aloha from hawaii - day 7 on maui island

Monday, January 8, 2007

Leaving our Maui Lu Resort.. Hmm. It's our last day in Maui! and it doesn't even seem like we've achieved anything right. When we rented the boogie board and the surf board yday, we'd booked surf lessons for today afternoon! Hoho. So in the morning, we drove up to Kaanapali beach again to check out the waves since there were many surfers there the day b4. Actually my real agenda was, to visit the spicy beef noodle store, heehee.

Alas.. the beef noodle store wasn't open yet.. so we had to settle for some crappy french toast-ham-sunnysideup breakfast again.. before we went to the beach. This time I think we didn't even bother with the surf board.. stupid surf board so difficult to bring around plus never use! Luckily cos there weren't anyone surfing still.. I just played around with my boogie board but I have no idea how to, haha. We just played for a while before leaving the place to go back to Kihei to return our boards.

Next we met up at Kalama Park / "The Cove" for our surfing lessons! The really cute Japanese lady boss with a L.V. pouch and a halter met us.. Very friendly. Her Indonesian assistant was really helpful as well, and we got dressed in a freaking ugly top [to prevent rashes from abrasion with the board] and soggy shoes..

The ang moh boss, Jeff was really helpful and went into the water to take photos for us! Really nice of him.. And he even emailed us the photos later, not like those scheming busi.nesses who make u pay exorbitant amounts for photos. However.. he only sent me the low res ones so they aren't suitable for printing. Sigh.. I never got a reply for a better set of photos. And I feel bad to ask cos its free, so somehow I'd rather pay some money and get some decent photos!! =(

The highlight of this excursion has gotta be their son, Kai. He is so freaking adorable, I wanted to kidnap him home. He's unlike other american kids that I know who are full of confidence and all, he's kinda shy, but yet he bothers to talk to you..

The surf lessons guarantees that you'll be able to stand up on the surf board or they will give you another lesson! Did we manage to surf like a pro?

Hehe it was really fun! Not much of a wave though, but when you actually catch the wave it's really cool. The instructor kinda does everything for us though, you just lie there and he'll push you to the speed of the wave when it comes, and then tell you to stand up when you have to.. So it's pretty brainless lah. Towards the end we tried to do it ourselves i.e. paddle yourself such that you are the same speed as the wave but I kinda suck cos I can't paddle properly in the water. So I just kept making the instructor push for me HAHA.

I think pb looked kinda good in the photos while I looked really awkward.. boo. There were another 2 students in the group from canada, I think they were cousins, this really chio girl who I tried not to stare at, hehe, and a plump boy..

And here is our highlight... Kai! He's giving me an autograph.. Haha!! His father made him do it, and as he took the marker from his dad, he coyly smacked his forehead cos he was so shy!! He was actually playing in the playground with his many gfs :( but when his mom told him to come over and talk to us, he actually did.. such a good boy right? I love little boys with this kind of mushroomy hair!! I managed to cheat a kiss and hug out of him. Muahaha..

We went opposite Kalama Park to have our last Maui lunch at Alexander's, and then shopped around that area for last minute gifts. Bought a couple of tiki can openers.. cute!

So.. after our lunch in kihei, we bade maui farewell, and left for the airport. At the airport we didn't waste any Hawaiian time by drinking a cocktail.. hoho. This is a Tropical Itch. And they give you a back scratcher for that.. i thought that was kinda dumb cos it was so huge.

And it was night before we boarded our flight to Big Island!

aloha from hawaii - day 6 on maui island

Sunday, January 7, 2007

Our 3rd day in Maui already. Today instead of snorkelling in substandard beaches we had planned for a snorkel + snuba trip to Molokini crater! Where really good snorkelling is supposed to be. And no I didn't spell that wrongly.. it's Snuba. it's diving for noobs.. instead of carrying your oxygen tank, they leave it on the boat and there's this hose that supplies your oxygen that goes down to you..

So we met, early in the morning at Maalaea Bay. It's really near our hotel. In fact we were so early that the crew wasn't ready yet and we went for a short walk, and a toilet visit before going back to register. As we registered, the guy said that our names weren't in!! horrors of horrors. Luckily they still had space. Also, he later said he found out that we had booked the wrong date instead. I don't think we were that blur but oh well, at least they let us hop on!

