the wee hours of the night, hire a good DJ if necessary.
Create your own world of gambling, set up a casino, with various table and slot games. Set up a lottery. Create your own instant wins and ‘break open’ tickets. Create bingo games to increase revenue and sell raffle tickets to further increase your revenue.

The only thing missing on your ship right now is a strip club, but we can always add that in later on.

All-Nighter

2010-03-24T22:01:00.000-04:00

On the very last day of the cruise we got a wake up call @ 6:30 in the morning, I had crashed around 3AM, and Eric kept saying he wanted to try sleeping on the lower bunk, so that night I crawled up into the top bunk. When I woke up the next morning, my mom was surprised to see me there ‘cause she thought it was Eric who climbed into the top bunk and that I was the one who never came home that night, sneaky little kid that one. Turns out he pulled an all-nighter with his new found friends, not sure what they did though, ‘cause he wasn’t even in the video that was posted.

After that all the ‘kids’ hit up the buffet at around 8 and got together for one last hurrah. When 9AM came, we all headed back to our respective rooms to grab our luggage, and once again, we were hit with approximately 3,000 passengers trying to get out of 1 set of double doors. As you’re going out, you have to be swiped out too, to ensure that there are no stowaways. Once you get out, you got to find your luggage and go through customs, by the time we got to our bus and took off it was already 10:30.

We were the first bus to leave the marina, and according to our tour guide we were making great time and that we would be back at Commerce Gate around 10PM, even though we kept stopping every 2 hours for a washroom break or a food break. I just understand why we couldn’t have done both at the same time. We stopped for dinner at around 6, and then about an hour or so later, we stopped at the border to shop at the duty free shop, and we stayed there for about an hour. Wouldn’t you know it! There’s a Tim Horton’s there and get this! It has a restroom!

His defense was that he knew the border would be packed, since most people are returning from their holidays and he wasn’t sure how long we’d be stuck there, so he needed to let us go eat first, ‘cause our bus was full of old people, and people tend to get cranky when they are hungry.

So we’re coming out of the duty free shops and there is only 1 lane for buses and cars and 1 lane for cars only, with one final lane for trucks. The crossing guard removes some pylons so that our bus can get through, so our driver decides to use this to his advantage and ride the truck lane all the way down and merge at the very end. We get close enough to the border and we see a uniform officer get up and walk towards the bus, we think “uh-oh” he’s going to lecture us, but instead he goes the car that we’re trying to get ahead of and both the tour guide and driver think that we’re scott free, that he’s telling her car to let us merge. WRONG! He probably just told the car, “don’t worry, I’ll take care of this” and he goes up to our driver to ask him what he is doing and tells him that it’s not fair for everyone else who had to wait in line etc etc. So our tour guide plays dumb, he said “sorry, sir, I didn’t know” But border patrol isn’t dumb, so he says “listen, if I pull up your records, I’m sure it’ll say that you’ve been through here many times” So our tour guide goes “yes, yes, I have been but my driver is new, he didn’t know, I so sorry!” So long story short, they send a patrol car over and we get escorted back to the states and we have to do our trek all over again, sure time flew in this entire process, but it also cost us about 30-45 minutes.

We get back to commerce gate at midnight! I get a phone call from Ivy’s dad and turns out his bus got back at like 10PM, right on time! Rumor has it that they skipped the dinner pit stop, which saved them a bunch of time.

Tour Guides

2010-03-23T22:37:00.002-04:00

I’ve been on countless Chinese guided tours and not once have I gotten a tour guide that I liked. Maybe it’s always because I know I can do a much better job than them. Career change? This time my tour guide literally only spoke Mandarin, he came from China about 12 years ago, and has been a tour guide for about 11. He knows very little and very poor Cantonese and a small amount of Engrish. Usually on these tours they’ll say stuff in Cantonese and in Mandarin to cover their basis, well whenever he spoke Cantonese, it would be a different set of instructions than what he gave in his mother tongue, Mandarin, during the beginning of the trip he looked really flustered, like he was new to this job, only at the end of the trip did he reveal that he had been doing this for 11 years. My mom had to translate this last part for me, but apparently all the mainlanders thought that he did such a good job, they started asking him what other tours he would be involved in, because they wanted to sign up as well. WTF?

Casino

2010-03-23T22:35:00.000-04:00

I also spent some time in the casino, I think on the second day, I lost about $100, then took out another $100 wanted to chase, but decided not to. I lost that/spent that later on. I entered my very first black jack tournament on this cruise, it was only $15 to enter, whereas Fallsview wants $250 to enter. Maybe they’re structured a little differently ‘because the one that I participated in only went for 7 rounds, and the winner would be able to move on to the finals. My dealer was a somewhat pretty female Filipino dealer, we didn’t have a choice, and I only won 2 of my 7 hands for that round, so needless to say, I didn’t qualify to move on. I witnessed the highest score of the tournament which was 9,500. Everyone started off with 2,000. She got lucky being the last 2 hands of the round she got blackjack both times, which paid 1.5 times. She ended up coming in second at the final table. First place won $500.

Blackjack wasn’t the only tournament available; they also had slots tournaments ($20) and Poker tournaments ($60). I already tried a slot tournament in Vegas and knew how mind numbing that would have been, and I figured I would have much more fun with the $60 in video poker if I skipped out on the Poker Tournament. I ended up entering the blackjack tournament twice, I wanted to enter several more times, but had to resist the temptation. The second time, I entered, I just heard that they were looking for players so I signed up and they were offering a free drink to all who participated, so I paid $15 for a rum and coke.

On the very last full day of the trip, I took out $200 and went to play $25 per hand blackjack, I managed to win about $450, saved $400 aside to repay my father for the money that I “borrowed” and went to go use the several match play coupons that we were given when signing up for their players card.

Craps sucks, I can never win at that game, wasted $10 there. Roulette was okay, won my bets there. The $15 in promo chips were pretty crappy as well since I kept losing those, but the best coupon was the ‘Lucky Ace’, where your first card was an Ace, won the majority of those hands, I could have walked away with a bit of money, but that just wasn’t enough, so I kept playing until I lost all the money that I was suppose to leave with. We had 6 new sign ups, so that meant 6 coupon books and it says only 1 per person, so I had to discreetly and slowly use them, every time I wanted to use one, I would play stupid and ask what I had to do, and they would tell me.

Throughout the week I overhead a couple guys say that their buddy was in the casino and he’d be up money every night, one night I walked in and saw him sitting at the $15 minimum tables, pretty much betting the table minimums, his face was all red like he was just a regular drunken teenager playing blackjack and he turned to his friends and said “yeah, I’m up again”. The very next night, which was the last night of the cruise, I see this very same kid, sit down with $20-$30,000 is chips, and playing the table limit of $2,000 at 2 hands a go. I watched him double that money and then bring that pile back down to less than what he bought in with. I left shortly after seeing that he was down, so I’m not sure the end result of that story. At one point, after splitting aces and winning all three hands, he turned to the dealer and said ‘pick a number, 1, 2 or 3?’, the dealer picked 2 and he tipped him $200.

Nassau

2010-03-23T22:30:00.003-04:00

The next port of call that we visited was Nassau Bahamas. This was supposed to be a great day for sun as well, however as we were leaving the ship, it started to lightly rain, and the remainder of the day was mildly cloudy. This was the first and last excursion that we actually participated in. I knowingly paid $65 for a guided tour of the Atlantis Resort, usually tours of the hotels are free, and after having been to Vegas this was more of a ‘been there done that’ moment. The price of the ticket did include admission into their Aquarium, and you could go through it as many times as you would like.

Today was also St. Patrick’s Day, and I’m not sure if it was the lack of food, the lack of liquids, or the lack of sleep, but I really wanted a beer. Okay fine, maybe I caved into peer pressure, being surrounded by drunken adolescents wandering the streets with a bottle in a brown paper bag, but the above facts were true too.
I was stuck on babysitting duty, watching Eric, Yvonne(11) and Doris (17), Doris was old enough, so she wandered into the street markets to look for a “designer handbag”, while I wandered the streets with the other two.

As soon as we saw the parents and they took protective custody of their kids, I marched myself into the nearest convenience store and purchased a bottle of local beer for $2.50, after drinking half of it and on an empty stomach I was already feeling a little talkative, looked down on the bottle notice that it says 7% alcohol. As we were making our way back to the ship, I stopped in another store for another one, this time it only cost me $2.25. So I got a little wobbly on less than 5 bucks, beers on the cruise cost @ least 6 bucks!

We boarded the ship about 2 hours before they closed the door, as there wasn’t much more to see and we were getting hungry since the kids skipped lunch, the parents went back on the ship for lunch.

This was the last stop of the trip and from here we would be headed back to NYC, which surprisingly is a 2 day cruise, but hey that’s 2 more days of partying, so no one’s complaining.

To help pass the time between travels the cruise staff put together a long list of activities for people to do, and each day they would come out with a newsletter outlining all of the activities available.

They had Bingo, Karaoke, movie screenings, shows, games to play. We had several coupon booklets that were given to us by our travel agent at the time of booking and in that book was a coupon for 3 free bingo tickets, so we played bingo a few times. But the catch to those free bingo tickets is that they are only valid for the ‘blackout’ game, which you have to get all the spots on the bingo card within a certain number of calls in order to win the prize.

