{"id":47463,"date":"2024-12-20T11:31:05","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T17:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=47463"},"modified":"2025-01-08T23:58:42","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T05:58:42","slug":"oahu-day-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=47463","title":{"rendered":"Oahu Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Skipped the last few days of school for the kids, gonna meet up with Ah Ma and Ah Gong in Hawaii.<\/p>\n

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\nNot a fun wake up time. We had our alarms set for 3:30am. Our original booking was for the flight leaving at 10am, but stupid United randomly changed all their flight schedule so now we are leaving at 7:15am. Blah.<\/p>\n

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\nWish traffic was light like this all the time in Austin.<\/p>\n

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\nHolidays means not taking chances with parking. Reserved offsite parking lot.<\/p>\n

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\nShuttle was already waiting for us when we arrived, easy peasy.<\/p>\n

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\nKids are very excited to go to Hawaii. They just have a concept of Hawaii, but somehow they are so excited.<\/p>\n

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\nThe baggage check line looks semi busy. Good thing we only have carry on and we’ve got digital boarding pases. Went through Clear(the regular line was short too) and we were past TSA check point in probably less than 3 minutes. That was too easy. We could have easily woken up much later…but would have stressed more.<\/p>\n

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\nKids wanted books to read. So we got books for them to read, and now I’ll need to carry around heavy books for the rest of the trip. Sigh.<\/p>\n

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\nBut I mean, it’s awesome that they like reading.<\/p>\n

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\nOf course, Salt Lick breakfast tacos every time.<\/p>\n

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\nMust have coffee. It’s so early and I’m so sleepy.<\/p>\n

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\nYum, bbq sauce.<\/p>\n

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\nRL looking her best. A boot because she fell down the stairs 2 days ago and really bruised her leg and toe. X ray confirmed no bone break, so that’s the good news. And she left her jacket at home as we left so she had to buy some last minute long sleeve shirt at the airport. Representing ATX.<\/p>\n

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\nFlight is on time and first leg is 4 hours or so to SFO.<\/p>\n

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\nThey are excited to travel.<\/p>\n

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\nA little groggy out there this morning.<\/p>\n

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\nI actually didn’t even watch any shows on this leg of the flight. I was so tired, just tried my best to sleep, but the girls kept on waking me up for random things. We are hungry. Can we have more snack. I am thirsty. Do you have more snacks?<\/p>\n

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\nI can’t imagine how painful it must be to fly without ipads for kids.<\/p>\n

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\nipads are amazing.<\/p>\n

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\nEarth is amazing.<\/p>\n

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\nAbout to get to SFO. Our plane needs the flaps washed.<\/p>\n

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\nSo there’s compost and recycle, but nothing for regular trash. They claim that everything that’s sold in the airport can be recycled or composted…but this being an airport, people are bringing in trash with them that can’t be recycled or composted. Then what? I guess into the wrong bin it goes. There’s no regular trash can, I looked.<\/p>\n

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\nThere’s allegedly an Centurion lounge that we can go to. Pay $60 and we all get to eat and drink as much as we want. We only have a two hour layover, and we are walking from one terminal to another, so we’ve gotta hurry.<\/p>\n

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\nWe are all tired and hangry. The walk is going longer than expected, they are doing some construction here….ugh.<\/p>\n

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\nWe gave up on finding the lounge, it was a high stressed mess. No one was happy walking with our heavy bags, RL had a bum leg, and little KL complained nonstop about how his duffel bag was too heavy. So we gave us, went to our gate, and found some Mexican food to eat. The food was actually very good and hit the spot.<\/p>\n

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\nGood timing too. Right after we ordered food, the food line got a lot longer.<\/p>\n

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\nLittle KL must be tired, he’s not eating much and he’s complaining a lot.<\/p>\n

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\n2 hours of layover came and went super fast. onto the next flight to Honolulu.<\/p>\n

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\nThey handed these out to the kids as we boarded the flight. The strip was just a textured strip…yeah, right. Like that will help calm my crazy kids.<\/p>\n

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\nMy screen randomly reset itself. It runs on Android. What’ odd was that some other screens also reset on the plane, but it seemed like it was random on which ones were reset.<\/p>\n

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\nOnce that plane lands, we’ll take off.<\/p>\n

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\nAway we go to the middle of the Pacific.<\/p>\n

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\nI sat with the girls on the leg from Austin to SFO. Now it’s RL’s turn to sit with the girls.<\/p>\n

