When Oscar Goodman, the flamboyant mayor of Las Vegas, came to London to launch a new direct British Airways service to his city, he brought along a chorus line of casino showgirls - and handed out poker chips as his calling card. The man who played a cameo role in the film Casino flew back home on an inaugural flight to one of the top tourist destinations, which draws 40 million visitors every year.
When invited to try out the new service by flying all the way from South Africa to Las Vegas and back, I couldn't find anyone to print my business cards on poker chips. In transit in Heathrow, I fought off the travails of business class travel by enduring a "flying feet" massage at the travel spa in the new BA Club World lounge in Terminal 5. When the masseur asked if I'd like a "flying facial", I quipped, "That sounds rather rude - and I'm not old enough to qualify for an anti-ageing wrinkle treatment yet."
A day after leaving Cape Town, flying in my pampered horizontal cocoon all the way, we veered into Vegas on the BA gambler's special.
We landed at dusk after an in-flight snack of salmon, prawns and lobster, washed down with champagne - on a high-flying menu designed by Liam Tomlin, a renowned Irish chef who lives and works in South Africa. As for me, I was on my first visit to Sin City - a virgin to Vegas. (I was a VIP visitor - apparently only one in five tourists in Vegas is a first-time visitor.)
Arriving in Vegas in style, our media party of nine squashed into one long limo in black-tinted privacy. We cruised the neon night of Las Vegas Boulevard - the legendary "strip" of high-rise resorts like Bellagio, MGM Grand and The Mirage.
This desert valley boasts more hotel rooms than any city in the world - well over 200 000 at last count at 5 000-suite mega-resorts. At first sight Vegas resembles a giant Disney theme park with the faux Sphinx and pyramid of Luxor, the replica Manhattan skyline at New York-New York, 50-storey Eiffel tower of Paris, gondolas, Grand Canal and St Mark's Square of The Venetian and pirate ship of Treasure Island.
You know you're in Vegas when you have to wheel your suitcase through a vast casino, past punters playing the slots, to get to one of the guest elevators. "Ol' Blue Eyes" was crooning in the lobby when I checked into Bellagio - and choreographed on the terrace where the 200m high fountains cascade every half hour in a spectacular light, sound and water show. They gave me a map to find my way around the 4 000-suite resort of ballrooms, wedding chapels, malls, gallery, gardens and restaurants. Getting lost en route to my suite, I was going to need a navigational aid.
Jet lag is a virtue in Vegas. No one seems to sleep in Sin City. When it's time to go to bed in Vegas, it's time to wake up in South Africa. When I couldn't sleep in the early hours I'd dream walk on the casino parapets like Hamlet and watch the punters playing baccarat, blackjack, craps, roulette and poker at the slots, tables and high-roller clubs. A croupier on her obligatory 30-minute break told me the only quiet period is the "graveyard shift" when the gamblers break for breakfast around 5am.
I'm no gambler. I'm cautious by nature and thrifty by upbringing. I'm averse to risk. When a "dollar bet" means a $100 wager and a "dime bet" means a $1 000 (R7 200) wager, the exchange rate takes on a whole new meaning. Apart from a nickel ($5) bet and $1 slot, the stakes were too high for me. You've had your chips unless you know the colour of your casino money - $100 for a black chip, $25 for green and $5 for red. The limits at blackjack tables run from $5 to $1 000 per hand. Don't lose your shirt.
Only in Las Vegas do travel guides come with an entire chapter on gaming - and a glossary on gambling speak. So you thought all the dealers were croupiers? Wrong! Watching the action, I picked up a whole new lingo. I learned to tell the difference between a croupier (the dealer at roulette or baccarat), the boxman (the craps dealer), card dealer, pit boss (the person in charge of a group of gaming tables), stickman (craps dealer) and shill (a fake player paid to lure punters to an empty table).
"Are you lonesome tonight?" crooned one of the call girls who walk the floors of Vegas by day and night. Touts hand out playing cards on street corners, with names like Candy and Brandy from $69 on alluring glossy snapshots, while a bus with a girlie billboard - "These girls want to meet you!"- drives up and down the strip all day. Prostitution is legal in Nevada. They say "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" but if you roll the dice and contract a nasty disease, it'll come home with you.