Shows we watched a show where a woman sang some songs, we watched a close-up magic show, we watched a hypnosis show, I watched the dating game show.

Karaoke, needless to say there were some talented singers on this cruise and there were some not so talented singers on this cruise. My mom’s friend’s daughter, Doris wanted to sing, but she didn’t want to go up alone, so she asked me to sing along with her, so I said fine. I let her choose the song, she chose “Never Had A Dream Come True” By S Club 7, and I said okay, since I knew the song. So we get up on stage, they cue the music and the lyrics, and I go ‘wait a minute’ I don’t know this song, the only thing I know is the chorus, but by that time it was already too late, she had started singing, so I just stood up there for moral support.

The other ‘cool’ places to hang out were the Library and the Card Room, yes the library, Eric and his crew would go there late at night when no one was around and they would just sit around and talk, one night they played ‘Truth or Truth’ after a couple of questions, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I’m not sitting around playing ‘Truth or Truth’ with a bunch of 14 year olds. On my way back from the bathroom I stopped by the only truly 24 hour restaurant and had some vanilla ice cream, before I made my way back to the room.

Tai Pan tours advertised it as the ship having 3 24 hours restaurants, but we only found that there was one of them.

GSC

2010-03-23T22:27:00.001-04:00

After Port Canaveral we would be docking in Great Stirrup Cay. Just like any other major cruise company, they purchased a small portion of the islands which allows them to have parties and access there. To get off the island you had to ride a small boat that carried 400 passengers at a time and it would only be a 10 minute boat ride. If you purchased tickets for their excursions then you would get first dibs to get off the boat, however if you didn’t then you would have needed to get a ticket and wait till your set of numbers would be called.

I went to go line up for the onshore tickets and got numbers in the 900’s. The tour guide was handing out tickets in the low 20’s, so needless to say, I abandoned my tickets and went with the tour guides tickets.

Even though we had tickets in the mid 20’s we somehow managed to miss the first set of boats and ended up on the next set. Luckily my mom’s friend was able to get to the island first and they reserved seats for us.

From there on it was just one big beach party, with food and water provided. After lunch, I was hanging out with Ivy and her friend Priscilla, when Priscilla saw a girl who looked really familiar and said that she thinks she knew her, that she was one of Derrek’s friend’s girlfriends, but she was too shy to go up and ask her if it really was her. So we were all just standing around when someone from their group asked me to take a photo of them, of which I did and when I returned the camera, I said “alright, which one of you is Anna?” after she identified herself, Priscilla took it from there, and then our tribes merged and we all became great friends for the remainder of the trip.

My tribe was a lot smaller in size than the other tribe, the other tribe was already well established and had almost 10 people in it. That is where all the lying began. I didn’t want to be the oldest one of the tribe, so when they went around asking for everyone’s ages, I told them that I was only 18, they all bought that at first, eventually later on in the trip, they would get from multiple sources that I was 25, of which I would blatantly deny and leaven them wondering how old I actually was.
That was pretty much the only day of warm sun we got, the rest of the trip was really cold, who knew that travelling across the transatlantic ocean in the middle of March would be so cold and windy!

We never once, hit the pool. I did go outside one day to sit and read, but it got so cold that I had to run back in and grab a sweater and even then I didn’t last very long. There were people there just sitting there while reading and sunbathing, I had no idea how they did it, and I’m from Canada!

Florida

2010-03-23T22:22:00.002-04:00

The next day we would be at sea once again, everyone would pretty much go exploring on their own and then report back their findings during meal times. Sometimes at lunch it would just be the kids, my mom’s friend had 2 kids that we would hang out with.

When we docked in Port Canaveral in Florida, we didn’t want to visit Cocoa Beach, The Kennedy Space Centre, Disney World or Universal, we wanted to go to the Outlet Malls, so the 11 of us hired a taxi van for about $275 USD to take us there and back. We probably stood around the port for a good hour discussing where we wanted to go, if it was worth it and negotiating with several cabs before we actually boarded one. The driver was a nice guy; it seemed like he needed the money so he picked up a shift from his buddy and borrowed his taxi van.

The drive to Orlando was a spot on 1 hour drive, so I guess the excursions people didn’t lie about the travel time, I kept thinking that they deflated the travel time to get you to join.

Over in the outlet mall area, Eric fell in love. He bought some kind of fudge smoothie from the fudgery and it truly was the best thing we’ve ever tasted. Every time we took a sip, an uncontrollable smile would run across our face.

Everyone seemed to have managed to pick up a few things at the outlets, after that we even had time to travel to downtown Disney and walk around there and snap some pictures before heading back to the ship.

Getting on and off a cruise ship with 3,000 people is insane! Everyone is crowded in the stairwells waiting for the “go ahead”

NYC

2010-03-23T22:16:00.002-04:00

The very next morning we all boarded the busses at around 8AM and were headed to New York City! This next part for me was unexpected; I didn’t realize that they would be taking us to the Rockefeller Centre, Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and Times Square. I honestly thought that we would just dilly dally, have breakfast and make our way towards the cruise ship, but leave it to Asian bus tours to cram every little minute in. In New York I bought a Jay Leno coffee Mug and a Heroes T-Shirt and it took me awhile but I finally managed to find a NYPD shirt for a suitable price.

Boarding the ship was an interesting but long process. Who knew that there would be 3,000 passengers onboard a 3,000 guest passenger capacity cruise ship? Oh and did I forget to mention that it was Spring Break 2010 as well?

They let us board the ship beginning at around 1 and the ship wouldn’t set sail until 4, but none of the rooms would be ready until 2. So our only options were to either explore the ship or go eat at the buffet. So naturally like everyone else we all chose the buffet. OMG it was like P Mall on Christmas day, you could barely walk. Miraculously most of the trays of food remained full, and once you got food, it was impossible to find a parking spot, or in this case, a table.

By the time we finished eating, our rooms were ready, so it was time to go check that out. Once we walked in, we were in for a huge surprise, it wasn’t dirty or anything, it was just really really small. I mean we all knew that it was going to be a small room; we just had no idea how small of a room it was going to be. I mean it was smaller than my first year dorm room, and we had to fit a family of four in it. After that our next concern was, where are we going to sleep, there are only 3 beds, after asking our housekeeper, they informed us that there was a pull away bed tucked under one of the beds and that it would be pulled out and set up for us at night.

We had what they called an inside cabin, my mom’s friend upgraded and paid $50 more per person to have a little window in their room, their room was a bit bigger, but only by a couple of feet.

The first night was very rocky, there was a storm in NY when we left and we probably had to sail through it in order to maintain our schedule. It was so rocky that the tableware in one of the specialty Japanese restaurants started sliding off and broke, people were sliding all over the place.

We started dinner with 11 people, and before the food came we were already down to 8 people. *Sigh* the rest of us just had to pick up the slack and eat their food.
If you went up Deck 7, you would see a cluster of people just sitting by the stairs and holding on, looking really pale, having just consumed some sea sick pills.

Where it all began. The Big Bang Theory

2010-03-22T20:01:00.000-04:00

It all began with my little cousin’s parents wanting to take her on a vacation for her March Break, so they signed up for the cruise along with 7 of their friends. My cousin’s dad asked his mom, if she would like to join them on the cruise, she said only if she could find some of her friends to go with her and sure enough she found two.
Then my mom caught wind of this and immediately like the idea so she signed us up and began telling her friends about it, at first there were several others interested, but due to vacation conflicts only one could go. So in the end we had a big group of 21 or so people.
We were all supposed to be together on one bus, but for whatever the reason we got separated into 2 buses. Turns out that Tai Pan had 3 buses leaving for this trip. My mom’s friend and her family, my Grandma and her friends along with my family were placed on Bus A. While my cousin and her party was placed on Bus C. The buses are suppose to leave in alphabetical order, but Bus A had some late stragglers which caused us to be the lone wolf and leave a bit later than everyone else, while Bus B & Bus C were already on their way.
When we got to the Niagara border the line wasn’t that bad, it was soon revealed to us that Bus C made it through the checkpoint without and hassles and were already well on their way, while Bus A & B had to be screened carefully. So everyone on those two busses had to take all of their luggage and belongings off and report to customs individually or as families. So needless to say, this gave Bus C a huge head start and left Bus A and B only 15 minutes apart.
We were never really able to catch up to Bus C, every time we got to a checkpoint they would have already left or was already boarding the bus to leave. When we stopped for lunch, they were nowhere to be seen, when we stopped at the outlet mall to shop, we caught up with them, however they had 2.5 hours to shop while we only had about 1.5 hours to shop, and for some that was just simply not enough. So they left the mall pit stop before us and when we got to dinner, they were already finished and was about to leave. When we got to the hotel they were all already checked in.
Bus C = Fast Bus
Bus A = Old Bus
Bus B = Slow Bus
I was on the old bus because the majority of the passengers on my bus were senior citizens or on their way to becoming one.
Bus B is the slow bus because they were always 1 step behind us.

