'It's so bloody hot' was my Initial impression of Las Vegas. Walking around the strip and inside the casinos feels like I have taken acid and started walking around Blackpool. Everybody that is dealing cards is wearing a bikini. There is a massive artificial re-modelling of absolutely everything, including the Effiel Tower and even the Amazon rain forest. These plastic monstrosities are everywhere and it all feels unnecessarily brash and over-indulgent. Walking down the strip there are Mexicans on both sides of the pavement trying to give us business cards of prostitutes. These cards decorate the pavements. The same businesses are advertised on purpose built advertising vans that drive up and down the strip all day. The two visible sides to Vegas thus far are a huge brothel and a huge themepark, often referred to,by the locals who hark back to the Golden days, as an 'adult Disneyland'. Additionally we have lost count of the times we have been asked 'so are you guys married?'. It is actually worse than being in India with regards to having everybody's conservative views rammed down our throats on a daily basis.

Nonetheless 24 hours later we played lots of poker and went to watch a very entertaining Derren Brown type show called The Metalist. We went to watch the Bellagio fountains next. The following day we played more poker and in the evening we went to watch the Cirque de Soleil production KA, followed by more poker.

So we actually ended up having a great time and Vegas was a great place to play 24 hours of poker a day whilst having a few breaks to watch some amazing shows. We learned to immerse in the environment, which means drinking strong cocktails for breakfast and sharing jokes about titty (pronounced tiddy) bars and weddings. We even learn to deal with the heat and Claire has almost completely replaced her consumption of water with that of gin. Now that we have practically gone native it feels like we should move on and experience the real America and natural beauty that it has to offer, which hopefully will much less centred around cocktails and titty bars.

Dean