Well, we’re off to Hawaii, folks. After what will be the yet another grueling trip, we will be in Kona on the morning of July 28th local time. That’s only three or so short days away. We received an email from Jack’s Diving Locker Saturday morning offering us jobs. So, let’s see how this experiment of merging what we love with a more normal life works out.
I had visions of going to see my parents first and of going to California first, but having spent all Saturday on orbitz, kayak, airasia.com and the like, the best, read cheapest, option we found was direct on Wednesday.
I first pieced together an itinerary from 3 different websites. It was all going to start with taking the night bus to Kota Kinabalu, then a Royal Brunei flight to Manila (via Brunei). But when I tried to book the flight last night, the website crashed at the part where it processes my credit card info. UBOC’s website was down so I couldn’t check to see if the charge had gone through. This morning I was still having the same problem, so I got on Skype and called customer service who wanted twice the price for the same flight. All argument that I shouldn’t get penalized for the fact that their service was down fell on deaf ears.
Unwilling to pay 200 each for a one way flight, we were looking at taking Air Asia direct from KK to Manila. The problem with that was that Air Asia flies into Manila Clark and our reserved Continental flight flew out of Manila International 2 hours away. And there is no shuttle service and no well-described way of making the connection. This was making me uncomfortable.
Assuming we got to Manila International, we’d have been taking a Continental flight to Honolulu via Guam. Then I still had to find us a puddle jumper to Kona.
In this scenario there was a few possible problems. My baggage getting lost at any point and not finding its way to Hawaii. My baggage being too heavy and having to pay ridiculous amounts of money to get it on the flight. And mostly, by building 3 different itineraries, if any flight was delayed and we missed a connection, it would cost us masses of money to fix it.
So, $93 each extra bought me peace of mind. First, we don’t have to spend the night on a 16 degree Celsius bus, because we’re flying from Tawau, a mere hour bus ride away. From there we are going to KL. That’s on Air Asia and I’ve pre-purchased 60 KG of luggage. In KL, we have a 10 hour layover, so even if our flight is late or canceled, we’ve plenty of time and 3 other possible flights to get there. From KL, it’s a single itinerary - we fly Korean Air to Honolulu via Seoul and then to Kona. We have a 12 hour layover in Seoul and the Internet has nice things to say about having a layover in Seoul. We’ll see how we feel when we get there.
It has been such a juggling act to get this trip done. And every permutation was either costing too much money or had the possibility for way too much headache. Saturday night I didn’t sleep well because I was really excited. Last night I didn’t sleep well because I just didn’t have a good feeling about how this trip was panning out. Now I feel great. After we made the decision to simplify things, I just felt like a huge weight had been lifted. And let’s face it, traveling makes Ryan extraordinarily grumpy and it doesn’t make me a ray of sunshine either– there’s no reason to compound frustration by adding problems to the mix.
Anyway, after all this, I'm more than qualified to be a travel agent if the scuba thing doesn't work out.
Once in Kona, we’ll need to find a place to live and possibly transportation fairly quickly. I know that it’s going to be quite a shock to the system at first – it is most definitely not SE Asia. Hotel will be $65 per night and rental car is looking like $165 per week. And food is not going to be 30-cent rotis. So no dilly-dallying in getting ourselves settled.
Today we spent the day in Semporna. Initially we went there to pay for our reserved Continental flight by Western Union. It was while we were there that we decided to stop this nonsense and spend the extra bucks for peace of mind. So mostly we ate roti, Ryan bought a luggage scale and I got my hair cut by a Filipino trany who successfully got rid of all my split ends but left me almost bald in the process (well bald by Ryan standards in that my hair is now barely longer than shoulder length). We learned that gays were very poorly treated in Philippines and that it is much easier to be gay in Muslim Malaysia. Something we’d never considered. In Thailand, for example, ladyboys just are. I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me to ask myself how ladyboys are or aren’t accepted within the Thai culture.
I thought I’d do a top ten list of the things I’m looking forward to:
1. A grocery store where I can buy any item I want. Especially avocado, yogurt, vine ripe tomatoes and because it’s Hawaii, passion fruit.
2. A kitchen where I can cook almost anything I want for dinner. I say almost anything because, clearly, I’m not going to run out and buy a Cuisinart my first week there. Ryan said I can have a knife, a wooden spoon and a cast iron skillet, though I think a Teflon pan would be much more versatile. Rice will not be included in any meal for a very long time!
3. A bed that doesn’t break my back. And multiple pillows to sleep in Fort Alexia every night.
4. Real world hair.
5. Exercise – I’m going to take up running again like I had on PP – there’s a marathon/half marathon/10K/5K event in June 2012 in which I would like to participate. And I think that a year is enough time to prepare.
6. Friends and fam coming to visit.
7. Yoga studios for the occasional led practice. And Yoga teacher training for when I decide to do that.
8. High speed, reliable Internet.
9. TARJAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! (Target)
10. No more visa runs and border bounces!
Anyway, that’s my top ten list. You’ll have to ask Ryan for his, but I’m pretty sure that it includes beef jerky and balsamic vinegar.
Peace xoxoxoxox
No comments:
Post a Comment