I’ve been on a trip into a strange, strange place the last week. My day job sent me to Las Vegas for the Amazon Reinvent Conference, which not only let me do a deep dive into the wonderful world of Amazon’s cloud service offerings, but also my first ever trip to Las Vegas.

This is an odd place. A few observations:

• Lots of smoking… if you’re allergic to cigarette smoke, and are used to living in an area where there’s not as much smoking, this is a big change.
• It’s a very clean place, very little litter, bannisters are polished, floors are washed, bathrooms are all clean.
• If you want to get somewhere, you’ll have to go through a casino. “Twisty maze of passages” is an apt description here, honestly in the 4 days I’ve been here I’ve taken a different path to and from the conference area each time, and not because I was trying to explore, it was because I was getting lost.
• Everything is expensive. If you’re used to a $10 entrée, get ready for them to start at $20. For a burger. With no fries (they are $9 extra).
• Everything is designed to separate you from your money, the casinos, the half price ticket places, etc. Paying $200 a night at the hotel and expect to have free wifi? Nope, $13 per day. Per device. Want a black coffee? $3.50. Latte? $5. I’m sure you can get cheaper food and drink farther away from the strip, but then there’s the walk (after the 15 minutes to just get out of your hotel) or taxi ride, or bus (which of course has deals that lean towards you giving them more money). Also if you see a wookie, robot, or awesome cool costumed guy standing on the sidewalk, they want your money before you take a picture with them, or talk to them.
• Along the strip there is a cacophony of noise, if it’s not the sounds from the casinos, it’s music playing (pop music, because of course people like pop, so you’re more likely to go into that casino/night club/whatever)), advertisements blaring (“red club card players get ten times more points and more chances for double extra club points on every spin!”), etc.
• Opulence everywhere. All the high end stores, amazing custom motorbikes, cars, and carvings hang around all over inside the casinos (I assume the richer the casino seems, the more people think they’ll win so they can be rich as well).
• There are still bums on the street but they are (for the most part), not pushy or aggressive, and clean.
• The saddest part of the city is the people giving away the “girls to your room in 20 minutes” business cards for prostitutes, blank expressions on their faces, all ages, genders, and nationalities, sticking cards with bare boobs and a phone number in your face on every corner, generally combined with a snap of the deck to get your attention. Somehow I just can’t imagine the 60 year old latino lady with a lot of wear and tear on her face with the bright red “Drinking team” t-shirt caring at all about you getting sexual favours from a call girl.

That is all of course, completely normal for anyone living here, or frankly in any big US city. For me, a humble country boy (and a cheapskate), it was eye opening.

I did get to go to my first Vegas show as well. Circ De Solie’s “Mystere”, where there wasn’t any sort of a real story, but just SPECTACLE, splattered at you from the stage, with odd people and things but a consistent level of SPECTACLE going on. Amazing dancers, trapeze artists, strong-men, acrobats, songs, drumming, humour… Just awesome to see, glad I got the chance.

The Vegas strip is fascinating to walk down too. People from every corner of the globe, lights, famous landmarks that maybe you’ve only seen in the movies (like me), the chance to see a celebrity wandering around (my wife saw Woopi Goldberg while she was waiting for me in Treasure Island), and the ability to randomly wander around for (in my case) 12 kilometres just checking the place out.

I’ll be heading home tomorrow, but will be returning with not only a closetful of new trade show t-shirts, but some great memories.