The Deal

2010-03-22T20:00:00.000-04:00

A 9 day Tai Pan Tour embarking from Toronto headed to New York to board the Norwegian Gem which would eventually make port calls @ Florida and the Bahamas.
The schedule was to leave Richmond Hill on Friday March 12th, 2010 @ 6AM and take us to New York where we would be accommodated in a hotel and the very next morning take us to the pier to board the ship, with minor and various pit stops along with way to New York since it was a lengthy bus ride, with one of the pit stops being an outlet mall.
The schedule to return was to leave the New York pier by noon and return to Richmond Hill by 10PM.

PJ Party

2009-09-17T21:58:00.004-04:00

So after losing battle of the sexes to the opposite sex, i was extremely devastated. Not because I lost to members of the opposite sex, but because of the fact that I had just lost out on my bottle of rum.

So Kevan the host of the event said that whoever would come up here and do the best job promoting the pajama party that was going to take place in 30 minutes downstairs would get a bottle of rum.

I was the first and only person to run/go up there and promote the PJ party.

Naturally of course, after promoting it, I would have to attend it.

When I got there I did not find this:

or this:

Instead, we were greeted at the door by something like this:

That wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

JA Talk

2009-09-15T22:23:00.003-04:00

*Please note that the below is an actual conversation, however the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Annette: i dont even kno wat to say but i am feelin like apart a me is missin nw that ur gone

J-Starr: same here! man, i'm so bummed too, you left that night without even saying goodbye! we were suppose to have a kodak moment and make it last forever!

Annette: o no now u makin me feel even worse baby

Annette: if am alllowed to cal u that

Annette: u didnt tel me did i get ur number o yes i think so

Annette: now u makin me feel bad i didnt kno u wanted to take photos o gosh forgive me

Annette: ur so cute u kno that i av always wantedto ask u cuz i av seen u a few times glancin at me wenever i turn to look at u

J-Starr: Yeah, you gots my number, lets just hope you didn't lose it.

Annette: u always av me wonderin y is he lookin at me that way

Annette: but anyway hope al is wel wit u wat u gone back home to now work? do u have any kids arent u plannin on gettin married do u mind tellin me a bit about ur life as i'l do the same

J-Starr: Serious eh? 'cause girl you looking trash!

Annette: well i av no kids yet jus 25 have been wortkin at starfish alomost a year have a degree in hosp and tourism mgmt

Annette: am at work now as i am speakin to u the resort gettin al bored without u Canadians

Annette: trash???????

Annette: in ja that means rubbish huh explain

Annette: wen u plannin on comin back to ja was it ur furst time hon

J-Starr: I'm single, not married and no kids either. Yes, I be 25 too. I have a degree in marketing mgmt, almost went into hosp + tourism as well, but decided to do marketing last minute.

Yeah, the resort must be dead without us, looks like you'll have to cancel all your events, now that we're gone due to a lack of participation.

J-Starr: Trash means rubbish? Serious? My tour guide told me that trash in Ja means looking good. It means rubbish in english over here.

Yeah it was my first time. Maybe I'll come back during high season and see how the crowds are then.

Annette: y r u single

Annette: o thanks then (lookin good)

J-Starr: bc CDN girls cannot twine like JA girls!

Annette: the peak season starts from december to late june

Annette: u wont b ere fa ma bday sept 26 sorry u werent ere still aw

Annette: wel ur young we both r so no need to rush huh

J-Starr: too bad, but you can come to TO for mine!

Should I help her escape from the island?

We're Back & We're B_____! Entry 4

2009-09-13T12:55:00.008-04:00

So after spending an entire week in a foreign country with people who have an accent, you're bound to pick up some sort of accent.

So why is it that we have a British Accent?

Well we were hanging out in the pool, then this chubby kid comes along (he was watching us play flip cup the other day, and he was cute then, not annoying)

This kid was a bigger attention whore than I am, and he was like only 8! We first started interacting with him because he managed to find and catch three crabs in the pool and keep them in a cup, and he was showing them off to us. Then he started playing around with this 15 year old kid named Marc. It started out as just plain old fun, he would take his crabs toss them in the other direction and then they would go race and find them. Then it turned into a sort of bullying situation, where he would take the chubby kids beloved crab and just throw it across the pool to have him go fetch it.

This is when the kid started swimming for it, but said that he wasn't that fast, well I told him to swim faster and he said that he couldn't, this is when i said the phrase "pip pip cheerio" to him to which he replied with "oh shut up" in a snotty British accent.

He tried to play with Ly, but Ly would just ignore him and swim away, and he would say "Whot? Do you go to special needs class or something?"

This kid was annoying, to everyone around the poolside! But I think he was tolerated because he was cute @ the same time. I dubbed him to be Dobby because he was annoying just like the house elf in HP.

Then there was this German/Jamaican kid, who was my dance partner from the beach party, he was probably about 7 years old too, he was cute too....up until dinner one night where Aileen pointed out that he would pick his nose and eat it.

Then there was this little British Girl who was probably about 7 as well, she was there with her parents and we started interacting because we were part of an activity where you had to throw tennis balls to knock down bottles. She was cute, and wasn't annoying.

At one point during the trip it felt like I was running a baby sitting service because the German/ Jamaican kids sister was there, the not-annoying British Girl was there and two little girls who were part of a family of 5 girls from Montreal were there as well. We just throw the volley ball around and back and forth.

Then Aileen came in and I passed the baby sitting service over to her and she took the reigns from there.

Turns out that all of these kids were big fans of Ly's work. They would all ask me if I was the one who did the Monkey dance on stage that night and if I was the one who picked Miley Cyrus. They were all looking for him, they all seemed to like him.

Aileen was playing with those two sisters from Montreal and they some how gained possession of the ball and Sang wanted the ball, but the older and wiser sister of the two wouldn't return the ball back to Sang until he proved that he was worthy of such a possession, so she made him answer a series of questions, she asked him to spell numerous words all of which he refused to spell, in the end she gave up and let him have the ball, but not before she made fun of him and coined him Mr One and a Half Push-Ups.

So from that moment on, Sang was known as Mr One and a Half Push-Ups.

In terms of other fans, there was this one random dude, who I don't really remember who congratulated me on my performance for the Mr. Starfish Competition and said that I was really putting Canada on the map. (7 of the 8 contestants were from Canada).

For those of you who went with me, you might remember a more mature but very well built black guy (he was representing the female team for the arm wrestle competition in battle of the sexes), well, he started acknowledging me whenever he saw me too, so I guess he must have been a fan as well.

One last fan to shout out. There was this probably 6' 2" tall black dude, with braided hair, he was probably about 16 as well, and I think his name was Greg (according to Shelby), and he was from Britain as well. As I was walking into Bubbles Disco one night, he stopped me to tell me, and I quote, "you're so cool man", I smiled and asked him why, and he replied with the generic, IDN (I don't know).

Oh! One more side story, this guy wasn't a fan of mine, at the time, who knows, maybe later on he will become president of my fanclub. So after the beach party, I wanted to wash my feet off in the pool, so I sat down beside the pool, and let my feet soak in the water for a bit and I was just chatting with one of the workers who had just gotten off work, and along comes this Jamaican guy with a British accent, oh great another one!

His story is as follows: he use to work at this very resort about 11 years ago, and one year, he met a girl, they kept in touch and eventually she sent him a plane ticket to go to England for a maximum of 6 months. He said that when he got to customs, the custom officer looked at him suspiciously and asked him several questions, such as what are going there for, who are you staying with and are you going to marry this girl.

To which, he said no at the time, that he wasn't going to marry the girl. I didn't ask him, but I'm assuming that they eventually got married and that they're still together since he claims that he has 5 kids now, who are all going to very prestigious schools and that he's been back to Jamaica for vacation every year since he left.

If you look around, it appears that the people who work at the resort have it pretty good compared to the living conditions that we briefly witnessed outside of the resort. The people who work at the resort are happy and they know it (get it?), they get to eat free food and get free drinks, they walk around with nice clothing and nice bling. They have a chance to earn some extra cash on the side (secretly collecting tips), so on a good day, they probably make a lot.

But deep down inside, I think they're all trying to get off the island, and just like our fore-fathers believe, they too believe that America (or in their case Britain) is the land of opportunity.

I don't really know what else to write about, so I think I will end it there. I don't know when my next vacation is, but for now 'We're Back & We're British!'

We're Back & We're B_____! Entry 3

2009-09-13T11:02:00.006-04:00

All these events are a blur for me, not because I was drunk, but because there was no change of scenery, time or calendar to help me distinguish between the occurrence of each event. I'm sure that if I had the event schedule to work with, I can recall each event in grave detail.

We had to have played Trivia on Sunday, because that's when Le Yen met her arch nemesis, Neil early on in the week, and I recall us asking the ENT team what events are in store for Tuesday because we weren't going to be there on Monday. This would be the trivia game where Le Yen came in second place.

After that I think we played Charades with the Pictionary game set. This is where I found that Stacee was extremely good @ Charades, just like Amy, therefore I said that she was like the Jamaican Amy.

On Monday, we would go on our first and only excursion. We would be headed to Dunn River Falls to climb a waterfall! How insane is that? to climb a 900 Meter Vertical Waterfall!

The package that we signed up for was $55 it said that we would be picked up @ 9:30 in the morning, taken to the falls, shopping and then followed by lunch. They told us that we needed water shoes to climb the waterfall otherwise it would hurt. They told us that we could rent them for $7 at the water fall place.