The crew of Aqua Adventure giving us an introductory talk. They were superbly friendly people and made jokes all the time.. Really really enjoyed their company, you feel like part of their little family when you're on board! They even refer to you by name, every single one of them.. Very nice people. We were then served breakfast of some coffee and muffins.

This is part of molokini crater. I didn't bring my camera down for the snuba cos my underwater casing can only take 10 feet [~3m] whereas our dive could go to 20 feet cos that's how long the oxygen hose is.

Before we went down, Anne taught us the main things we need to know to snuba dive. Basically it's just breathing underwater and stuff.. sounds simple yes?

er.. no. When you go below the surface of the water and you breathe, there are lots of bubbles that come out and they will go by your face/ear and make this sound, and it's really scary. It just made me panic I don't know why. In fact I even resorted to putting my head above the surface of the water to breathe in, even though I had the mask and oxygen tank on. Haha.

But yea after a while you kinda get used to it.. so down we went. It was pretty cool that you get to kinda dive even without a cert.. But half the time was spent equalizing my ears [you know, the pinch your nose and breathe out to alter the pressure stuff] and when I am actually down, after a while I float up again and I find myself really near the surface when I thought I was actually doing quite well. Stupid. it's so hard to stay at the bottom. No one else seemed to be having that problem so i don't know what's wrong with me.. Guess it's the equalizing or something.

About the fish.. well..... you see, b4 we went down, Anne was like, ooh, we're gonna see manta rays and octopus! But it was really disappointing. Molokini crater leh.. supposed to be really good for snorkelling but there were hardly any fish as usual. Sigh. You know, Redang which is the only place that i've gone snorkelling has so much more marine life than this. There are like schools of fishes there and you kinda worry about avoiding them right? In Hawaii.. there are hardly any.. =( Maybe it's cos the water is really cold? Anyways, yes, disappointing.

So.. after the snuba, we went for a snorkel, and another team went down to snuba. We didn't snorkel much cos it was so damn cold and there weren't much fish anyway. When the snuba people emerged, they were so excited cos they saw this octopus! And they seemed to enjoy it sooo much this family wanted to do it again at our next destination.. pb and I thought wth.. no fish also so happy.

next destination was at turtle island! so there'd BETTER be turtles ok!

see the turtle? well, yes it was pretty cool to see it cos these are really endangered hawaiian sea turtles! But you can also observe that there is pretty much no other fish in the water.. Boo. We saw about 3 turtles.. it was cute. =)

this guy who was leading us, he's called Jesse and I thought he was really cute. He's got lots of dirt in his fingernails, like a true sailor! Haha I kinda melted when he pushed my fringe out of my goggles.. keke. but he did the same for pb as well lah haha. Anyway, he saw this 'snow flake eel' which was sooo tiny and most of it was concealed under some coral/rock. And he was so excited about it after he showed us and we got back onto the boat, he was telling the crew that he saw it.. i thought they'd be sick of these things by then but they really seemed to enjoy what they were doing.

there was also another guy called Poconos [dunno how to spell]. He was damn zai! He's like a fish or something, they say he's got gills.. haha, he was the camera man and he videoed the whole thing.. and when he goes down into the water he freaking doesn't need to breathe! He just goes down and films without any oxygen tank... My my. He says that he used to smoke but he quit it.. and then he kinda trains so that he can keep his breath for a longer time. He was also really cute. Muscles and all. Hohoho. No wonder I enjoyed my trip eh. =)

All the tiring stuff is over! No more cold cold water, time for lunch! On the way back, we made our own sandwiches and the Captain made 2 maitais for us. Yay. However, some shouts on the deck made us abandon our maitais.. They had spotted whales!! Yay!

First a dive with the fin showing..


then the tail remaining..


and then disappearing..

Yes. this time it was much closer! And it wasn't even a whale watching tour. I find it totally awesome, yet kinda scary at the same time, that there are such huge huge beings right around/below our boat. One of the crew members told us he met some whales when he was kayaking once! I would seriously freak out if that happened man. He says it kinda brushed against his kayak, and he could see the barnacles on the whale and all.. Whoa!

