“Las Vegas is the only place I know where money really talks – it says goodbye.” –Frank Sinatra

Whimsy columnist CLIVE WILLIAMS finds himself in Las Vegas for a conference and a ride on the fastest and most horrifying in roller coaster in the world.

I recently travelled to America, Las Vegas to be specific, to attend a law-enforcement conference. 

It was my first time in the US since covid. It’s more complicated for me to go there these days because I’ve been to countries sanctioned by the US, so I have to apply and pay for an entry visa. 

The visa application process through the US consulate in Sydney seems deliberately complicated and slow to punish applicants for going to countries the US does not approve of (the US embassy in Canberra does not do consular work). Fortuitously, I got my visa the day before I was due to fly out of Australia. 

The first thing that’s notable on arrival in the US is the grumpiness of the border officials. It doesn’t matter where you enter the US. They all seem to have attended the same charm school. 

The conference was held at the South Point Hotel and Casino. It allows smoking indoors, so the air conditioning was perfumed to hide the smoke smell that permeated the whole resort. 

South Point was enormous, with three horse-riding arenas, a large bingo hall, 64 bowling lanes, eight movie theatres, a 25-storey hotel, massive conference, ballroom and exhibition spaces, 10 restaurants, hundreds of gaming areas etcetera. All were contained within the one air-conditioning system. The a/c had to work hard because the temperature outside was in the mid-40s. 

The conference lasted a week. After a week of air-conditioning 24/7, most of the 400 conference delegates had coughs and sore throats. The hotel windows were sealed shut so there was no access to fresh air unless you went outside. 

The meals were good but served on disposable plates with chrome-plated plastic cutlery. The coffee was undrinkable. It’s little wonder that Starbucks at Manuka went out of business.

South Point is about 13 kilometres from The Strip where all the more desirable hotels are. That’s where I would recommend visitors to stay. That said, Las Vegas is not to everyone’s taste, with its re-creations of Egypt’s pyramids and sphinxes, France’s Eiffel Tower and Venice’s canals, complete with serenading gondola men. 

However, I did succumb to the amazing Big Apple roller coaster ride, which is said to be the fastest and most horrifying in the world. It’s certainly not a good idea to eat before riding. 

Something that’s notable about the US is tipping. Two takeaway coffees at Starbucks cost $US17 ($A25) – which included a 20 per cent tip. You can supposedly ask to have the tip removed although no customers cared to try. 

Even if you get slow or poor service you are expected to tip 20 per cent. It’s apparently to offset the poor wages paid to service staff, but that should be the employer’s responsibility to rectify, not the customers’. 

I was also unlucky with my daily one-kilometre swim. The pool at the hotel was kidney-shaped and no good for lap swimming, so I drove 56 kilometres to get to a 50-metre pool, only to find it was laned width-wise. Effectively it was a 50-metre-wide 25-metre pool!

So, did I find anything good about my latest US experience? Of course, I did. The conference was well organised and useful. Americans are invariably friendly and helpful. The roads are good. Petrol is cheap – around $US3.60 a gallon or about $A1.40 a litre – and the Payless rental car was only $US33 ($A49) a day. 

I drove with an Australian colleague out to the Hoover Dam – built back in the Depression of the 1930s, and still impressive today for its scale and art deco styling. 

The desert scenery was spectacular, and I would have liked more time to go to some of the very well managed federal and state parks. My wife and I once did a 10-day rafting trip through the 225 kilometres of the Grand Canyon National Park – a truly memorable experience with the big rapids and imposing scenery.

Anyway, all good things come to an end; I flew out after the conference to boldly go next to a place where, hopefully, most tourists don’t go. Did I mention Albania?!

I should add that one of my American friends told me about a hillbilly who went to a park ranger’s office to report he’d seen a suitcase in the woods containing a fox and two cubs. 

“Were they moving?” asked the ranger. 

“Ah sure don’t know,” replied the hillbilly, “but I guess it would explain the suitcase.”

Clive Williams is a Canberra columnist