Before that we decided to check out the gift shop in our resort lobby to see if they had water shoes for sale and indeed they did. I picked up a pair of size 8's for 12 bucks. I guess I must have picked up the last pair 'cause Ly wasn't able to find another pair and buy his.

So in the morning they bring a tour bus to pick us 5 up from our resort, but we shared the bus with several other groups from different resorts.

Our first stop was the water shoe rental place, which was really just a little hut that had a whole bunch of them for rent/sale. Ly was able to purchase his here for 17 bucks. We figured that if we spent a few more dollars we could keep the shoes as a souvenir.

After the water shoe rental place we were all expecting to be headed to the water fall to climb the waterfall, little did we know that they pulled a fast one over us and took us shopping before hand, they took us to some duty free shopping centres.

The first stop they were selling jewellery, coffee, and alcohol. We didn't really want any of that stuff so we walked across the street to some other souvenir gift shops.

This one guy tried to get us in to his shop by asking if we were from the Starfish resort, then he told us that he's a bartender there and that today is his day off and he's just helping a friend out. I don't think anyone of us believed him but we were already planning on going in.

Then I heard him give the exact same speech to a couple behind us, but he used a different hotel name. Clever!

We walked around to a whole bunch of shops and discovered that they had water shoes for sale here as well, and they were priced cheaper than the gift store and a lot cheaper than the rental place, the cheapest we found was a pair for $6, and that's without negotiating.

I don't think anyone one of us purchased anything in these shops here. So we all boarded the bus and then headed to the next shopping centre.

Here it was pretty much the exact same thing, the items being sold here were the exact same as the other place, however here we discovered Jamaican Rum Creme, it's just like Bailey's but tastes a whole lot better, and only costs 10 bucks a bottle.

The interesting thing about all of these souvenir gift shops is that they're all owned by Indian people! They just hire Jamaican girls to work in their shops, and they all speak English very well.

"Would you like something? I give you best price"

After this shopping centre they told us that they were going to take us to a place were we could buy some Jamaican crafts. So they took us to this little village looking place and we had to be divided into smaller groups, i think it's to ensure that everyone in the village gets a chance to make some money off of the tourists. They seemed to have a roster going on. I stood outside while Le Yen and Aileen were buying their bracelets and I heard one women say that the tour guide didn't give her any tourists this time and she was quite vexed.

"$10? That's too much. No thank you"
"Okay, how much are you looking to spend?"
"$1" (That's how Ly would negotiate)
It never worked though, maybe it he shouted $4 instead.

It wasn't really a high pressure sales tactic that they would use, they would let you leave their shops, but they would really try to beg you to go into their huts and view their items. I think that was their only source of income.

So finally after leaving all of their Wal-Mart stores (they would name their huts 'Wal-Mart') we were finally on our way to the falls, or so we thought. Turns out we had one more stop, and that was lunch, but it wasn't just any lunch, it was a $15 lunch buffet.

I went in with Ly and Aileen, while Sang and Le Yen stayed out to enjoy the scenery. Much to our surprise it was an Asian themed buffet, then we noticed that a few of the wait staff were Chinese, then we noticed that the guy standing around wearing a tie, who was presumably the owner or manager was Chinese as well.

He noticed us and came over asked if we were Chinese and asked if we spoke Chinese, I said yes to both and he seemed really ecstatic that he finally had Chinese people to talk to, so he began telling us about the great sites of Jamaica and where we should go visit while we were there. Told us about a nice beach that was about a $100US cab ride away.

Then told us that he came over here from Hong Kong about 6 years ago and started this restaurant, business is usually pretty good, he says he's usually able to fill up his restaurant.

So finally we were able to get out of the restaurant and be on our way to climb the water fall. When we get there, we have to make our very long descend to the bottom of the waterfall. When we got there we were all very disappointed that it wasn't a 600ft vertical climb with a race to the top kind of thing, but in fact that it was a waterfall that was slowly elevated and that we had to climb it as a group effort, forming a human chain. No wonder why it takes 1.5 hours to climb it.

We would be formed in a human chain slowly climbing it, while the videographer and the tour guide would simply just run up the waterfall. They hold our cameras for us and take pictures for us.

At the end of the climb they would return your camera and expect a tip. In this case they would truly deserve a tip since they took pictures for us and did not get our camera wet.

We would also be able to purchase a more professional photo for $8, but I don't imagine that sales for those photos are high since they already use our cameras to capture the same shot.

They also had a 30 minute DVD for sale as well, this DVD would set you back $40 if you were to opt in for it.

Instead of paying for it, here is a 10 minute sneak preview of the video: http://www.jamaica-tour.com/dunn-river-falls-jamaica.htm

They did make the climb very fun though, but would I do it again? Probably not.

We're Back & We're B_____! Entry 2

2009-09-12T16:09:00.014-04:00

I don't remember what time I got up the next day, but it couldn't have been too late, since I wanted to get out there and soak up the rays.

We hit up the breakfast buffet, after that we either went to the pool first, then the beach, or vice versa. It probably wasn't even noon yet and I was BORED!

Shelby was wrong, bored after a week? It hasn't even been a full day for me yet and I was bored.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understood that going to a resort all you pretty much do is sit by the beach or pool and drink Mai Tai's all day long, but what I wasn't expecting was for it to be so dead!

I was expecting the place to be a lot more lively, filled with a lot more energetic people, and constant music going on in the background to jam to. But what I found was that more than half the lawn chairs were empty, no one really wanted to do anything! at all!

So once, I realized this fact and was forced to accept it, my vacation became a lot more enjoyable.

So after people watching for an entire afternoon, we finally came to the conclusion that about 60% of the resort guests had an accent, and of that 90% of the people were from Britain, and yes they all spoke with an accent.

I don't recall who, but someone discovered that they had a daily list of activities to do, both for night and during the day, and each days activities would be different, for example, one day would be a rock climbing competition, the next would be a table tennis one etc.

That's when it hit me, why must I find that group of energetic people, why can't I create that energetic atmosphere myself and draw the crowds in. So that's when I began to initiate operation 'Celebrity'.

I don't recall what I exactly did to kickstart my stardom, but when A&E Contacts me to do an autobiography, i'll think harder, I swear.

So anyways, I'm in the lobby getting my drink on and I meet this guy who is probably in his early 40's a bit on the plumpier side and is semi bald? and goes by the name of Steve during the night, but leopard speedo during the day. So I'm talking to Steve and asking him what is with everyone and their "coffee" mugs, then he tells me that those mugs hold a lot more, alcohol, so you don't have to make frequent trips up to the bar, and that they're theoretically cleaner as well. Another newbie resort mistake on my part.

Anyways, Steve traveled alone on this trip, and he was probably my first fan.

My second fan was probably about 5' 7" and just a little over 300 lbs. I was just standing there talking to Le Yen and Aileen and sipping ma beer, I guess we kinda both looked over and he said hi, and made his way over to us, explained that he was on the same plane as us, so that we wouldn't think he we too creepy, then started asking us where we were from, and it gets narrowed down like a Google Earth Search. Canada > Ontario > Toronto > Vaughan > Maple > turns out the world is pretty small and he lives @ Jane & Major Mack. This is clearly fun for him, so he asks us what floor we're on and where our room is, we're on the first floor and our room is right behind the buffet area. Then he told us that he was here with his wife and child, and with his sister in laws family, of which he did not like the sister in law one bit!

Then asked us who we were here with, we told him, then he couldn't really picture what Sang looked like so we started describing what he looked like to him.

I have no idea what time the sun gets up in the mornings, but I'm usually out of my room by 9:30 and the Jamaican sun is blaring and blazzing hawt! But not to worry, usually the sun is gone by three and doesn't come back until the next day. So you really only have to apply sunscreen once. Well I only did it once each day, which might explain why I look Mexican. Huh!

Of the entire week that we were there, it only really rained "once". I say it only rained once because it only really affected us that one time, there was light rain another time and it there was rain another time, but it was night time and we were indoors napping.

So we're outside playing and waiting for the strength competition to begin, and then all of a sudden it starts to rain, pretty hard too! So we all take cover under large living room sized structure and begin the strength competition. The strength competition was to see who could hold two jugs of water at arms length for the longest period of time. Girls only had to hold one jug of water.

Originally it was only a few people who were part of the competition, but since it rained, we were joined by others, no worries, the more the merrier, so it was us 5, a family of 8 from Montreal and a father and son who were both named Mark.

Long story short, Ly was able to hold the water jugs the longest and his prize was a bottle of Appleton Rum. So once that was over we were just hanging around the structure talking to the entertainment staff who were responsible for organizing such events and playing table tennis.

Then all of a sudden a man comes running to us from across the facility where the bar is located, asking us if we had an extra ping pong ball. This caught Sang's attention because he immediately thought of Beer Pong (At the beginning of the trip Sang was genuinely bummed for 6 minutes because Ly forgot to bring the Ping Pong Balls).

Once the guy heard that Sang wanted to play beer pong with him, he invited us as well, then said what about flip cup, since more people can play, and this caught my attention, so we all abandoned our current activities and headed over to the bar area to play Flip Cup!

