The REAL TRUTH About Vegas

I’ve been a little cheeky with the title of this blog… Firstly, welcome to TrustedVegas.com, I’m Hywel (a Welsh name for a man born in Oxford 36 years ago…) and I run this site with my wife Sarah.  

We visited Vegas for the first time six years ago, planning to stay for two nights, and I expected to HATE it.  I thought it would be everything I am not.  I’m not a party animal, although party like an animal I can, I’ve never been part of the ‘in’ crowd, though I can be friends with most people, and I certainly would never have imagined myself shouting ‘VEGAS BABY’.  And I haven’t.  I don’t think.

For ‘little scared me’ I expected an imposing, vacuous, selfish city that was all about ‘sin’. And in many ways it is all of those things, but in a way I loved. Whenever there is a TV documentary, a newspaper article that isn’t for a travel promotion, or a radio feature about Vegas it is always entitled ‘The Dark Side of Vegas’ or something similar.  It delves to unearth THE TRUTH about the city that is seen as the adult playground of the world.  Well let’s try two things.

Firstly imagine a documentary about ANY playground.  The TRUTH about your local park.  The TRUTH about Disneyland, the TRUTH about your kid's primary school.  There will surely be some horrible things that happen in or around each of those things, and yes, journalists (my wife is a journalist) should spend their time unearthing these things.  It’s important.  All I’m saying is that the TRUTH about something that seems all about entertainment, perfection, glitz or glamour is a much more attractive programme or story to make or write.  If you live in a city, or you think about your nearest city, you’ll know that there is a dark side to that city.  

There are homeless people.  There are deprived areas.  There are shocking things that happen that are in need of exposing.  Vegas is held to a much higher standard because it is Vegas.  So here are the downsides to that city.  There are people with gambling addictions who spend their pension on fun instead of important things like food and medicine.  There are homeless people who live out of sight, including in the storm drains which run under the city.  Vegas is the first city to have tried to OUTLAW giving food to the homeless (in order to make them go to government organised shelters).  This last one never got anywhere thankfully.   But the other side of Vegas is that it is one of the rare places in the world where adults can go and have fun.  Lots of fun.