ABCDE Travel sunday, july 18, 2010
BED CHECK New York,
New York The whole Big Apple in a single building. F4
Navigator Soon, you’ll be cruising along with a lot more security. F2 Coming and Going The GAO comes down on undisclosed airline fees. F3
Going Our Way Take a breathless tour of Eastern Europe. F3 CHAT We answer reader questions 2 p.m. Monday at
washingtonpost.com/travel
IMPULSIVE TRAVELER
Windy city No, not Chicago, but this eccentric town in Kansas. F6
F
GAME L “S
player seeks out the action at two vastly different venues
By Justin Moyer
moky, crowded and in- timidating have a place. Just not here.” This is the motto of the Greenbrier Casino Club, one of two West
Virginia casinos that, under the watchful eye of the West Virginia Lottery Commis- sion, began spreading live poker earlier this month. Now, I’m a poker player from Philadel- phia who learned the game in Atlantic City’s smoky, crowded and intimidating card rooms long before Jennifer Tilly ap- peared on Bravo’s “Celebrity Poker Show- down,” and even though I quit smoking, I’m set in my churlish, misanthropic ways. A “nice” card room? Sounds pleas- ant, but unnatural, like Catholicism with- out guilt.
As West Virginia expands its casino gambling, a poker
What the Shrek? The new Sentosa Island
Singapore’s quaint enclave gets a gleaming makeover
by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan Special to The Washington Post
Not long after arriving on the island of Sentosa, I could tell that something had changed.
Amid the lush tropical greenery, a tur-
reted silhouette loomed. As I got closer, I could see the outline of what looked like a fairy-tale castle. There, in the middle
of the 1,200-acre island, stood Shrek’s castle, a feature of the 49-acre Universal Studios theme park that opened in March as part of a casino resort on Sen- tosa.
Shrek? Casino? Sentosa? The combination would have been un-
fathomable when I was growing up in Singapore in the 1980s. During my childhood, Sentosa, a small island just off the southern coast of the Asian city-state, was that dorky place your parents or teachers dragged you to for slightly out-of-step activities. Sure, it had miles of picturesque beach. But there was also the inexplicable mu-
sical fountain, which was entertaining only if you like watching water tor- pedoed into the air in sync with Muzak. The Images of Singapore museum, stuffed with wax figures illustrating the country’s history, was a musty stop for every schoolchild. And don’t even get me started on the Butterfly Park. But recently, the island has undergone
a transformation. In the past few years, a number of trendy bars and restaurants have sprung up. A year ago, a luxury re- sort opened in a grand colonial building the British military put up in the 1880s.
ROBERT RECK singapore continued on F4 At night, soft backlighting sets off the infinity pools at the Capella Singapore hotel.
PAN Still, for a member of Washington’s
huge, underserved poker community ex- iled to penny-ante home games and sketchy underground card clubs, Texas Hold ’Em in a neighboring state sounds like paradise. Sure, slots have been avail- able at Charles Town Races for years, but serious card players won’t walk across a casino — and certainly won’t drive to Ap- palachia — for a visit to the one-armed bandit.
But West Virginia coal magnate Jim
Justice has brought honest-to-goodness table games to the Greenbrier, a 232-year- old resort nestled in White Sulphur Springs, just over the Virginia border. Might this magic mountain have a card room to rival the Borgata or the Bellagio? I booked a $350 room and made the four- plus-hour, 250-mile drive west to find out. The first problem was parking. “Valet”
TOP: JAY PAUL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST; ABOVE: DOMINIC BRACCO II FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
At top, a blackjack table in the Casino Club at West Virginia’s Greenbrier resort; above, in the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races, dealer Larry Nickelson, from left, oversees the action as Xuan Thanh Phung places a bet while his wife, Hang Trinh, and patron Sharif Shafik watch.
isn’t a four-letter word, but when free self-parking is available within a one- or two-day walk from his final destination, a cheap poker player dare not speak it, lest a uniformed gent who depends on tips to survive appear with high hopes and an expectant look. My search for self-park-
poker continued on F5
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