So here, we pushed two tables together formed two teams of four. The teams were us three (Ly, Sang and Myself) along with one of the entertainment staff (Kevan) against four Americans.

You have no idea how relieved I was when I heard a familiar English voice. Up until this time, we were purely vacationing with Brits. Every single person that we encountered was practically a Brit.

Finally English, that we can all easily understand!

The only kind of cups we had were the resort cups, which were made of hard plastic, and were surprisingly "hard" to flip. I say "hard" because I was lucky and was easily able to flip my cup between 1 and 4 tries each time. I think we only played three matches total.

So for the first match Team Canada all drank and flipped our cups, while Team America was still trying to flip their first cup over. They didn't even get past the first person, he was only a sub for someone who went to the washroom, so when she came back, he was booted.

Round 2! This time was a bit better, they were able to make it to the second person before we beat them.

Round 3! They wanted to change the formation around and start at the opposite end, and as they say in Jamaica - No Problem Man. So we did just that, and we still beat them, I think they only got to the 3rd person this time.

Clearly the Yanks were not having it and were tired of losing so they decided to change it back to their original game of Beer Pong. We stayed for a bit, but clearly the game was going to take forever! So we decided to just leave and that we'll catch up with them another time.

Hopefully the rain will stop in time because we're suppose to have a beach party tonight! We all went back to our rooms to shower and nap. The key is to nap during the "down time", which is when there is no sun and in between the start of the nightly events. So nap around 4-7 ish. I found this out the hard way, 'cause on the second day, I partied all day and was exhausted by night fall, another newbie mistake.

So after dinner we checked to see if the beach party was still on, since the rain had stopped earlier and yes it was. So we all headed down to the beach party.

To start things off, they started with an ice breaker game, where you find a partner, gather around in a group and depending on the word they shout out, you do the action, so in this case, if they shouted out the word Rum, you would continue to dance with your partner, if they shouted out Beer, you would need to find a new partner to dance with, and if they shouted out the word Mudslide, you would need to pick up your partner.

I joined, Ly joined and Aileen joined. Finding a partner was easy for me, because a little German/Jamaican boy tapped me on the back and asked me to be his partner (must be another fan). Aileen and Ly were partners.

I thought that I would be able to make it pretty far into the game considering that I have a very small partner which would make it easy to pick up. But see I forgot one key thing, being able to locate the little munchkin in a crowd, and was quickly eliminated by the third round. In the end Aileen and Ly emerged victorious!

After that we might have played the game limbo, or we might have played limbo before the dancing game, anyways I'm sure you know how limbo works, and guess who wins it. Yup, that's correct...Limberly.

Anyways, we have time for another game! This time it's a like a timed scavenger hunt. Yes, all three of us participate. It's like Le Yen and Sang weren't even there. We all gather around in a circle and when the host shouts out an item we have to go get it. For example, if he shouted out Cup then we would all have to go find a cup and last person to return to the circle with the cup would be eliminated. Ly was first to be eliminated because he was unable to find a watch, then I was eliminated because I was unable to obtain a pair of shorts, and finally it came down to Aileen and two other girls, so they decided to have a dance off for it. Look for the video of Aileen dancing on YouTube.

Aileen lost the dancing competition because one of the girls had a larger fan base.

So anyways after that, we were just hanging out on the beach, drinking and learning some dance moves under the moonlight, so it was a good experience.

While we're dancing we see Team America and we joke around of how we left because they put us to sleep watching that game of beer pong, then they joked around by saying how they just finished about 10 minutes ago, then we joked some more about saving the disposable plastic cups that we had tonight to play beer pong tomorrow.

So then I see the sub from the flip cup game, Lauren and I approach her. I asked her if she played volleyball, she clearly looked the sporty type, I just couldn't pinpoint what sport she played. She told me no, that she played basketball, field hockey, baseball and softball. I said that you play that many sports and I had to guess volleyball, and we had a laugh at that.

After that, most of the crowd had already left the beach area, so we left as well.

The next days daily activities were I think a Rock Climbing Competition, which Ly took first place again and earned another bottle of rum, and a talent show @ night, however the talent show was canceled due to a lack of ...... talent. So they changed it over to a couples game, to see how much you know about your significant other. Le Yen was willing to participate but Sang refused to participate because he knew he didn't stand a chance against the other couples. Ly and myself were going to join in, we were sure that we would be able to win it, we spent a good 40 minutes rehearsing our answers too.

When the show came around, I saw that they had a large audience, so I didn't jump up on stage to claim my fame as I normally do, since I figured I'd give others a shot at playing, when no one but one couple was going to participate, I motioned to Ly that we should go up there and save the day. As we were making our way up, they canceled the game due to a lack of participation and changed it to a Mr. Starfish competition. The ENT Team also called us three guys out to go up on stage, and we were quickly joined by 4 other contestants to make 8.

So now that they had 8 people, the show could begin, to start things off is a chugging competition, do I even need to tell you who wins it? Ly of course!

The next event I think was that we had to take off our shirts and show our beer belly's, I tried to play the "it's a family event" type of thing, but that didn't fly. I flat out lost that challenge.

The next challenge was to pick your favorite animal. Ly picked a Monkey, I picked a starfish, and Sang picked a duck.

Ly did an excellent interpretation of a monkey, where he jumped around ate bugs off another mans hair etc, where I just stood there with my arms open and jumped up a few times, and Sang simply made Donald Duck noises. So Ly took that challenge again. After wards people told me that if I were to have jumped in the pool, they would have cheered harder for me, but I wasn't prepared to take that step to fame.

The next task was to name your favourite female artist. Ly picked, the one and only Miley Cyrus, I picked a picture perfect Beyonce and Sang picked Miss Umbrella herself, Rihanna. Then we had to go into the crowd and find a girl who looked like our celebrity. I thought that was the end of the task, but I was wrong, they then had us compete to see who could do the most pushups with our favourite female celebrity on our backs. Ly was able to do 15 push-ups with his, I completed 10 and Sang was only able to do 1.5 push-ups.

Just by reading these events it sounds like Ly won it for sure, but I must be forgetting some events because Ly lost by 1 point.

So after that we sit around by the pool for awhile, laughing and discussing tonight's events. After that we head on back up to the lobby to view the agenda for tomorrow's events, because Ly needs to win more Rum to bring home!

Shortly after, the ladies retire again and Sang and myself hit the lobby bar, and as i'm at the bar, I run into a Guyanese guy who is on vacation and who was on our plane, he said he saw me up there and just wanted to congratulate me on my work and we exchanged some information about each other after that I bring the beer back to Sang and we sit down, down a couple of beers then head on over to the disco.

Inside the disco we find a table and sit down for a while, just sitting and not doing much talking 'cause it's too loud in there to talk anyways. Then all of a sudden out of no where, Sang suggests that we head on over and do shots at the bar, this catches me off guard, but i'm okay with it, since I haven't done any shots since i've gotten here.

As we get up and leave our seats, Lauren and Martha (the girls who we played flip cup with) bring us shots saying that we looked bored and that we should take the shot with them, so we did, after that, I hit the dance floor with them, along with Danette, one of the ENT staff.

About 10 minutes later, Sang signals to me that he's leaving and that I'm left to fend for myself. Then about 10 minutes after that, we all head out of the club and back to the lobby to exchange facebook information.

Once that is completed, we head back into the club to dance some more. Meanwhile, I make my way over to the bar to get myself another drink and as i'm on my way, i'm stopped by a Guyanese girl, who said that she saw me up on stage earlier and liked what she saw, and that the man who I was talking to earlier was her Uncle.

So up comes Lauren and pulls me up to the bar, telling me that I have to do another shot with her, sure thing. So we do a shot with the bar tender, right after that shot, they decide that they're really hot and they're going to cool off in the pool, but first that they needed to change.
So we agree that we'll meet back at the pool in 10 minutes.

So I get back to the room, slightly tipsy and inform Ly that I'm going to go swimming with them and asked if he wanted to come along, but he declined.

So I get back out there and sit by the pool, shortly after they both come trotting down the stairs, and yes we swam around, well Lauren swam around and made weird seal noises at the request of her friend. So i'm sitting there talking to her friend, then Lauren swims up and somehow manages to convince her friend to go back inside with her bathing suit on to get drinks.

So now, i'm sitting there talking to Lauren and she's explaining to me how my friends suck because they all went to bed so early. I say, yes I know. She said that they saw us sitting by the pool earlier, shortly after the game, as they were headed to the beach area, and as they came back we were gone.

The next thing I wanted to say was "Oh, so you're stalking me?" But as soon as I opened my mouth and said Oh, I found that her tongue was down my throat. Thank goodness I flossed that night!

So anyways we made out until friend came back and broke us up. Then a few blokes were walking on by and they invited them to go to the hot tub with us, and for some odd reason there was some sort of argument going on between the Americans and the British, and being a Canadian in this situation is hard, since we have ties with both countries, so I just stood there quietly until a guy sitting at a table watching the entire event unfold called me over, to tell me that he wasn't with those two Brits, that he was a Scot didn't want me to mistake him for hanging out with them and giving him a bad name.