If you're sleepless in Vegas, you can find a nightcap any time at clubs that are open 24/7. You could do frozen vodka at a minus5 Ice Lounge (made of ice), watch the girls dance on the bar at Coyote Ugly or check out Studio 54 at MGM Grand. With our VIP media passes, we got past the bouncers at Eva at CityCenter, an uber-trendy club owned by Eva Longoria Parker of Desperate Housewives fame. The cocktail menus are illuminated on palmtops - and spirits by the bottle ($450) are served at a cordoned-off table by your very own waitress. Who could ask for more?
"There's a lot more to Vegas than gambling," I was told by Scott Ghertner, PR director of MGM Mirage - the biggest operator in town, which owns 16 of the city's most iconic resorts and almost half its rooms. According to the Las Vegas Visitors Authority, most tourists list the shows, night-life, restaurants, shops, golf, museums and art galleries as the primary reasons for their visit - not gambling.
Vegas lives up to its reputation as "the entertainment capital of the world" with "the biggest and the best". Cirque du Soleil runs six different shows from Viva Elvis at Aria to The Beatles Love at The Mirage at six 2 000-seater MGM resort theatres. We saw a spectacular show called O by Cirque du Soleil at Bellagio - starring world-class acrobats, clowns, high divers, tightrope walkers and contortionists. Visitors also come to see long-running shows like Disney's The Lion King at Mandalay Bay, cabaret like Crazy Horse and Folies Bergère or world-renowned comedians, magicians and singers like Celine Dion and Barry Manilow.
Some of the best entertainment in Vegas is free. From my eyrie at Bellagio I walked straight onto Las Vegas Boulevard, joining the crowds on the pedestrian walkways and sidewalks, snapping dozens of famous resorts like The Flamingo - the famous setting for the film about mobster Bugsy Siegel. The resorts compete with free streetside shows on the strip to lure visitors through their doors - the fire-and-sound volcano show at The Mirage, the fountains of Bellagio and the kitsch pirate show in Buccaneer Bay at Treasure Island. You can also catch free lion, tiger, dolphin, shark and circus attractions - if you support the exploitation of animals for entertainment.
In the spirit of showbiz, I visited "CSI Las Vegas" a brand-new attraction at MGM Grand. I joined enthralled fans of the TV series who get to investigate a realistic crime scene, measure the calibre of bullet, examine hair under a microscope - and talk to the coroner during a realistic autopsy. I left Las Vegas as an accredited crime-scene investigator after solving a murder in the desert. I have a diploma signed by CSI supervisor Gill Grissom to prove it - as they say, there are no bones about it.
Elvis and Michael may have left the building - but not the strip or the shows. Elvis and Michael Jackson impersonators pose on the streets for a buck for a snapshot - or you can pose with Romans in togas at Caesar's Palace.
Vegas is all showbiz. When I moved from Bellagio to a 24th-floor suite at the brand-new Aria resort at CityCenter, the "drapes" opened automatically, all the lights came on and the giant TV said, "Welcome Graham Howe." I had to step back outside just to see my private-suite show all over again. The view of the strip from my room was amazing - all the way across the desert to Sunset Mountains.
Moving from old Vegas to new Vegas, I saw the face of the future. Opened early this year, the CityCenter - a cluster of hotels, malls and casinos - has a space-age monorail, cutting-edge architecture, soaring glass and steel towers and massive art installations by the likes of Henry Moore and Nancy Rubins. Renowned architects Daniel Libeskind and David Rockwell designed the hotel, shopping and lifestyle metropolis in the heart of Vegas. More like Dubai than the old neon capital of Nevada, City-Center is a city within a city - reinventing Vegas in the 21st century.
We spent the last morning on a chopper ride through the Grand Canyon and a champagne breakfast. After four days in Vegas, it was time to get back to reality. Flying out, the shimmering neon of Las Vegas - meaning "the meadows" in Spanish - vanished behind us like a mirage in the pitch-black Nevada desert. I slept all the way home.
- Graham Howe was a guest of British Airways. Website: britishairways.com, arialasvegas.com and visitlasvegas.com.