Hawaii fun time (part 1)
Geez, it's been a month since I went, and I'm just now getting around to writing about my Hawaii trip. Well, things have been busy lately. The first free time I had after the trip I used going to KumoriCon, and most of the rest of my other days off have been spent moving, since we found out shortly after our trip that we had to move because our apartment wasn't meeting the right safety codes....we were able to get another apartment in the same building, but it was still a huge hassle....and poor Leopold (our cat) kept going back to the old apartment for the first couple of days, expecting to be let in. But we're mostly settled in, so now I have time to tell my tale....
Our flight departed Portland on the morning of August 23rd (meaning that I had to get up before noon for the first time in quite a while, since I usually work the closing shift at my job :P) Flight was fairly uneventful....I mainly kept my headphones on and read manga (started checking out Bastard! from the library after about a year of thinking that they had stopped getting new volumes when, in fact, they had been all along :P) while Josh slept next to me. Near the end we had some turbulence that was pretty bad; it freaked me out to the point where I cried a little bit, which has never happened before....it sucks, I thought getting older meant that my fears would lessen, but mine have only gotten worse as time has gone by (then again, I might have only gotten that freaked out since this is the first time I've been on a plane since I started watching Lost ;P)
So after a few hours, we landed at the Kahului Airport on Maui. I'd been to Maui several times before with my parents when I was younger, but this was Josh's first trip to any of the Hawaiian islands. I'd warned him about the humidity, but once he felt it he said that it was "overrated" (it actually wasn't as strong as I'd remembered it to be, I think I'd actually been thinking of summertime Tokyo when I told him about it :P) The next couple of hours were just arrival stuff: getting the checked luggage, going to the rental car place, finding where we needed to go on a map, and then driving from the airport to the town of Lahaina. It's a fairly touristy town, with a lot of shops and restaurants beckoning the curious to pop in and spend some money. The place we stayed at was called the Lahaina Shores, which sits almost right on the beach (there's a bit of a yard and a swimming pool before you reach a fence that takes you right to the sand). We unloaded our stuff in the room and decided to hit the beach for awhile. I had told Josh about how nice and warm the water in Hawaii was, and, upon getting in, he once again said it was "overrated" (and, yeah, it was a bit cloudy that day and getting late in the afternoon, so it wasn't as warm as I'd remembered it :P) Later we went to town to find some food (and also for me to go on a nostalgia trip of places I'd been before, though I wasn't able to find the arcade that I probably still have some leftover tokens from a long ago trip). We ended up eating at a little Vietnamese place (where the family running it appeared to be having dinner themselves) and then just spent most of the rest of the night looking through brochures for things we might want to do on our trip. We also discovered that not only did our room have an ocean view, it also had a luau view; there was a restaurant right near the hotel that put on a nightly luau, and since we were near the end of the hotel we had a pretty clear view of it. Kind of a cool little extra we hadn't been expecting ^_^
On Thursday morning we went to a presentation by the hotel's concierge where we learned about all the different activities we could do. They made it really easy for us; everyone was given sheets where we could just circle the activities we wanted to do, then after the presentation we could tell the one of the concierges which things we were interested in and they would do all the booking for us. It was really nice to not have to try to compare rates of all the different companies then call up and try to coordinate activities so nothing overlapped, all the work was done for us ^_^ I'll describe the different things we did as I run through each day, but I will say that we ended up spending $1000 total on activities. A lot of money, I know, but we received $2000 from Josh's father last year as a wedding gift, so we figured as long as we didn't go over that amount for all of the trip costs, we would be okay (my parents paid for the plane tickets, hotel, and rental car, so basically we just needed money for food and activities).