I told him I understood, then after the Brits left, we invited him to join us in the hot tub, at first he said he was just only going to walk with us there, then when we got there and got in, they somehow convinced him to join us.

So here I am sitting in the hot tub, facing Martha, with Lauren to my left and the Scot, whose name is Greg to my right, for some odd reason Greg refused to move on to the other side and sit with Martha. Lauren even suggested something to him to get him to the other side, then he replied with "no, i'm okay here" (in a Scottish accent), he just couldn't take a hint.

Alright, this isn't working out, so the girls huddle and decide to run a play, so when they get back they run through a list of questions, such as where you're from, what's your name, what do you do, do you have a girlfriend etc.

Turns out that he has a girlfriend which is why I guess he doesn't want to move over to the other side?

Okay, I can't just sit here forever myself, time to run a play of my own. So I ask Lauren if she wants to go check out one of the other 2 available hot tubs, she says sure, but once we get there and test the water, we discover that they're super cold compared to the one we were just in, so we quickly run back.

So it looks like i'm stuck with these two, so we sit there for a while, then Greg decides to call it a night, then Martha decides to call it a night. Assuming that my sister hasn't gauged her eyes out by now and is still reading this post, I don't think I need to fill you guys in on what happened next.

So after a while, we decide to call it a night since her checkout time is at 10 tomorrow and my fingers are getting all pruny. I'm on the first floor in the opposite direction and shes' on the fifth floor, but the gentlemen in me says walk her back to her room. So of course I do.

So she gets to her room and bangs on her door for her roommate to let her in, tells her to leave the door open and we stand outside for about another five minutes, just chatting. After that we say goodbye to each other, since i'll probably never see her again and I make my way back to my room. Wow. It's 3:40 in the morning!

We're Back & We're B_____!

2009-09-12T15:27:00.002-04:00

Since this trip is suppose to be a boring and relaxing one, I don't think is much excitement to write about, however do to popular demand, this trip report will happen!

Le Yen's parents drop us off @ the airport and we proceed to check in, after quickly discovering that the family in front of us is in the wrong line up we quickly slide on over to the next line and get ahead of them in the queue. Not that it was a long line up or anything, but we like to capitalize on other people's blunders.

As we're checking in, the typical hindrance of Ly and his passport comes into effect as usual. What is it this time you ask? This time it was because his first name only contains 2 characters and the system requires at least 3. After awhile they somehow manage to override the system and let him through, I guess they'll be phoning their software engineers after this, thanks to Ly.

We get to the security gate and begin stripping down....our belongings to pass through the metal detectors, we all make it through just fine, however at the very last second, Aileen is stopped for a "random screening". The father of the group that we slipped past before can't seem to make it pass the metal detectors either.

After the screening process, we head to our gate and I head to the food court for food, I had a light lunch that day because I was busy running around gathering last minute supplies and packing.

After what seemed like a really long time, we finally board the flight, it was an uneventful flight (I guess that is a good thing) they showed the X-Men Origins movie which helped pass the time, we all had the lasagna for dinner.

After the 4.5 hour flight the row of frat guys behind us, were clearly drunk, they purchased a bottle of Absolute Vodka from the Duty Free and were drinking it on the plane, by the time we were ready to leave more than 2/3s of the bottle had been consumed by probably five guys.

After we deboard the plane we all head on over to the resort check-in counter, and surprisingly enough, about 1/3 of the plane was all going to the same resort. We all board the bus (picture a greyhound bus) and the guy who helped us load our luggage onto the bus asked for a tip when he was done doing so, we read that we were suppose to tip them, so I gave him $5, a dollar for each of us. Some people tipped him, others just simply walked away.

During the 35 minute bus ride Sang was the first one out of all of us to make a friend, Dennis. Dennis was with his wife and two kids, visiting Jamaica for the first time, coming from Brampton.

We finally get to the resort and the check-in process was quite chaotic, no one really knew how the resort system of checking in worked. Everyone seemed to wait and obtain their luggage before proceeding 5 feet towards the check-in desk. However, if some people had experience in this field they would divide and conquer, have one person head to the check-in counter and check-in ahead of everyone else while the other person waited for their luggage.

It's not like we were pressed for time, but it just makes it easier if you get ahead of the line and avoid all the commotions.

We're finally checked in and obtain our nice blue wrist bands. Our rooms were #113 and #114, however we had a difficult time locating our room, our rooms were in a separate wing on it's own, located behind the buffet and away from all the other rooms, but we eventually found it.

When we got in, I was surprised to find a locked cabinet with two bottles of alcohol in there (for taking shots) I presume, I don't think anyone of us ever took any.

So what do you do when you get to your hotel room? You take pictures! After pictures, washroom and freshened up. After that, I think we all went down to the buffet for their late night snack that they serve every night. After that I think we all did some exploring around the place.

After that, I think the ladies went to bed, while Sang and I went to the bar in the lobby to get our drink on! We sat beside these two girls who turned out to be from the U.K. so they had a British Accent, they turned out to be step sisters too, which explained the age difference and the hair colour difference, one was blond, one had red hair. We talked to them and they provided us with a lot of useful information, they were there for almost two weeks, so they had a lot of info to share. The red headed one, Shelby, told me that it gets boring after a week, and I believed her at the time too.

We found out that there was a "disco" right beneath us, that is open until the last person leaves, so we went down to check it out and have a few more drinks, and to our surprise there was only about 6 people in there, and according to them, it's pretty much like that every night.

We didn't stay up much longer after that since it was already 3:30 in the morning Toronto time and we were pretty tired.

Japan - Day 7 - Tokyo

2009-07-09T21:10:00.038-04:00

It’s our final full day in Tokyo, and going over the tourist map that we have, it seems like we’ve already hit up all of the major tourist attraction spots, and then some! How is that possible? People said it would take an entire week to explore Tokyo.

We had what we were going to do in the morning all figured out; we were going to head to Odaiba. Odaiba is an artificial island built over a land fill many moons ago and resides in the Bay of Tokyo area.

In order to get to Palette Town and its surroundings we had to take the Yurikamome Line, which reminded me of a high speed roller coaster. Once we got there we began to wander around the island, it’s here, where we came across a familiar face. There are many well known attractions in Odaiba, such as the Island and Seaside Mall, Aqua City, Joypolis, Tokyo Beach and a life sized Gundam.

After saying hello to our giant friend in green, we wandered around the streets and Tokyo Beach for a bit, snapping pictures of whatever we felt was picture worthy. We wanted to head inside to the mall to look for food, however this was around 10:30 in the morning and the mall / food court wasn’t open till 11AM, but it was easy to kill time since there were so many new things to see.

We even came across a guy training his Pokémon.

Once the mall was open and we were inside, we slowly made our way to the food court to grab some fine authentic Japanese food, or as the locals call it, food. I didn’t have “lunch” here per se since before we left the hotel I stopped by the local convenience store and picked up a rice triangle, a bun and some juice, so I was quite full. Even though I was quite full, I could not pass up the offer to indulge in a green tea ice cream and red bean waffle, hey, it’s only my second one of the trip!

After that, we proceeded to explore the mall for a bit, and eventually taking turns going to the washroom, I know, I found that weird too. One person would go to the washroom, then come back, then all of a sudden the other person would realize that they had to go too, this kept going until we all went. If anybody has any theories they’d like to share on this subject, I’d like to hear it.

After the mall we made our way over to Joypolis, it was a decent sized Sega amusement park, inside they had a 24 and Prison Break game/ride. There was a small entrance fee and each attraction that you wanted to visit was to be paid separately. We didn’t go in since we figured most of the action of the story would be in Japanese and we would be left out.

After Joypolis there was still a giant Ferris wheel, FUJI TV headquarters and many other things to check out, but the remainder of these items were all the way across the island and at that point we didn’t feel like making the trek, since we had many other things to check out, or so we thought.

Since the train station was right by our hotel we headed back to the hotel to kind of “regroup” and gather our thoughts and decide on what we wanted to see for the rest of the day. In the lobby of the Five Star Hotel they had an entire display case with brochures for tourists like us, aside from that we also had our own personal concierge at our disposal for information.

I brought some of the brochures over for the guys to look at, while I chatted up the cute lady working at the concierge desk. I asked her where we could find the giant sized Gundam statue that was in the works, but she didn’t know, so we had to research it on the interent, turns out that Gundam statue that we wanted to see was in Odaiba, but on the other side of the island that we were too lazy to go across to, FML.

After that, I asked her what she recommended that we spend some time reviewing, she pointed out a few places, one of them being the Sensoji Temple. I went back and presented this information to the guys. Steve said that he was tired of visiting so many shrines and temples, he wanted to do some shopping. Ly, as usual, did not voice his opinion and said that he was fine with whatever we chose to do. I, was actually excited to visit the Sensoji Temple, since I did not visit enough back in Kyoto.

Since we couldn’t decide on what we wanted to do with our remaining time, we asked Ly what he wanted to do, and he finally said something. He said that he wanted to go to a place, but it would cost money and that we probably wouldn’t be willing to spend it on. At first we thought he wanted to go back to Akiharbara and drop some major coin on some of the electronics that we saw earlier, but he said that wasn’t it. We literally sat in the hotel lobby for about an hour and a half playing twenty questions with Ly, trying to figure out what he wanted to do and what we all wanted to do.

