A Pious Las Vegas without Half the Fun…………..
“LIKE another famous town that beckons visitors in a searing desert, Mecca has only one big, if different, draw. Its 13m visitors a year are only a third as many as flock to Las Vegas, but numbers are rising. The holy city is striving to meet the challenge with some Vegas-like amenities. Mecca already boasts dozens of fancy international hotels. At the current building rate it could have 80,000 hotel rooms by 2015. The Mecca Clock Royal Tower Hotel, with more than 800 rooms, occupies what will soon be the world’s second-tallest building, a structure incorporating the world’s biggest clock, with faces at least six times the size of Big Ben’s, and capped by a spire topped with a golden crescent. The hotel building forms just part of part of the Abraj al-Bait complex, a Gotham City-like eruption of seven huge towers, conveniently sited a stone’s throw from the Great Mosque……”
Maybe they have the tallest tower and the most expensive rooms, but the entertainment can never compete with Las Vegas. Even what is served at the “tables” cannot match the real Vegas. Besides, unlike Las Vegas, whatever happens in Mecca cannot stay in Mecca: at least it goes up there and added to your ledger.
One thing they probably both have in common are ruthless and rapacious developers. At least in Vegas there were no historical sites they had to destroy for the developers to start their nasty work.
Cheers
mhg
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