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\nLittle KL was being as crazy as he could be during the first part of this flight. He’s gotta be tired. I told him to watch one show and then it’s quiet time for a nap. He fought it and fought it and fought it, but finally did manage to fall asleep.<\/p>\n

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\nLittle punk when awake, very cute when asleep.<\/p>\n

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\n6 hours for this flight. It feels so long.<\/p>\n

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\nBollywood movie for my second movie, Satyaprem Ki Katha. Started out like a normal Bollywood Rom Com, but was actually a modern one about sexual assault in India. Would recommend. Also watched the 4th Bad Boys movie, would also recommend.<\/p>\n

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\nFinally reached Hawaii. That was a long travel day with the kids. Look at that beautiful teal colored water though!!<\/p>\n

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\nLooks cute, but he’s trying to annoy me while I’m trying to finish the last bit of my movie before the plane lands.<\/p>\n

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\nLet baba finish his movie please!<\/p>\n

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\nEven Hawaii has beach erosion issues.<\/p>\n

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\nAir Force base.<\/p>\n

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\nCool, F22.<\/p>\n

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\nCool fact. On both legs of our flight today, the captains were both female. Girl power.<\/p>\n

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\nLeaving terminal to the baggage claim where ah gong and ah ma are waiting for us.<\/p>\n

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\nKids storming ah gong. It’s been over 2 months since they’ve been in Taiwan and the kids have missed them. Ah ma was seated and waiting in another area so didn’t get a welcome photo of her.<\/p>\n

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\n7 people means two taxis from airport to hotel. RL rode with the girls and I rode with the rest.<\/p>\n

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\nSeatbelts in taxis are never quite that easy.<\/p>\n

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\nHonolulu has a lot of traffic. It takes about 30 minutes from airport to hotel.<\/p>\n

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\nBanyan trees I think.<\/p>\n

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\nArrived at hotel for check in.<\/p>\n

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\nLong line, except this turned out to be the wrong tower of the complex. So now gotta go check in at a different building.<\/p>\n

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\nThe Lagoon Tower of Hilton Hawaiian Village is where we are staying at.<\/p>\n

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\nWe are all tired from traveling. Checking in is taking longer than we’d like.<\/p>\n

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\nFocus.<\/p>\n

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\nFocus! Didn’t even care that we were just a few feet away.<\/p>\n

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\nGot leis for free from the tour desk. They lured us with free leis to give us a spiel about booking tours. I guess semi worth it just to get leis for the kids.<\/p>\n

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\nThis is what $718 a night gets you in the Waikiki area.<\/p>\n

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\nA living room to tie the two bedrooms together. A living area makes traveling with a big group so much easier.<\/p>\n

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\nA little dated, but can’t complain too much since it’s got the living room that we wanted.<\/p>\n

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\nLittle KL said that this would make a good Zane, the spanking spoon.<\/p>\n

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\nEveryone’s slightly jet lagged and hungry,<\/p>\n

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\nLittle shopping center on site of the Hilton Hawaiian Village.<\/p>\n

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\nBanyan tree courtyard, nice.<\/p>\n

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\nAhhh yes, the ubiquitous ABC Stores of Hawaii. Nice to have this here as we’ll be shopping here all the time.<\/p>\n

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\nSo many Asian influence here in Hawaii.<\/p>\n

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\nDinner spot. We are all tired and hungry. Wish more Japanese places would list their sakes like this.<\/p>\n

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\nWe ended up not ordering sake. Beer for me and rice lager for RL.<\/p>\n

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\nEveryone misses ah ma.<\/p>\n

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\nLet’s eat. No nonsense Japanese food, yum.<\/p>\n

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\nLosing it. It’s way past their bed time in Austin even though it’s barely dinner time here in Hawaii.<\/p>\n

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\nStocking up at ABC Store. Gotta find some sunglasses, forgot to bring mine from Austin. No, I didn’t buy these.<\/p>\n

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\nBack to our room, time for the kids to go to bed. Ah ma and ah gong will put the kids to bed, me and RL will go out for a quick drink.<\/p>\n

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\nWaikiki beach at night.<\/p>\n

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\nFound a little pool bar aread.<\/p>\n

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\nWe are so tired, barely making it through this drink.<\/p>\n

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\nGot a second beer, but taking it to go. Time to go back and rest after a long travel day.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Oahu Day 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Skipped the last few days of school for the kids, gonna meet up with Ah Ma and Ah Gong in Hawaii. Not a fun wake up time. We had our alarms set for 3:30am. Our original booking was for the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":47459,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-47463","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47463"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48944,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47463\/revisions\/48944"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}