It’s Christmas Eve. We spent the morning at the Ala Moana Beach. It was a big logistic exercise to get that many adults, and an almost equivalent number of kids and infants, organized, packed, and ready to go. It was a really hot day, but that didn’t matter at all to the kids. The adults had to smear lots of sunblock lotion on them though.
Tag Archives: holiday
Hawaii Day Six – A Set of Wheels
We did some research the night before on what transport to get. We wanted to get an MPV, or what the US folks call a mini-van. It turns out that every rental company seems to be out of mini-vans. We decided to go for a “mid-sized” vehicle from Enterprise. It turns out to be quite a largish vehicle, at least by Singapore’s standards. I’ve driven several times in the US, so I am not unfamiliar with left-hand drive and driving…
Hawaii Day Five – Kahala Mall
We didn’t really do much on day five. We had become a little exhausted taking care of Vanessa and Ian. Especially Ian. Sometimes he just wouldn’t stop crying. By the time we could “move out”, enough of the day had gone past. We decided to just go somewhere nearby, and that would be Kahala Mall. There wasn’t anything particular in Kahala Mall that we wanted to get.
Hawaii Day Four – Aloha Tower
We went to the Aloha Tower today. It’s supposedly ten storey high, the tallest in its time. It does look quite stately. Ten storey isn’t very high at all by today’s standards. But it’s plenty high enough if you want to go up and find that the elevators aren’t working. That’s what happened to us. As we were contemplating whether it would be worth our while to climb up the stairs, we noticed that the stairs were also sealed off….
Hawaii Day Three – The Cheesecake Factory
The highlight on day three is about food. We headed over to Waikiki beach again, where they had this restaurant called The Cheesecake Factory. I thought it was a factory that made cheese or cheesecakes, where you could go to tour, sample their products, and maybe they had a little cafe somewhere you could sit down to have tea or coffee with some snacks. I was quite mistaken. I was wondering what the fuss was about having to go their…
Hawaii Day Two – Waikiki Beach
We’re staying somewhere not in the “hottest” areas of Honolulu, but today, we took a bus down to the famed Waikiki beach. We were told that there actually isn’t much of the beach to see because they’re pretty much covered up by tanned (or tanning) bodies. It turns out that was slightly over exaggerated. But Waikiki beach isn’t really all that big, really. I’d think Patong beach in Phuket is bigger, although Waikiki has more developments around it.
Hawaii Day One
Day one in Hawaii was spent doing nothing touristy. Not unless recovering from a long trip is considered a touristy activity. When traveling with kids, especially infants, I think everyone, adults and the children, all get very tired. So the entire day was just spent recovering from the trip. I took about a 1.5 hour nap in the afternoon. I’ve travelled much longer distances before, but I think this time is definitely most tiring. When I woke up, I was…
Hawaii Day Zero
As with most air travel to any distant destination, the first day is essentially spent on the plane or in the airport. So that’s basically how we spent day zero on our holiday trip to Hawaii. The flying time itself probably totaled not a lot more than 12 hours, but including the transit time, the early check-in at Changi Airport, it all adds up pretty quickly.
My Take On Hotel Ibis Singapore
I stayed my one night at Hotel Ibis the last weekend. It’s a pleasant hotel, but here are a few things they could improve on. There are a few things that I’d imagine would be terribly easy to fix. They were probably just an oversight. Or perhaps they just hadn’t gotten around to getting those things done yet. First thing is the lack of peep holes on the doors of the hotel room. The second thing is the lack of…
Hotel Ibis Singapore Review – The $1 Room
Yup, I’ve checked in. The deal at paywhatyouwant.com.sg is for real of course. It’s a spanking new hotel, so new that not everything is quite ready yet. It’s clean, neat, and modern. There’s nothing grand about it. It’s exactly what you’d expect of any reasonably good tourist class hotel, exactly the market that Hotel Ibis is targeting. The room may be slightly small, but it’s certainly bigger than what you’d find in other crammed inner-city hotels like, say, in Shinjuku…