Looking down from your hotel window you’re likely to see a tropical pool, palm trees, deckchairs, swim up bars… men and women laying in the sun, working on their tans. You could be forgiven for thinking that you were at a beach resort in California, or Mexico, or Thailand, or Australia…

But you’re not. You’re in the middle of a desert. A big, bad, flat, hot, plane of dirt with no beaches and no water for miles.

You can observe the common sentiments, like that Las Vegas is a place of excess. Where everything is taken to the extreme. Past normal. Into the ridiculous.

But it’s more than that.

Where normally, a hotel is a place you go to sleep, to stay in a town in order to see all the parts of it, in Vegas, the hotel IS the town. The hotel IS the attraction. That’s what you’re there to see. There is nothing else.

And somehow it IS an attraction. It IS attractive. They’ve done it.

You walk from one hotel to the next in perpetual amazement. Amazement that the casinos are so big, amazement at the amount of flashing lights, amazement at how much money is being spent, amazement at a half naked burlesque dancer with a meter high headress of feathers walking around in a public place. But maybe most of all, amazement that an entire city has been constructed seemingly for the sole purpose of… amazing you!

As strange as Vegas is however; as weird as the contrasts and the contradictions and the insanity all is; you can’t help but enjoy it. It forces you to love it. There’s a very small number of ways you can NOT have a good time there.

Whatever you like is there, in it’s extreme form. If you like food, if you like sight seeing, if you like movies or music, or theater or dance… or if you just like interesting places to get drunk and party, Vegas is surely the place to be.

You go from pre-dinner drinks at a crazy Mexican bar on the strip with cheap Margaritas and random 80′s music, to dinner at a fancy restaurant where you eat 6 courses including rich home made meatballs, gourmet pastas and for desert (prepare yourself…) deep fried Oreos topped with sugar and dipped in Vanilla thickshake. You head from a quick flirt with the slot machines, to an extravagant musical production where fake elephants walk down the aisles and men dressed as deer prance lifelike across a stage, to a rooftop pool bar with promo models handing out free Scotch tasters, back to a desert bar to end the night with triple chocolate crepes topped with brownie pieces, hot runny fudge and a mountain of chocolate whipped cream to…

You see what I mean?

By the end of your time there, you’ll be exhausted. You’ll have eaten too much, drunk too much, spent too much, seen too much, and done too much. But you will feel like a rockstar. You will have had a blast.

Vegas is a strange place. Kind of like that strange uncle who has the weird hair, the alternative views and will talk to you about sex before your parents will. He’s so out there, but he’s kinda your favorite. He’s super fun, but in small doses.

He IS crazy, but you love him. That’s Vegas.

Our 4 days in Waikiki, as it happened, resulted in some of the best meals I’ve eaten in my life, and one of those, was at Keo’s Thai Restaurant at Waikiki.

It was by chance that we even ended up at Keo’s really. We were scanning through the hotel book for a place to have dinner: not really the way that great restaurants are normally found. But it was getting late, we were starving and so we made a snap decision.

Cabbing 5 minutes down Ala Moana from the Park Shore we jumped out at Keo’s hoping for the best.

The restaurant was very busy on this particular night, but we managed to get a table out by the street with a nice open air feel. The fit out of the place was intricate, with Thai artwork on the walls, and indoor plants scattered throughout. The atmosphere was energetic with tourists of all kinds enjoying loud conversation and Waikiki breezes.

Elysia and I started out with a couple of cocktails, reasonably priced, and not untasty while we waited for our food.

What we were waiting on was a Thai Vegetable Curry and a Satay Mahi Mahi.

I’m not a big seafood person, but I don’t mind a good piece of fish or a nice shrimp dish. Satay’s too can go either way. Some are on the spicier side and lose my enjoyment as my eyes begin to water, and others are not spicy enough and feel more like you’re eating a meal with melted peanut butter on top. I hadn’t eaten Mahi Mahi before but figuring we were on an island, and it seemed like this fish was super popular in the area, decided I had to try it out.

This Satay Mahi Mahi however was from the first bite, instantly inducted into my top 5 meals of all time. That’s any country, any restaurant, anywhere. Ohhh just remembering it now makes me salivate. Is that gross? Sorry.

The Mahi Mahi was battered. Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside was the coating. Inside the batter was a thick, fleshy, perfectly moist piece of fish of succulence and joy. The satay was right in that middle area, flavorful, peanutty, and with just a touch of spice that you knew was there with no eye water. All of this served on a bed of Thai rice.

Oh how I enjoyed it. I had so much respect for this meal that I conciously stopped eating, despite the deliciousness, just to avoid overindulging and ruining the ability to preserve this memory forever.

We payed the very modest bill (extremely modest considering the meals awesomeness) and made our way back to our hotel, discussing other top 5 meals we’d had and deciding exactly where in the rankings this one fit. Everyone we’ve talked to since about Waikiki, this meal has gotten a mention, the only frustration being not being able to adequetly describe just how fulfilling this meal was.

If you’re in Waikiki and DON’T go to Keo’s… I feel embarrassed for you.

Technorati Tags: Hawaii, Restaurants, Waikiki

You get to a place or you see a sight, or you have an experience that wasn’t at all what you had come for, planned for, or hoped for, and yet while unexpected is completely memorable and delightful in a weird and wonderful way.