Although there weren't much fishes, the crew really really made it up for pb and me by being so so friendly and cheerful. I don't know if it's cos we're tourists so they try to be nice to evryone, or whether they are generally carefree and happy.. But they really made my day. We enjoyed the whole experience so much and it was such a feel-good tour! The whales really helped as well.. that mini whale watch was so much better than the whale watch we took the previous day!

After buying a couple of photos and deciding NOT to buy the very expensive video [which they edit and put your face only if you buy it!] we went back to Boss Frog to return our snorkel gear.. And also pick up a Surfboard! And a boogie board for me cos I have no idea how to surf. Ok neither does pb but he gian3 so yes, we rented them.

Cool? Our pontiac g6 with my boogie board and his surf board on it!

Ok, remember yesterday there were no snorkellers at Kaanapali and we were the only snorkellers around, but there were many surfers? This time, there were no surfers at all! You can see why by the calmness of the sea. Haha. So as we were carrying the hugeass surfboard towards the beach, we saw a group of hawaiians [i think] having a bbq and they were grinning away when they saw me and pb, must be either cos the surfboard was so big [the bigger, the easier! small surfboards are for pros to do their tricks] or cos there's no wave to surf at all.. probably the latter.

This wasn't at kaanapali but some beach at the south, I can't quite remember. We left the surfboard by the beach and I let pb use my boogieboard instead. Me? I lazed on the beach, again. muahaha. I was reading my Angels and Demons borrowed from Ameek's bf ok.

Notice that the beaches here.. aren't really fantastic. Not the blue green waters kind. The colour is almost like Singapore's beaches, just that the water is clear. The sand is just normal sand. Not like, white powdery sand. I think Oahu, though more civilised had nicer beaches with pretty waters. You know, actually I think redang's beaches [which aren't even the best right] can qie4 these anytime. In terms of sand, water's colour and visibility, and amount of marine life. I'd really appreciate the malaysian beaches from now on.. and they are 1000x cheaper to go to!

After a while it started drizzling. And drizzling even more.. Poor me was just stuck in the rain, while pb happily played on with MY boogie board.. grr. That's when the book got kinda wet, oops sorry ameek. I waited for the longest time and I got fedup so I went back into the car to read.. The rain was too irritating!

Finally, pb came back to the car.. and we drove off in search of food! Went further south to get fish tacos from here.. and a super overpriced fruit smoothie [$5 i think] which pb likes.

see the rainbow behind me?


my ahi ahi (tuna) taco! flakes of tuna in it.. nice!

The place in the south where pb bought the satay ish meat on the first day had closed by the time we reached it, so we went back north towards our hotel. We dropped by a hawaiian cafe to order some noodle and taro (yam) pastry. They make quite a big deal out of Taro here when it's like how normal in singapore.. in fact whenever i think of the yam plant i think of how the people ate them during the war cos it's filling. but the pastry was nice.

I think there's no more photos for the day meaning we just went back to the hotel and were too tired to resurface for dinner.

aloha from hawaii - day 5 on maui island

Saturday, January 6, 2007

For once in maui, we actually had something planned. Today we are going on a Whale Watching session! by the Pacific Whale Foundation. We had to drive up to Lahaina. Of course this was totally my idea cos, this was my freaking fyp ok! I've been seeing photos of humpback whales' tails for the entire year.. so now time to see the Real thing! Well they guarantee sightings, or you get another trip on them til you see them.

on the way north, along the west coast towards lahaina

we were kinda just on time, and by the time we found parking i think we were late. But it din occur to us and we happily sauntered into the gift shop where we were supposed to register.. The attendant there hurriedly told us to join the rest who were across the street and ready to leave! Wow, it was a big group indeed. We almost didn't make it.. felt pretty irritated about it.

I had chosen this tour because they say they give some education about whales.. and have a hydrophone to let you hear the whales communicating. We did see a few whales.

What happens is you look in the horizon and first you see spouts of water coming up!! That's from their blowhole. They will spew water a few times. So you slowly wait, and after a while, they will dive a couple of times, such that you see their fin. And lastly, you will see their beautiful tail appearing above the surface, a fountain of sea water cascading down the tip, and then it will dive to the bottom, not to be seen for at least 10 minutes. I think we mostly saw them in pairs.

