Jon V Mickey: Round 1

Los Angeles
15th April – 19th April

Apologies it has taken us a little while to update this blog, we know you are all hanging out for it. Truth is we just got into NY from Vegas, and haven’t really had any free time (Vegas was too emotional to get this out)

OK, LA, we broke this part of our trip up into two parts, firstly Anaheim – DISNEY LAND, and
then Hollywood. Disney Land according to Jon:

Disney Land was even bigger and bolder than what I was expecting. ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ – it’s a little scary how happy this place is. It is even scarier how efficient this place is, everything ran like clockwork, even waiting in line for rides ran smoothly. When you got into the line there was a sign informing you how long the wait was and every time they were spot on.
So we hit all the hardcore rides straight up, Dumbo, Tea-Cups, Frontier Train Rollercoaster, and Star Wars simulation ride. Too easy, bring on the kid rides.

Many of you may be aware I’m not too much of a fan of heights, mix this with a fast spinning contraption being controlled by over enthusiastic teenagers and hence it is easy to understand why I was a little cautious about tackling some of the more ‘adventurous rides’. That being said I also knew that if I passed on these certain death-traps it would more than likely come back to haunt me during ‘future’ celebratory speeches.

So with my eyes closed tight I took on the mighty Splash Mountain, the spinning top thing and the pride of the Park, California-Screaming (big rollercoaster). Yes before anyone starts I am well aware that it is Disney Land – designed for kids, something I was alerted to at every ride where kids who were about 5 years old were rushing past me to get on the rides I was dreading!
I am happy to say that once I did open my eyes, wiped the tears away and stopped screaming out certain obscenities (Sandy will attest to that 2 of these were true, you can guess which 2) I actually enjoyed the rides.

To sum it up, the day consisted of walking about 60km, eating possible the unhealthiest food on the planet, waiting in line for around 8hours and watching a fireworks display to challenge Perth’s Australia Day celebrations (Disney Lands nightly sceptical). All-in-all it was a pretty crazy (as in crazy crazy, not crazy crazy) day.
Jon over and out...

Part 2 of LA, Hollywood will be updated at a later stage.

Also keep a look out for the Adults Only ‘Las Vegas’ coming to the Jonathan-sandy adventure soon... Vegas Baby, Vegas.

Hawaii 10th April – 15th April 2009

So we jetted off from tropical Fiji, bound for Hawaii, USA. We left Fiji Good Friday night and due to the time difference we landed in Honolulu Good Friday morning, 6 am.

Aloha!

After being dropped off at our hotel by our taxi (who Sandy gave a 30% tip too?? She isn’t too good with the money/budget thing as most already know). (Lucky I have Jon, it’s a great way to get him to do all the work!!) We found we couldn’t check into our room until 12 noon (it was 7am), all good as we were still able to have the hotels continental breakfast. Consisting of, wait for it, mini donuts, pancakes, muffins, toast with the choice of butter, cream cheese or cinnamon sugar (most American guests where JAMMING on the cream cheese and topping it off with the cinnamon!) pineapples – which we have had coming out of our ears since we left Australia, and bananas. That was ok, at least there was some fruit and the bananas were perfect. Little did we know it would be the last time we saw banana’s on the menu, too healthy obviously.

First point about the stay in Hawaii. Tipping, what you need to know; Tip EVERYONE! if a bus driver smiles and says hello as he drives past you tip him, if the hotel receptionist answers a question you tip her, it is crazy, apparently the mainland US isn’t as bad, we’ll have to wait and see.

Hawaii wasn’t really what we were expecting. Actually, not too sure what we were expecting from this part of our trip, maybe exotic beaches, cocktails by the pool, hula girls, sun tanning babes! We stayed in Waikiki, which was pretty full on, hundreds of hotels, convenience shops, restaurants and retail shops.

Day 1:
Walked around the city for bit trying to get our bearings. Even though it was good Friday EVERYTHING was open, including the massive Almo Mona Shopping complex (second biggest in the USA). We caught the bus, yes Sandy caught public transport! And walked into the biggest food court we have ever seen, you name it they had it, mexican, chinease, french, mexican, fast food, slow food, mexican. After walking around and getting lost, we headed back to the hotel to rest up a little.

