Vegas took my passport

She shoots, she scores … oh wait no she doesn’t score.  She loses badly. And when I mean lose I mean she gets robbed. Despite what my Dad may think my passport almost certainly got STOLEN  in Vegas and I was left in Nevada with no passport, no ID and with the very real prospect I might not be leaving USA in a week. 

How’s that for a dramatic beginning for a blog post.

I remember I once wrote on this blog about how proud I was for not losing anything whilst being in the USA.  Well the ceasefire between my objects and myself ended in spectacular fashion when not one, but both of my passports, my drivers license and some cash got stolen from my bag in Las Vegas. 

To be frank I was certainly not acting like the safest traveler – carrying my wallet in my backpack which only fastened magnetically, putting all forms of ID in the same bag and then having the sense to walk around Vegas with the bag strung loosely on my back. 

We’re still not entirely sure what happened but I had the wallet when we entered the hotel lobby and it was gone by the time we had reached the top of the elevator. Hotel security was quite hopeless – they got very uptight when we asked them to review the CTV footage and were very reluctant to do anything about it. 

What that meant was that I had to first call the New Zealand embassy in Washington D.C and then the New Zealand consulate in Santa Monica to organize an emergency travel document so that I could travel back to New Zealand the following week.

These bad boys don’t come to cheap though – $500 NZ for an emergency document if you pick up the document from Santa Monica, Los Angeles.

So apart from losing my passports what did I think of Vegas!?

Not much. Personally, I didn’t like the atmosphere that permeated the strip – alcohol, sex and gambling.  Images of bikini clad women who ‘wanted to meet you’ lined posters, buses and trucks. Even the waitresses at the pool in the hotel were required to wear bikini’s whilst they worked.  Along with this people drank yard glasses filled with margaritas on the street and smoked in the hotel. 

It’s also important to talk about safety in Vegas.  Yes, I might be slightly biased since my passport got LOST STOLEN but truthfully out of all the places I’ve been in the USA it was where I felt the least safe.  Walking around off the Strip at night felt dangerous – if anything were to happen there was literally no one around to help.  It is also quite telling of a place when Uber drivers ensure they drop you off right outside a restaurant and tell you to be safe every time to exit.

If you were to spend all your time in the hotel, pool and bar you would feel relatively comfortable but actually getting out and seeing the sights (particularly those not on the Strip) felt unsafe for two young girls.

All in all I don’t think I’ll be running back to Las Vegas. 

This may have been somewhat of a more negative post but hopefully my last couple of days in the USA will be much better!