Then they would switch off the engines so that you can hear the hydrophones clearly. Er, I don't remember hearing anything distinctive.

You're gonna be disappointed seeing my photo haha, most of them were just water i couldn't see a thing, i don't know what i was taking man. I guess my zoom is just not powerful enough. This following one really tests your eyesight. Sadly it's the only one that I can even see any whale action in, the rest of the photos are discarded. See if you can spot the whale, hahaha.

I was really disappointed that they didn't breach, i.e. jump out of the water and land on their side.. yeah.. so we only saw tails. We could actually identify whether they were different sightings from the pigmentation on their tails. Argh, this is reminding me too much of my fyp.

For the benefit of you who don't get what we saw.. here's what it should look like, although we didn't get to see them so close up.

courtesy of the internet

So.. humpback whales actually can be sighted in rather shallow waters. They migrate from Alaska to Hawaii during the winter to escape from the cold. Then they sleep like crazy in Hawaii. They don't eat at all here. It's like, Alaska is the dining room, and Hawaii is their bedroom. They have never been filmed mating. That's all I can remember from the whole trip, haha.

The seas were rather rocky and we were pretty sea sick but luckily we didn't puke. Just kinda rested on the way back.. Haha. Chao keng. Since we were already on the more northern part of Maui, we traveled a little higher to reach the Kanaapali beach! This beach was named America's Best Beach in 2003. It's a rather small stretch, and bordered by a few higher end hotels. You gotta really watch out for the 'Public Access' sign and go by a narrow lane to reach it.

There were quite a few people surfing there, but since we still had our snorkeling gear, we went snorkeling even though it seemed like it was more of a surfing beach?

There was a grand total of.. 1 fish. wth. Maybe that's why everyone is surfing?? We felt damn sian so we decided to go search for food instead. stupid best beach, waste our time! The surroundings was really nice though.. I liked the crowd and the atmosphere.

We found a chinese cafe really near the beach.. There was a Taiwanese lady with a Chinese husband I think.. she was really friendly and she recommended me the spicy Beef noodle. pb took some pork chop noodle.

my spicy beef noodle was SO DAMN GOOD. I want summore.

Back at Kaanapali beach after lunch. Best beach leh, cannot let go of it so easily. I was too lazy so I bummed on the beach instead. Actually it's also because there were quite a lot of rocks at the shore and I hated it. Don't know how those kids can play there.. so dangerous. See pb with his hot pink float. Hee..

Because we still had our snorkeling gear, after a while we decided to go search for more snorkelable beaches back south. We followed the map that the Boss Frog people gave us, it showed clearly which beaches were good for Boogieboarding/novice or advance surfers/snorkeling. I think we went to one of the Kamaole beaches.

I was very amused by the way they put the reflectors on TREES! See the yellow plates on those trees? Really very kampung. Notice the sea is on our right, cos we are traveling South along the West coast of Maui. In fact for our whole trip we only took this road, either north or south of the west coast.

i dont like these things. apparently the red pencil urchin is not dangerous and can be picked up but the black one is a no no.

This is the state fish! and it is called the humuhumunukunukuapua'a. Why they make the names so difficult to remember, I don't know. It literally means "fish who comes out of the water and sounds like a pig".. or some people say it's cos the fish has a snout like a pig.

I was floating so near these things but I still risked my life for a good shot of these prickly things, before frantically trying to swim away... The things I do for this blog...


one more pencil urchin, and a pbsaurus


humuhumunukunukuapua'a again!

After a slightly more fish-filled snorkel, we got back to wash up before emerging for dinner.. Today's dinner was at an Italian restaurant called Bada Bing, right next to Pupu Lounge.

Freshly baked seafood pizza and my macadamia nut mahi mahi pasta which made my cough a lot worse.. Boo. The seafood pizza was not like anything we had had before.. It was filled with fresh fresh seafood.. Loved it! Neither was the macadamia nut mahimahi pasta an ordinary linguini.. macadamia nut leh!

It was yummy yummy. They had these bread balls fried in olive oil.. Kinda oily but we were so hungry they tasted great! Had to dapao the pizza for the next day though.