Day 2
Early start for us, grabbed a StarBucks Coffee and headed out on the bus again, for the farmers markets and hike up Diamond Head (I think I got a photo of it, will check and post). Both these activities were great. The farmers market was similar to our local Sunday markets just with Hawaiian produce, and the walk up Diamonds head had the best views of Honolulu. With nothing planned for the afternoon we figured we would just jump on the first bus we saw and see where it took us.
Destination Sea Life Park, on the south-east side of the island about 45-60min away from Waikiki. It didn’t look like much as we rolled up, sort of an old 80’s sea park, little run down, but it was pretty cool inside. Caught an insane dolphin show, checked out the usual sea creatures close up and got to have our first American Hotdog!
We ended the day with a guided twilight tour of the Honolulu Zoo (2 hours, of which 45 minutes was spent looking at and learing about Pink Flamingos???)

Day 3:
After experiencing the local bus south we figured it was a fairly decent & cheap form of travel around the island, so we got up early again jumped on the bus bound for Pearl Harbour.
This is a must do experience if you go to Hawaii, even as Aussies, the whole experience of the tour is pretty moving. Best part of the tour was meeting a survivor of the Arizona who told us his story about December 7, 1941 - it is definitely a highlight of the trip so far.
With that being said the low light has to have been the bus trip home, time waiting for the bus 1hour 15 min, bus ride home 1hour 30 min, chances of us catching public transport around the island again, 0%.

Figuring charted tours were the way to go we headed back to the hotel to book ourselves into as many tours as we could for our final two days on the island.

That night we were booked in for Germaine’s Luau, an authentic (or as close too, tourist experience) Hawaiian party. It was another hour bus ride to get out, although this time it was a private charter and the bus ride to and from the Luau was good fun thanks to our driver, Cousin Wally, who kept us all entertained with Hawaiian stories, jokes and songs. The Luau itself was an all you can eat buffet (man do Americans love their buffets, and boy can they eat) included in the price of the ticket was 3 complimentary cocktails (which was great as it only takes me 1 cocktail to start getting boozed) The night was like an Hawaiian cabaret show, good value all round. We sat with some other Aussies who were great fun. I won the 3rd prize on the door giveaway! Chocolates, lollies and a massive cocktail glass, which we had to unfortunately leave behind in our hotel as we really didn’t have time to post it home, would have made the perfect wine glass!!

Day 4:
3rd day in a row we were up and off early, only this time we had a 6am pick up. We had seen Hanuema bay on bus trip home from the Sea Life Park and it looked so amazing from the lookout point we knew it was a must for us. The tour consisted of hotel pickup & drop off and snorkel hire.
The bay was formed from a dormant volcano head that the ocean had breached and filled up. It consists of 36 different types of fish and if you’re lucky enough some morning sea turtles come in to feed, we were not lucky enough. Sandy was a little scared (shit scared) of snorkelling but once in the water took to it like a fish to water (pardon the pun). We snorkelled around for a couple of hours and then finally got to do what we came to Hawaii for, lay in the sun and sleep! It was awesome.

Tour 2 for the day was the North Shore tour of our island. We were picked up by our bus 20 minutes after being dropped off from snorkelling so it was pretty go go go, our tour driver was a surfer dude called Harry. He was a riot, and loved us Aussies! Although he had only lived on the island 5 years his knowledge of the island, its customs, history and natural environment was unbelievable, seriously not sure if we should believe everything he told us.
This tour consisted of a trip to the east side of the island, visited the shrimp farms (prawns for all you down under) whale watching, sunset beach, pipeline, turtle beach, and a stop off in the little town where they hold the triple crown surfing competition every year.

Day 5:
Ok, our last day on the island before we were due to jetset across to the mainland. This blog is a little lengthy so we’ll keep it short. We had booked ourselves in to a day tour of the Big Island (Kona). The gist of the tour was, got up at 3:30am, flew out at 7am, got on a bus for 10 hours, drove over 400km, it rained nearly all day, saw a cool waterfall, one of the world’s most active volcano, had a buffet for lunch (told you they love their food) stopped at a black sand beach and finished it off with a drive past the spot where our beloved Captain James Cook was killed. All in all a very long and tiring day, got home at 10pm and had to be up by 5am for a 7am flight...... good times.

