only 1 winner at the city of entertainment

genting is THE city of entertainment, if the promotional tagline is to be believed. but before you get anywhere near the fun & festivities it offers, there's a 30km long & winding (& mostly uphill) road to be tackled. a daunting task if you are often light-headed & prone to motion sickness. unless you're a corporate bigwig, in which case you can avoid a bout of vertigo by travelling in style on a helicopter.

i was there for a conference recently. being the start of school holidays, the family tagged along for a weekend of self-gratification - the wife appreciated the cool crisp air (1700m above sea-level) while the kids' attention were directed at the allure of the theme parks.

we stayed at a monstrosity that is the 1st world hotel, validated by the guiness book of world records as the largest hotel in the world with 6118 rooms. i don't recall its presence (or any semblance of it's impending construction) on my last visit in feb 1999, so it must have been built in record time to open in dec 2000.

rumour has it that it was built specifically on the selangor side of the border with pahang- i didn't even know that the state boundary runs through genting - because sentiments were strong at that time that the opposition fundamentalist party PAS may capture pahang at the 1999 general elections. should that occur, the casino operations which is located on the pahang side & which the fundamentalist party said it would ban should it come power, would conveniently shift over to the 1st world hotel premises on the selangor side. anyway, it's just hearsay which didn't materialise & genting continues to reap in the big bucks on both sides of the border!!

i did make a few observations during the brief sojourn there :

1) there always seemed to be hordes of people everywhere - at the hotel lobby, shops, restaurants, theme parks & certainly at the casino. what is it about the latter that attracts people like a spell, i wonder?

2) there's a sticker next to the tap in the room that declared, "water safe for drinking". all very assuring but i still boiled it anyway. but it did make me think - is it because the water elsewhere is of dubious quality??

3) food is very expensive by any standard, in marked contrast to hotels in las vegas, where i recall the huge buffets go for an unbelieveable giveaway price of USD2.99-3.99. maybe that's because there are numerous hotels/casinos on the vegas strip itself competing for tourists' dollars, while genting runs the only casino & all 5 hotels at the peak of this hill resort.

gamblers may have frivolously lost hard-earned money there, but many would have made much investing in its shares. so, whichever way you look at it, there's really only one clear winner in this game of chance - genting.