That afternoon we partook in our first activity: surfing lessons. We had a lesson on the beach where we learned how to stand up and stuff (I was a bit worried that I might have trouble since my one of my legs would always bump into my arm whenver I brought it forward to kneel), and then we paddled out into the water. Each instructor would take one student at a time to help them catch a wave while the other students hung around by a buoy off to the side of the action. When I got my first attempt, I tried to stand up but when down fairly quickly, so I got another try at it. I got up again, wobbled a bit, and then fell off. Josh didn't do too well on his first attempt, either (though I couldn't see it very well, since I didn't have my glasses on), but on his second he actually made it all the way to the beach. My second attempt ended up being my best one, too; I didn't make it to the beach, but I did manage to stand for awhile without shaking or anything....I also nearly ran over someone who was swimming in my pathway because hell if I know how to control the board, but he saw me and got out of the way in time. After that point, things went downhill for me: I started to feel seasick. Now, I had brought motion-sickness pills with me on the trip since I know I can get seasick on boats, but never had I expected that it would happen during the surfing lesson, so I hadn't taken any that day. It wasn't the surfing itself, it was the waiting by the buoy in the choppy water that had me feeling ill. Also, the current was getting stronger and it was getting harder to stay near the buoy and not drift over to the surfing area. I considered just heading back to the beach after my third attempt, but I was still feeling OK, so I went back to the waiting area again. Bad idea. The current was getting stronger still, and I started feeling worse and worse, which was zapping any energy I had to keep myself from drifting out of the waiting area. I was paddling as much as I could, but I just didn't have the power behind it to make any progress in the direction I was trying to go. Eventually, I had floated all the way to the surfing area, where apparently it was time for my fourth attempt anyway (that, or the instructor saw how exhausted I was and didn't want to make me swim back to the waiting area). It took a couple of tries to get me up on a wave, since my paddling wasn't strong enough to give me any momentum. After that attempt, I didn't even consider going back to the waiting area; I swam straight for the beach, plopped down on my ass and waited for the others to finish. Everyone else went through one more turn each, and then started coming in. My rest ended at that point because I had to drag my surfboard back across the beach to where they were stored. The instructors were mostly focused on helping the younger kids with theirs, and Josh had to carry his own, so there was no one to help me as I agonizingly tried to lug it back while barely having the energy to walk. I wish I'd been able to enjoy the surf lessons more, because I really had fun while I was feeling well. Now I guess I know that seasickness is not just limited to riding on boats :P
We got back to our hotel around 5PM, and I needed to lie down for awhile. We had restaurant reservations at 6PM, but I didn't feel like I'd be able to eat anything. I figured we could go another night, but Josh really wanted to go then, so I got dressed and we walked to our destination, a Japanese teppanyaki style restaurant called Kobe. It's one of those restaurants like Benihana's where they cook the food at a large table right in front of you and also perform fancy tricks while they do it. Josh splurged and ordered a combo featuring lobster, scallops, and Kobe beef. I was still not feeling hungry at all, but ordered some salmon, figuring I could just take it back and eat it later. I literally had about five bites of food the entire dinner: a little shrimp appetizer, bites of Josh's lobster and beef (the first time I'd tried Kobe beef....man, it really just melts in your mouth, it's so tender!), a bite or two of my salmon, and a couple bites of rice. I really couldn't handle any more than that. It's definitely a place I'd want to go back to and be able to actually enjoy the food.
It was a couple of hours later before I started to feel well again. It was probably the worst case of seasickness I'd ever experienced, though it didn't even bring me to the point of vomiting (but then, I'm absolutely disgusted by vomit, and it's been over ten years since I've thrown up, only because I have forcefully willed myself not to even at times when my body really wanted to). I actually started to feel hungry and got some food to eat around 8PM. I kind of wished I could have had some more of Josh's since that Kobe beef had been so awesome, but he hadn't left any leftovers :P
To be continued. Next post will cover Friday and Saturday.
Our flight departed Portland on the morning of August 23rd (meaning that I had to get up before noon for the first time in quite a while, since I usually work the closing shift at my job :P) Flight was fairly uneventful....I mainly kept my headphones on and read manga (started checking out Bastard! from the library after about a year of thinking that they had stopped getting new volumes when, in fact, they had been all along :P) while Josh slept next to me. Near the end we had some turbulence that was pretty bad; it freaked me out to the point where I cried a little bit, which has never happened before....it sucks, I thought getting older meant that my fears would lessen, but mine have only gotten worse as time has gone by (then again, I might have only gotten that freaked out since this is the first time I've been on a plane since I started watching Lost ;P)
So after a few hours, we landed at the Kahului Airport on Maui. I'd been to Maui several times before with my parents when I was younger, but this was Josh's first trip to any of the Hawaiian islands. I'd warned him about the humidity, but once he felt it he said that it was "overrated" (it actually wasn't as strong as I'd remembered it to be, I think I'd actually been thinking of summertime Tokyo when I told him about it :P) The next couple of hours were just arrival stuff: getting the checked luggage, going to the rental car place, finding where we needed to go on a map, and then driving from the airport to the town of Lahaina. It's a fairly touristy town, with a lot of shops and restaurants beckoning the curious to pop in and spend some money. The place we stayed at was called the Lahaina Shores, which sits almost right on the beach (there's a bit of a yard and a swimming pool before you reach a fence that takes you right to the sand). We unloaded our stuff in the room and decided to hit the beach for awhile. I had told Josh about how nice and warm the water in Hawaii was, and, upon getting in, he once again said it was "overrated" (and, yeah, it was a bit cloudy that day and getting late in the afternoon, so it wasn't as warm as I'd remembered it :P) Later we went to town to find some food (and also for me to go on a nostalgia trip of places I'd been before, though I wasn't able to find the arcade that I probably still have some leftover tokens from a long ago trip). We ended up eating at a little Vietnamese place (where the family running it appeared to be having dinner themselves) and then just spent most of the rest of the night looking through brochures for things we might want to do on our trip. We also discovered that not only did our room have an ocean view, it also had a luau view; there was a restaurant right near the hotel that put on a nightly luau, and since we were near the end of the hotel we had a pretty clear view of it. Kind of a cool little extra we hadn't been expecting ^_^
On Thursday morning we went to a presentation by the hotel's concierge where we learned about all the different activities we could do. They made it really easy for us; everyone was given sheets where we could just circle the activities we wanted to do, then after the presentation we could tell the one of the concierges which things we were interested in and they would do all the booking for us. It was really nice to not have to try to compare rates of all the different companies then call up and try to coordinate activities so nothing overlapped, all the work was done for us ^_^ I'll describe the different things we did as I run through each day, but I will say that we ended up spending $1000 total on activities. A lot of money, I know, but we received $2000 from Josh's father last year as a wedding gift, so we figured as long as we didn't go over that amount for all of the trip costs, we would be okay (my parents paid for the plane tickets, hotel, and rental car, so basically we just needed money for food and activities).