Ok so we are now on the plane to LA, off to Disney Land tomorrow (rides, rides, rides) (Not on your life, it’s the tea cups for me all day!) (Don’t be a girl, Jonny! If he doesn’t go on some ADULT rides with me, I’m going to talk about the wedding for the rest of the trip, right up to January!! Tough decision, Sandy – 1 Jon - 0)

Talk again soon

Mahalo

Chapter 1: Fiji

Fiji 6th April – 10th April 2009

We landed in Fiji at 6am (local time) at the Nadi airport, first thing you see as you walk off the aeroplane (and across the tarmac) is the amazing mountain range.
We were lucky enough to race through customs, checkout and walk out the airport door straight into a taxi.

Mistake 1: Without thinking there would be much difference between taxi protocol around the world, it was only 20minutes into our 70min drive that we enquired into the fare; we had realised the trip meter was not on let alone working. $110(FJ) – bugger – some smooth talking and amazing haggling on my part got the fare down to $100! Jon 1 – Fiji Taxi driver 0

Mistake 2: Checking into our hotel (which looked pretty amazing). Strolled up to reception handed over our hotel vouchers only to be told that our accommodation had been booked incorrectly, our hotel vouchers were only valid from the 10th of April. Sandy gave me that look (that has seemed to gone up a level now we are engaged, cheers for the warning Adam). But as the lovely lady behind the counter quickly informed us, ‘it’s ok we are in Fiji, no problems’ within ten minutes they had sorted our dilemma and in a room by 9am.

So Fiji is a pretty amazing place once you have gotten into the groove, or stepped into ‘Fiji time’ as the locals call it. We were there for a good friends wedding, Kathryn & Ash, which was awesome. The wedding went off without a hitch, well other than a little rain (lots) in the middle of the day, but that passed and didn’t diminish the festivities in the slightest.

We don’t want to over kill this blog so here are our top 10 handy tips and very short stories that kind of sum up our time in Fiji. There could easily have been 20 or 30 more; it’s definitely an amazing place.
1. Only two Fijian words you ever need to know, bula – hello, vinaka – thank you. Get used to hearing them every 5 seconds.
2. Fiji Bitter – local beer, fosters brewed – happy hour $2.50 from bula bar. Don’t drink Fiji Gold, it’s the poofters drink.
3. Don’t eat at the hotel, try as many different places as you can, even the 24 hour roadside BBQ hut - $4 (FJ) per serve, bargain basement prices! See photo.
4. Crazy crabs in the mornings, frogs at night, horses and dogs on the road everywhere.
5. Get out of the hotel, we did a road trip one day (12 hours & 400kms) with Michael & Jamie, best day of the trip. Avoid crazy local elders named Steve, and whatever you do – DON’T tell him you don’t believe in Jesus (Cheers Michael) or be prepared for a 20minute god rant.
6. If you look like a Fijian, as Jamie and I do (or half-cast as in my case???) the locals won’t eat you, not good news for Sandy. Don’t know why but in one day 3 different people asked Jamie and me if we were Fijian? She is American for those who haven’t met her before, and while yes Jamie is part Philippine I have no idea why I looked Fijian.
7. Avoid horse rides along the beach with a cross dressing local as a guide. Sandy seems to have a knack for attracting the ‘strange ones’. They have a knack for finding me!! Too nice!!
8. Pacific Harbour has the best pool side bar. Ref to photos
9. If you’re white you’re sweet, cops won’t stop you, 8 people in a Toyota Yaris, no problem. Sorry Theepan might be best if you don’t drive over there.
10. Taxi drivers are insane, if you rent a car drive it like you stole it. Aidan this is your’ kind of driving - you will love it, overtaking on a hill around a blind corner at night, no problem.

Around the World

Family and friends, this is the first instalment of our trip blog, thanks for taking the time to have a read. We will try and keep it regularly updated and full of ‘interesting’ photos and stories.
Oh and to avoid any confusion, while this is a joint blog there is a few sections that Sandy and I have written different messages/point of views (POV) on topics and issues, thus this is my (Jon’s) font - POV and this is Sandy’s lovely font - POV!
For those who don’t know yet, and our apologies if we haven’t had the chance to formally tell you either in person or via a phone call/text, but prior to leaving Sandy and I got engaged. Yes, I know long time coming....maybe (he is the happiest man alive!!)
Ok so this is the first real time Sandy and I have set off for a holiday/travel together and it’s been a bumpy start but as we write this (aboard the plane to Hawaii) things have improved dramatically.
Not to bore all with details we need to send out a thank you to my olds and Mr & Mrs Phillips who tried to come to our aid amidst a personal mental lapse with some quick thinking, even if it was to no avail.