In my quest to fully immerse myself into what is essentially this travel blogging world, I sent out a few requests to potential sponsors who might be willing to offer up an exchange of their travel related product or service in return for some first-hand reviews. This is what those travel bloggers who are expressly targeting the travel marketing niche do, but it’s mostly single female bloggers who are truly successful with this.

It’s definitely something I plan to keep doing every so often – sending out these requests, that is, but up to so far the only luck I’ve had was standing in for a known casino whale. Yes, the type of casino whales who are wined, dined and made to feel like royalty just so that they can blow the cash they earmarked to spend on their gambling exploits at a certain casino. Roll into town as a casino whale and you pretty much have the keys to the city. Every casino operator wants you generating that buzz they’re all looking for at their casino, so everything else around the gambling sessions is pretty much made available to you for free, in its most premium of iterations.

So yes, I was indeed called upon to “fill-in” for a casino whale who suddenly had other commitments, but was already committed to occupying no less than two nights at the casino’s presidential suite, with a preloaded gambling credit purse of $50,000! Was the best weekend of my life and although I am not at liberty to name the casino which extended this courtesy, all I can say is that it’s a king’s life that of a high-rolling casino whale!

I’m really not much of a gambler, but $50,000 is a lot of money to start out with and take numerous chances at winning big, but unfortunately as part of the deal, every last cent I “won” was for the original casino whale whose place I’d taken as a result of him having to jet off and take care of some last minute, emergency business.

The typical day in the life of a casino whale will have you fending off the otherwise very welcome advances and suggestions of the designated concierge team, who will go out of their way to find something for you to indulge in to your heart’s content. It’s quite ironic really because the typical casino whale doesn’t really need all the added luxuries they’re afforded for free and they’re the only ones who actually get those free luxuries. I mean if your intention was always to blow $50k at a casino, surely you can more than afford to pay for all the extra luxuries like premium room service ordered up to your presidential suite and the likes?

That’s what the bright neon lights of the likes of Las Vegas represent though – a world largely made up of illusions, using those who are already in a privileged position to try and lure in those who harbour dreams of assuming a position of privilege.