Prologue: Planning the vacation

Thoughts of visiting the exotic Hawaiian Islands had been floating in our heads from a long time ago. We had also thought about flying through Hawaii during the India trip in 2005.

Shashi had gone through several vacation packages over the last few months. But it all began to materialize when he received an eye catching Hawaii trip offer through Skyauction-a popular travel site. He won the bid for a whooping $602/person. The deal was valid for 5 days/nights stay for 2-8 people. Chandan and Payal, were the enthusiastic couple on board. We locked in on the deal and booked the package for the Thanksgiving week which would also include the wedding anniversary celebration for Shashi and I. The package deal was for “Oahu” the commercial Hawaiian Island. It included Roundtrip airfare from San Francisco to Honolulu and stay at a good hotel in Waikiki Beach.

A week before the trip we got together at Chandan-Payal’s to plan the trip. Chandan did most of the ground work to coordinate and plan the activities during our visit there. As for the others, we just sat there cozily after the sumptuous meal by Payal. While we chit-chatted and fantasized about our upcoming Hawaiian dream vacation, Chandan after several clicks and a few phone calls, booked us packages starting from submarine adventure, evening dinner cruise and Luau (A Festive gathering elaborately illustrating Hawaiian customs especially the Hula dance). The super organized planner also created structured itinerary for a week’s worth on Excel.

Now just the count down to our long awaited trip. A week before the trip we were busy shopping. We exchanged emails with Chandan, got all the required paperwork for the trip and he took charge thence.

Getting There

It was already the day of the journey’s commence. I had a list of personal errands to run. One of them was grooming at the beauty salon. I had wanted to always try out something new with my hair and decided to go for a perm. Well the story isn’t all that exciting, to make it short I spent long three and half hours at the parlor teeth gritting to the insane brain numbing odor of the chemicals dripping from my scalp by my ear lobes. The tingling nauseating effects were least pleasing. To my dismay the end product wasn’t fruitful either. I can’t blame my beautician as she put a lot of energy and time in setting each curl. Miscommunication perhaps! She explaining in her Philippine’s accent how well the long perm will suit my hair and me nodding expecting something totally different. Anyways it looks like I will be stuck with this hair do for a quarter, so a bad hair day for long long time [Smile] [Sigh]. After the entire parlor episode I rushed back home to find Kannan gone. He had left after a long wait outside my house entrance as I was nowhere to be seen. Mom had cooked me a feast and was supposed to be picked up so that Kannan could meet at our place for lunch. I ended up stuffing my stomach with all I could as I had to rush back home to finish packing. Time leapt away and it was already time for us to leave for the airport.

Shashi’s colleague Fred gave us a drop to the local railway station (BART). We caught a train and got to the airport. We met Chandan Payal at the airport and to our despair learned that our flight had been delayed by four hours. The 6:45 pm flight was now departing at 10:45 p.m. The time seemed to be dragging; we tried finding ways to kill time. We played Uno for about 45 minutes. We used up the courtesy food coupons (provided by the airlines for flight delay) at the airport café for food and drinks. We were able to kill an hour there. Payal and I were loitering around window shopping. The last few minutes of wait were the most exhausting. Finally we got to board around 11 p.m. 15 minutes later than actual delayed departure time. Well misery wasn’t over yet; there was another half hour of delay due to some technical problem with the flights air conditioning. Finally the plane took off and we reached Hawaii safe and sound. We were tired from the long wait and journey and to add to our fatigue was the humid sultry weather. Our rental car office was closed. Chandan quickly suggested to go for a different rental company. We took the hertz car rental shuttle and in a few minutes the guys got us a Rental car. We drove to the hotel and luckily were checked in. The hotel where we stayed “Coconut Plaza” is located near Waikiki beach and is very decent. We wanted to crash in our beds and have a long sleepy session.

So the agenda was to meet next day at the lobby for breakfast and then start of sight seeing.