After asking him a bunch of questions, we found out that it couldn’t have been a gadget of some sort, since he said that it’s more of a service and you get nothing in return except for joy. So we immediately said that he wanted to head back to the Red Light District and get his freak on, but he assured us that wasn’t it.

Finally I got tired of just sitting around and wasting time trying to figure out something that he would not voluntarily reveal, so I made the suggestion that we each split up and go our separate ways then come back later on, meet up for dinner and exchange adventure stories, and they all agreed.

So Steve headed off back to Shibuya to do some “shopping”, and Ly headed off to his mystery destination, meanwhile, I headed off to my first shrine of the day, the Yushima Tenmangu Shrine, this shrine house the God of Learning. And yes, I did learn something new, I learned how to walk through a giant wreath in a religious manner.

After that I realized that I hadn’t eaten much solid food for the day and was feeling a bit hungry, so I stopped by a convenience store and grabbed some Dragon Ball Chicken.

From there, I made my way over to Asakusa to visit the Sensoji Temple, I was told that this was the oldest Temple in Tokyo, so I had to check it out. In front of the temple is a gate with a giant lantern and this was a well known landmark as well, however once you reach the giant lantern but before you get to the actual temple, you have to make your way through hundreds of methodically placed street vendors. Here they would offer you delectable sweets, over priced and non over priced souvenirs, as well as various other memorabilia’s.

Here is where I once again pigged out, I first started off with some weird pasty circular marbles stuck to a stick, which didn’t taste that good, then I had to buy a cup of green liquid to wash that down with, after that was done, a homemade fried bean jam bun caught my eye and I just had to try that, that was awesome! A few more steps and a few more shops down, I come across a store offering 33 different flavours of ice cream, but at that moment, I was kind of full from all the previous junk so I didn’t opt for it. After navigating my way through all those vendors and spending a good chunk of money on junk food, I finally make it to the steps of the temple.

Right out side of the temple there was a giant pot, if I may, with a lot of incense burning from it, I stood there for a moment and watched, a lot of the people would just stand there and kind of absorb in all the incense smoke, I suppose that’s what you were suppose to do with it. I was about to do the same, then I came across an Indian guy who basically wafted all the smoke towards him and kind of fanned himself with it. I said to myself, “He looks like a very religious Indian guy; he must know what he’s doing”. So I followed in his footsteps and did the same.

After that “test” came another one, I came upon a great big donation box, determined not to mess it up, I stood there again and watched the locals do it. Throw a coin in, bow, clap twice and bow again? Got it! So, I did just that. I head over to the souvenir stand and purchased some charms for the folks back home, and as I’m leaving I come across a self-fortune telling box. It was an octagon shaped box with a small hole in the middle of it. The idea is to donate a 100 Yen into a separate box and shake the octagon box until a stick with a number comes out of the small hole; you then proceed to a shelf and pull out a fortune according to the number that you shook out.

Does bad English negate the bad fortune?

As I’m leaving I come across another food stall, this time selling something that I haven’t seen yet, a red bean filled fish shaped cake, and of course, I submit to my temptations and purchase it. It was pretty good.

It was time to head to over to another city, Shimbashi. I was planning on visiting the Suitengu Shrine, it was said to house the Seven Deities of Good Luck, I thought that after my bad fortune, this would help. So I make my way there, and when I get there, something strikes me as very odd about this place, at first I thought it was a cult temple, ‘cause there were no stairs to get in, all they had was an elevator with a handicap sticker on it. Well, since that seemed like the only way to get in was through the elevator, I hoped on. Once I got in, the place seemed very quiet, only a few people were around and they were praying, it didn’t seem like a HOT tourist spot like the previous one. I noticed that there were many old couples walking around and there were many younger couples walking around. This is very odd, so I open up my tour guide book and read the description on this Shrine, turns out that this shrine is noted for it’s divine grace such as safe delivery of children, pregnancy and avoidance from flood damage. *smack forehead* Oh! I get it now.

So I quickly skid-addle out of that place, as I’m running out of there, I came across a corner store that was selling fruit, but what caught my eye about this store was that it had a line up that extended from the inside to out and it wrapped around a corner. Wow, this place must sell some good shit!

After all that running and eating all those sweets, I was hungry, so I stopped by an Excelsior Caffe and grabbed an ice cold coffee. I guess this was imitation Starbucks? The price was certainly imitated very well; the drink however, was not. It tasted horrible, and I paid like 6 bucks for that too, should have stuck with a $1.20 Boss coffee instead. Yeuch!

That was it, time to head back to the hotel to shower and rendezvous with the guys. I got back to the hotel first, then Ly a few minutes after and we waited about half an hour for Steve, we suspect that he got lost. While we waited for Steve’s return, we exchanged stories, I told Ly that I think I figured out where he went based on the clues he gave us, to recap he said that it would be something very expensive and that we wouldn’t be willing to spend the money on (which was probably true), there was nothing in return except for a sense of joy and a smile, and that it could be considered as a service, based on all of those clues I came to the conclusion that he went to go find a real Geisha Girl.

A genuine Geisha girl spends years and years practicing the traditional dances, rituals and tea pouring methods. Where as a non-genuine Geisha girl, but still wears the make-up and costume is just a prostitute.

Both are very expensive and I’m sure that once you leave you will be greatly satisfied. He of course denied these allegations, but who knows.

Once everyone checked in, we made our way over to Roppongi. We heard that Roppongi Hills was worth the trip, they were quite right; it was nothing like we’ve ever seen before.

After a quick stop and a few quick photos there, it was time for dinner, we made reservations at a Teppanyaki place the previous night, but didn’t specify that we wanted to sit at the counter to witness all the action so they gave us a room. We didn’t want that, so we told them that we would make reservations for another night (tonight) for the counter and come back then. We didn’t end up eating at that place, ‘cause on our way back the next night we stopped by another place to ask if they had a table and they said yes, so we just ate there.

We decided that since this was our last dinner in Japan we would splurge, so we each opted for the most expensive meal they had on the menu, a set course which consisted of a salad, vinegar roasted mackerel, steak, pancake, seafood (shrimp, scallop) and desert, this cost us a whopping 5,500 Yen.

Although everything looked great and some of the stuff tasted wonderful, it wasn’t really all that worth it, we probably could have gotten a better meal some where else for that price.

Another fail on our part was that we thought Teppanyaki was the one where the chefs perform tricks with your food for you, sadly it is not. It’s just a form of Japanese cuisine that uses an iron griddle to cook your food.

I guess us Westerners have been fooled by the Teppanyaki places that we have here, leading us to believe that Teppanyaki includes tricks with your food, much like serving chicken balls at a Chinese buffet and leading non-chinese people to think that chicken balls is Chinese food.

If you’re in Japan and you want the kind where they cook on the iron griddle and do tricks with your food, then search for Hibachi or Japanese Steakhouse.

Japan - Day 6 - Tokyo

2009-06-28T22:21:00.021-04:00

Okay, it's our final day in Osaka, which means it's our final day in this hotel room, which also means, this is our last free breakfast. We get dressed and head down to the buffet area and do the same thing that we've done the past few days. Say hello to the lovely receptionist, get seated at our tables, make our own miso soup, eat cereal with yogurt, have fresh orange juice squeezing contests, etc.

We check out, pay our bills, hop on the train back to Tokyo. Not much happens again. Once we arrive in Tokyo, we make our way to our final hotel Tokyo Bay.
I walk up to the female receptionist, say konichiwa and inform her that I'm checking in, she says sure and hands me a brief form to fill out, I fill it out, and hand it back to her, along with my million dollar smile. She says okay and informs me of my room where abouts. No joy, maybe that smile only works on guys.

Steve and I head on up to the room with the bags in hand. We had to leave Ly behind since we only registered this room with two guests and from our Osaka hotel experience, they had someone show us up to our room, and we didn't want to run the risk of getting caught.
We drop the bags off, I go back down to grab Ly and we do the usual, take several snapshots of the room before it gets messed up. After a quick refreshing break, we head on out to Akihabara. This area of the town is known for electronics and manga, they have high rise buildings with department store after department store. Once we get there our first stop as usual is a food place, hey we're in Japan, we're allowed to pig out! We come across a place that's serving Tonkatsu, my favourite! So we head there and eat.
After that it was the Sony building, where they had a whole bunch of.....Sony products on display to let people view and if you're crazy enough, purchase. We explore the building for a while, but nothing really exciting.
We enter a few of the electronic stores and a few of the manga stores, since none of us are big manga fans, nothing really excites us, not even the hentai located in the basement levels of each of the manga stores. We even went into a 9-story Toy Store, one of the most popular ones in Japan, but we didn't really see anything that held our interest for longer than a minute.
I read in my Lonely Planet book that here in Akihabara they have cafes where the wait staff dress up in their favourite anime costume and serve you, we tried to find them, but couldn't, although we did see a whole bunch of girls dressed up in costumes handing out flyers to passing locals, but they ignored us gaijins, we can only imagine what they were offering.

After Electric City, we moved onwards to Ginza, a 4-chome intersection lined with high end department stores and prestigous boutiques. Now we're talking! If you're rich and famous, or if you have lots of money to spend, or if you're a Yakuza wife, then you'll be spending most of your time shopping here.