That afternoon we partook in our first activity: surfing lessons. We had a lesson on the beach where we learned how to stand up and stuff (I was a bit worried that I might have trouble since my one of my legs would always bump into my arm whenver I brought it forward to kneel), and then we paddled out into the water. Each instructor would take one student at a time to help them catch a wave while the other students hung around by a buoy off to the side of the action. When I got my first attempt, I tried to stand up but when down fairly quickly, so I got another try at it. I got up again, wobbled a bit, and then fell off. Josh didn't do too well on his first attempt, either (though I couldn't see it very well, since I didn't have my glasses on), but on his second he actually made it all the way to the beach. My second attempt ended up being my best one, too; I didn't make it to the beach, but I did manage to stand for awhile without shaking or anything....I also nearly ran over someone who was swimming in my pathway because hell if I know how to control the board, but he saw me and got out of the way in time. After that point, things went downhill for me: I started to feel seasick. Now, I had brought motion-sickness pills with me on the trip since I know I can get seasick on boats, but never had I expected that it would happen during the surfing lesson, so I hadn't taken any that day. It wasn't the surfing itself, it was the waiting by the buoy in the choppy water that had me feeling ill. Also, the current was getting stronger and it was getting harder to stay near the buoy and not drift over to the surfing area. I considered just heading back to the beach after my third attempt, but I was still feeling OK, so I went back to the waiting area again. Bad idea. The current was getting stronger still, and I started feeling worse and worse, which was zapping any energy I had to keep myself from drifting out of the waiting area. I was paddling as much as I could, but I just didn't have the power behind it to make any progress in the direction I was trying to go. Eventually, I had floated all the way to the surfing area, where apparently it was time for my fourth attempt anyway (that, or the instructor saw how exhausted I was and didn't want to make me swim back to the waiting area). It took a couple of tries to get me up on a wave, since my paddling wasn't strong enough to give me any momentum. After that attempt, I didn't even consider going back to the waiting area; I swam straight for the beach, plopped down on my ass and waited for the others to finish. Everyone else went through one more turn each, and then started coming in. My rest ended at that point because I had to drag my surfboard back across the beach to where they were stored. The instructors were mostly focused on helping the younger kids with theirs, and Josh had to carry his own, so there was no one to help me as I agonizingly tried to lug it back while barely having the energy to walk. I wish I'd been able to enjoy the surf lessons more, because I really had fun while I was feeling well. Now I guess I know that seasickness is not just limited to riding on boats :P
We got back to our hotel around 5PM, and I needed to lie down for awhile. We had restaurant reservations at 6PM, but I didn't feel like I'd be able to eat anything. I figured we could go another night, but Josh really wanted to go then, so I got dressed and we walked to our destination, a Japanese teppanyaki style restaurant called Kobe. It's one of those restaurants like Benihana's where they cook the food at a large table right in front of you and also perform fancy tricks while they do it. Josh splurged and ordered a combo featuring lobster, scallops, and Kobe beef. I was still not feeling hungry at all, but ordered some salmon, figuring I could just take it back and eat it later. I literally had about five bites of food the entire dinner: a little shrimp appetizer, bites of Josh's lobster and beef (the first time I'd tried Kobe beef....man, it really just melts in your mouth, it's so tender!), a bite or two of my salmon, and a couple bites of rice. I really couldn't handle any more than that. It's definitely a place I'd want to go back to and be able to actually enjoy the food.
It was a couple of hours later before I started to feel well again. It was probably the worst case of seasickness I'd ever experienced, though it didn't even bring me to the point of vomiting (but then, I'm absolutely disgusted by vomit, and it's been over ten years since I've thrown up, only because I have forcefully willed myself not to even at times when my body really wanted to). I actually started to feel hungry and got some food to eat around 8PM. I kind of wished I could have had some more of Josh's since that Kobe beef had been so awesome, but he hadn't left any leftovers :P
To be continued. Next post will cover Friday and Saturday.