Vac Day X - Williams, AZ then back to Vegas

Monday - September 6th, 2010

Williams

I had a mission that day: to get laundry done. It has been my mission for the past couple of days as we've been traveling for almost a week and carrying six days' worth of dirty clothes. I am definitely not comfortable wearing dirty, wrinkled clothes and wandering around town, one that I'd like to explore and get to know -- don't want to mis-represent, you know? :)

The night before, I collected all the dirty clothes from everyone and stuffed my luggage with them so I could just rolled it to the laundry mat. When entering the town yesterday, we saw one laundry mat and right by the motel where we stayed, there was another one. Both not too far apart. I checked out the hours of operation at the door and it stated that they would be open at 6AM. Perfect, I thought.

Got up early so I could have a head start. I calculated, by the time I would be done with laundry, everyone else would have been ready to leave. As planned, I rolled my luggage to about a block away to the laundry mat. First thing I saw, the neon sign was not lit. Shit, just my luck. I checked the doors and they were still locked. I looked at my watch, it was already past 6AM. It was cold too, so I got my jacket out of the luggage and waited, hoping the owner would come soon.

Waited for about half an hour, warming myself up by doing some newly-acquired qi-gong moves. Angered, frustrated and disappointed, I thought there may be another laundry mat around. I thought of the one we saw coming in yesterday but couldn't determine where it was or which direction it was from where I was. I was wasting time anyways, so I thought I'd check out both direction, with my luck, I may not get any laundry done but at least I'll get to see the town.

So, rolling my luggage, I went down a few blocks, no laundry mat. I went back the way I came and a walked a few more blocks the other direction. Jackpot. There it was. I was concerned, because the door was closed. I prayed hard as I approached it, twisted the knob and it opened! Relieved, I went right in and searched for vending machine for soap. None! How to do laundry with no soap. Conveniently, there was a convenient shop right next to the laundry mat, so I thought maybe those folks run the laundry mat too. I went and check it out. Indeed, they carry all the laundry soaps in a conveniently packaged box for single use. I bought three boxes of soap and softener and asked for quarters to run the machines.

Excited that my luck has changed, I hurriedly go back to the laundry mat to make up for loss time. I split the laundry into two - one for undergarments and what not. The other, I put them into the bigger commercial washer so I don't have to do separate washes. Save money and time, so I thought. Put my change in and started both machines. The smaller ones started first and I could hear swooshing of water while the bigger washer didn't seem to do much. No water... thought that was weird. Then it started spinning. Wait, no water but it's spinning. That doesn't make any sense.

I waited to see and checked maybe there was something that I didn't press. Nothing, it works like any regular washer. Money in and lock the door and the machine starts. How in the world do you wash clothes with no water. Angered again, I went back to the convenient store and asked if they know who operated the laundry mat. The guy said he could take a look. He was puzzled and went back to the store to grab a bunch of keys. He checked some settings and puzzled still. He said it wasn't suppose to do that. I thought so. He unlocked the container to where the change dropped and gave me my money back. He says there's nothing he could do and that the machine would have to complete its cycle before the door could unlock. I was very frustrated with that. He says he could refund me for the soap too, I asked him to give me another two boxes.

Just my luck. Well, I finally got all the laundry done in half the time I thought it'd take so it was alright. I was happy I have clean clothes now. I folded all the clothes and put them in different bags to be given to Mom, Papa, Sien Ee, etc. Once I got back, everyone was ready to leave. I started packing my luggage and made sure I have everything in there. Sien Ee made breakfast, I've lugged some cup noodles with me and this was the only motel that has microwave! That I was thankful so we could finally consume and get rid of them.

We loaded all our stuff into the van and started to explore the small town by foot. It was almost 10AM so it warmed up quite quickly. 

After strolling the one way street of this town, I soon realized a theme that can be seen almost every corner. A lot of the properties have FOR SALE sign. The economy here must be bad. 

PCC and I parted with others and started to walk on our own. She read something about the train station so we headed that way.

They have a gift shop at the train station and also the penny souvenir. I'm collecting on Papa's behalf hehe PCC picked up some souvenir and while we were leaving, I saw this windbreaker jacket that looked nice and recalled that Mom wanted to get Papa one and they haven't gotten one for one reason or the other. The price was right and the colors/materials were nice. Had PCC appraised and she concurred. So that was my gift for Papa's birthday hehe forgot to take picture...

We were the last to get back at the motel as the others were waiting anxiously to leave for Vegas (you know how PCC can be when it comes to shopping hehe alright I'm guilty as well :)

Thankfully, this time around the driving duty are fairly assigned to the four younger adults hehe me and PCC on the way there, Florence and Vanitha on the way back. So, PCC and I took the very last row of the van and slept almost all the way back. I didn't realize how tired I was.

We reached Vegas around 5PM. PCC wanted to go to Hard Rock first for BoyKK's collection. I was getting tired of visiting so many Hard Rocks, or so it seemed... so I went to the bathroom to get away. Unfortunately, that was where I retrieved SY's email about Ah Ma's untimely death. It was devastating. I didn't know how to react to the news. I went out to Papa and tried to hold back my tears with my cracked voice I told Papa that Ah Ma is gone. Papa was calm and in turn told Mom of the grim news. I couldn't tell much from Mom's reaction. I couldn't hold myself back anymore so I stormed outside and burst into tears.

We left Hard Rock shortly after that and proceeded to checking in to our hotel that night at the MGM Grand. As soon as we got our keys to our rooms, we called a family meeting. All of our plans to the East Coast needs to be cancelled. We'd have to call the airlines to see if Papa, Mom and Sien Ee can get an earlier flight back and we'd have to get back to LA as soon as possible. Since MCC did all the booking, it was hard to get through customer service and MCC was in Bali at that time. We managed to get a hold of her and she said she'll take care of it when she gets back to Singapore. We made what seems to be a lot of calls that night.

We didn't get out of the hotel room until after 10PM. We were tired and hungry so we went down to grab dinner. A Chinese restaurant by the name of ChinChin at the NYNY Hotel was our choice. We took the opportunity to do a flash sight-seeing as Papa, Mom, and Sien Ee never really have the chance to see the city.

 Dinner was mediocre, perhaps even less than that... even though the reviews stated otherwise.

Papa was intrigued with all the gambling that was going on in the casino -- we watched this guy who seemed to be filthy rich, lost all his gambling chips on roulette. He has no strategy (what gambling game does?) and he just bet all over the table, hoping he'd hit it rich quick. Well, that didn't happen for him but just thrill of the game, I guess. 

At another table, this Filipino lady was lucky for a couple of rounds but she kept betting on the same number. With my knowledge on probability, she probably will not hit the same number again. And she lost all her chips... 

I told Papa, if want to gamble, best bet is the slot machines. The smaller the denomination, the longer you get to play. So, we tried on some slot machines. It was fun, but no jackpot. After an hour or so of getting to know the games, we met up with Mom, Sien Ee and PCC. We thought it'd be a good idea to see the whole strip and the easiest way to do this is by the monorail. It was close to midnight at that time but we went anyways. It was quiet and there were not too many people on it. We didn't get out of the monorail but Papa said the $15 that we paid to see most of the strip (from the backlot where the monorail passed) was worth it, because we wouldn't have been able to cover or to see most of the casinos/hotels by foot.

We got back to the hotel after 1AM and retired to bed from what seemed to be a long day...