According to the Lonely Planet book a few years ago each square feet of Ginza, where the high end shops are located is valued at $5,500 US.

On this street, you name it, they have it. Cartier, Gucci, LV, etc. In fact this strip is so ballin that they have not one but two! count 'em two Tiffany & Co's.

After that, just dinner. No crazy stories here.

Japan - Day 5 - Kyoto

2009-06-23T22:17:00.027-04:00

So once again we begin the day by stuffing our faces at the buffet. If we were to pay for an intercontinental buffet it would have cost us each about $30, but I doubt we'd eat it if we had to pay.

We hop onto the high speed bullet train again and arrive in Kyoto in about 30 minutes. First stop, the Toji Temple, not much to see here. Let's move on to my favourite temple of the entire trip, the Rokuon-Ji Temple a.k.a. The Golden Pavilion. This temple and the sites that it provided was absolutely breathtaking, it was at this point in my life that I wanted a DSLR camera so that I could pretend to be a professional photographer and capture this moment, but instead, I decided to immortalize the moment in a different way, by writing about it.
At the end of your temple visit you are bombarded with stalls that sell delectable treats, it is here where I purchased that gooey green tea ball on a stick treat along with a small pack of green tea powder that had golden flakes in it, for 1,000 Yen each. That green tea powder better give me special powers after I drink it, otherwise, I've just been conned.

After the Golden Temple, we made our way over to the Nijo Castle, a shogun castle, pictures weren't allowed to be taken on the inside, so I'll just upload a couple from the outside.

After visiting the Shogun Castle and walking around the grounds we made our way to Nishiki market, where we walked up and down the aisles browsing and purchasing various deep fried goods. I stumbled upon a place that sold tempura battered shrimp but they were round, 5 for 300 Yen, they looked pretty good, so I bought a box. When I went to go pay, the lady said the word 'discount' to me, we were all very excited that I was getting a discount, after handing the food out and sharing with the guys, we each took a bite into it and quickly realized why she gave me a discount. Fail.
(This isn't it, but Ly purchased the round thing in the middle, which he said was pretty good)

After all that teasing of good food, we came across a Lipton Noodle House, thinking "oh, we don't have this in Canada, let's eat here" so we did. Steve and Ly ordered some weird rice while, I ordered some weird pasta. Major Fail! The food was expensive and horrible.

After a whole bunch more sightseeing we finally make it back to Kyoto Station. This was the most futuristic or new train station that I have EVER seen. It has a hotel attached to it, along with a sky walk that connects you to a shopping mall. If you travel up to the 11th Floor of the building you can get some pretty nice views of the city. This is where Ly was too tired to make the climb up another flight of stairs.

Okay. Okay. Enough of the boring crap, let's get down to the somewhat more interesting crap. Roppongi Crossings! So it's night time, we're wandering around a section of the city known as Roppongi Crossings, this is the "it" spot at night. We're looking for a good place to eat. I come across a black guy who asks us what we're looking for, I tell him that I'm looking for food, and he points me in the direction of a Starbucks. Uh?

So we move on, then we come across another black guy, who asks if he can also help us find what we're looking for. They're so friendly eh? I tell him that I'm looking for food, he asks if I'm Chinese, I say yes. Then he replies with "so you must be looking for Chinese food". Friendly but not that bright eh?

We finally find a place to eat, but for some reason, I can't find pics of the food, I guess I didn't snap away this time. Fail on my part.

After we eat, we proceed to make our way back to the subway station, we're stopped by another black guy yet again. This time he's more direct and he asks us if we're looking for girls. We stop and give him the time of the day to proceed. He informs us that he knows of a place and he can get us in for 5,000 Yen and we can stay for 90 minutes, and because he knows the manager there, he can get us unlimited drinks as well. After talking to him for a bit, he decides that we're nice people, we're on vacation and that money is tight, so he's willing to cut us a deal and drop the rate down to 3,000 Yen. He tries to persuade us by telling us that this place has international talent, Romanian, Russian, Canadian, etc. He invites us to just come with him and take a look, since we've already invested so much time into it, we figured what have we got to lose, right?

Wrong! We almost lost our dinner. When we got up there, he had the "talent" line up in a straight line for our viewing pleasure, we all took one look and practically bolted out of there, he needs to get his eyes checked.

We leave and begin to make our way to the subway station again, and before we even get to the crosswalk, we're approached by an Indian dude. An Indian guy in Japan, can you frickin believe it? And here's the kicker, he speaks Japanese too! This guy was probably in his late 40's and after a whole bunch of talk, he basically offers us the same deal, and the same resource of girls, however this guy had access to an all Japanese club, and we wanted in, but since we didn't fit their profile, no go, so we leave.

Believe it or not, a few steps later another black guy comes up to us, asking if we're looking for girls. Oh! So that's what those black guys back in Kabukicho, the Red Light District that we visited a few nights ago were offering! I thought they were pimping themselves! Silly me.
We talk and talk, he gives us his name, we give him ours, well kind of, I gave him my pseudo name, James. Steve used Steve and Ly used PrettyBoy.

He tries to persuade us to go visit his club and check out the "talent" he's got there, but we're reluctant to go since based on what we've seen available in those places were sub par. He really wants us to go to his club, so much in fact that he was willing to pick up PrettyBoy and carry him there, he made the motion of it, but we thought that if we was trying this hard, his place must be good, right? Wrong! It was the same thing.

We had to ride inside a cozy elevator with him and up to the 7th floor, in order to politely reject him and his "talent". As we were in the elevator making our way back down, we were stopped on the 3rd floor, by another, yup, you guessed it, black guy, he motioned for us to come in and check his "talent" out. We figured since we were already on the floor, we might as well have. The girls in this club were slightly better than the previous ones. Ly and Steve wanted to settle and stay here but I told them that we're moving up in this world, that we need to elevate our company, so we left once again.

Seriously, we're trying to get to the subway station to make our way home, but it's not as easy as it sounds, we're stopped yet again! I feel like I'm in a Pokemon game where I'm on the bridge just trying to cross it, but I keep getting stopped by these trainers who all think their Pokemon is the shit and battle me, only to end up losing. Anyways, this guy is a younger chap, and no, he's not black, don't be so mean! He's Indian. He was probably our age too, I think we might have met his father a few streets back. He tries to get us to go to his club, we sigh and reluctantly check it out, but of course it's a no go, so we quickly leave.

We just get out of the building and onto the streets again and WHAM! We're approached again! This time it's by a Taiwanese woman, offering Happy Endings. Uh, no thanks.

I don't know how but we finally manage to get out of there, alive and with our dinners still in our stomach!

For some odd reason we were all directionally challenged in Japan, maybe traveling over the international date line messed up our internal compasses. We could never remember which N.E.S.W. exit to take once we emerged from the subway.

So that night after de-boarding the subway and arriving at our "home" station we couldn't agree on which exit to take so that it would lead us directly back to the route we usually take to get to our check-in point, the hotel. So someone came up with the ingenious idea once again to split up, and we all go our separate ways. Problem is, we only had one map.

We decided that Steve needed the map more than either Ly or myself, but we took one last look at it, put our left in hand into the middle to form a small circle, said 1 2 3 Japan! and off we went in three different directions.

I took off in a random direction, not caring if I went in the opposite direction or not, my mind for the past hour and a half was on something else. At that point, I could care less if it was Japanese Style or Western Style, I needed to go, bad.

I walked as fast as I could until I found my checkpoint after that brief break, my mind was ready to work, to figure out how to get to the final pit stop. I kept walking until I came upon an underground passage way, and I knew that this would lead me to the hotel, since that is the route we took this morning, however the trick was navigating it backwards.

Time was against me, who knows how far ahead the others were, so I decided to take it, I walked for a few minutes, until I came upon a couple forks in the road, at that point, I wasn't sure which one I should take, I knew that if I took the wrong one, it would set me back a great deal. So I decided to play it safe and back track to where I started and find a new route from there, I figured it was better than being lost underground for god knows how long.

After being "lost" for quite sometime, I felt like just giving up and going to the tourist info station and just ask where the pit stop was, but I didn't, what kept me going was that, the others could be just as lost as I was too, and I wanted to beat them, fair and square!

Eventually I found the exit or entrance we usually frequent, so I took it and started walking at a much faster pace, then switched it to jogging for a brief moment, and then wait a minute what's that up ahead? It's Ly, turns out he was just as lost as I previously was and he was walking pretty fast too. So I decided to blow past him like Sonic the Hedgehog and tap him on the shoulder to let him know that he's just been beat. I only took it a few steps further only to let his mind think "what was that" and waited for him. I knew that if it boiled down to a foot race in the end, I would beat him and be safe from elimination.

When we got back to the hotel, we just saw Steve cross the lobby. Instead of heading up to the room we decided to hit the Club Lounge for some refreshments and drinks. Shortly after Steve comes down to join us, with a smile on his face. Informing us that he already showered. We just said good for you and asked if he had asked anyone for directions and he said "of course".

It took us about 45 minutes to navigate our way back to the hotel, after what seemed to be a trial and error system, where as if we worked together we could have solved it in 20 minutes.

But hey, where's the fun in that?