Finding ourselves at a Waffle House diner in Houston Texas at 1am in the morning on the way from London to Mexico turned out to be such an experience.

We had a mammoth 48 hour, 4 flight marathon journey from London through the US to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. After traveling for about 24 hours and being totally exhausted, Elysia and I arrived at Houston International.

Upon realizing that our bags hadn’t arrived and freaking out that all our posessions were lost forever, we decided to kill the 8 hour stopover by making our way to where ever was still open at midnight and sitting down for a meal then falling asleep at our table for a few hours.

We saw that the local Best Western had a 24 hour restaurant next door so jumped in a cab and set off.

Neither of us have been to the southern USA, and I’ll admit that some unfortunate stereotypes lurked in the dark corners of my mind about Texas. More specifically, we both agreed that the seemingly old Waffle House restaurant we arrived at definitely looked like the kind of place where armed robberies or mass shootings are likely to take place at 1am.

With trepidation we made our way inside.

“How Y’all Doin? Welcome To Waffle House!”

** Abort Negative Stereotype **

The smell of immense fast food grease, the old african american manager behind the counter singing soul music with far too much gusto for 1am in the morning, and the enormous waffles with ice cream passing back and forth across the vintage steel counter tops created a feel that was so pleasingly southern it made us forget momentarily the unfortunate 8 time-kill we faced.

Before long I was served my grease filled bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, whose level of trans fats and cholesterol would have made it too much of a health risk to appear on the menu in certain places. Unfortunately, pleasure is not a nutritional statistic, otherwise this meal would have had the heart foundation seal of approval. Delicious in all it’s greasy goodness, washed down with a tantalizingly sweet chocolate milkshake, the Waffle House didn’t fail to deliver.

We hung around for another hour after eating, just listening to the owner discussing his favorite soul tunes andstopping to bust into song at random intervals, one waitress talking with a local business owner in Spanish, and diners of various demographics sauntering in and out enjoying early breakfasts and waffle stacks well into the early morning.

The whole time, Elysia and I couldn’t get the smiles off our faces. We finally left, content and reminded of that underrated phenomenon of travel: Unexpected Moments Of Awesome.

If you’re visiting LA for the first time as a tourist, you need to know that it’s one hell of a big place! The city of angels is spread out over an enormous area of land, connected by highway after freeway after motorway, that just happens to be packed with traffic at most hours of the day.

Almost regardless of where you stay you have to get used to the fact that if you only have a short amount of time to see the city, you’re going to have to factor some serious cab fair-age into the budget.

Here’s an example:

We stayed in Downtown LA, figuring that might be the most central spot from which to head out to the different places of interest. Turns out we were either wrong, or there just weren’t any places more central in the city. To get from downtown out to Venice Beach: $60 Cab fare and there wasn’t even much traffic. Coming back… more traffic… $70. Seeing Venice Beach = $130. Another example: Heading from Downtown out to the Hollywood strip. This one was less, just $25 to get there, then an extra $10 to hop over to Rodeo Drive when we were done.

After realizing the situation, we thought we’d test the public transport on the way back, catching the bus from Beverly Hills to 8th street downtown. Cost $2 or something in total and wasn’t so bad, it just tripled the amount of time for the voyage, putting it at over an hour.

The alternative is, if you’re there to see the touristy things, pay for a tour bus to take you round for a day seeing as many of them as you can (might cost you $100 but be well worth it), and on the following days, pay for the cab trips out to only the (smaller number of) ones you wanted to see again most, OR the ones you didn’t see on the tour

Bottom line is, it’s worth researching well before you head to LA, especially if it’s for a week or less. My advice would be to pick the spots you most want to see, and try to find a hotel that’s close to as many of them as possible. Chances are you won’t get one close to everything you want to see, but if you get close to even a couple of them, you’ll keep more money in your pocket for the activities themselves, for meals, for fun and games of what ever kind you’re into!

It’d been on my to do list for so long…

I’d had one attempt – a helicopter tour through the Grand Canyon – foiled due to bad weather; another attempt over a volcano in New Zealand’s Rotorua dissipated due to only being able to book an 8 minute flight… And so the list goes.

So when the day finally came (our third day on Oahu) I was more than ready for some surprises of a positive kind.

We started the day making our way from Waikiki Beach to the North Shore of Oahu. We’d decided to fly with Paradise Helicopter Tours, and after a slightly unorthodox journey, we made it to Turtle Bay Resort, the take off point for the morning’s voyage.

As we belted up, cheeks smushed inwards by our ear muffs and looking very chipmonk-esque, we began our ascent into the clear blue skies of Hawaii’s third largest island.

First thing that surprised me… and I say so at the risk of sounding dumber than I look… Choppers move considerably faster than they appear to. When you see them from the ground, you imagine them floating, kind of cruising through the air with no real haste… or maybe that’s just my association from seeing too many traffic chopper news reports. We lifted off and immediately shot through the air over an entire golf course in what seemed to be seconds. The lower to the ground you are, the faster it seems too. At low altitute, when you can see in detail all the ground passing below you, your mind can compare it to the speed of a car or a train and realize that both the acceleration time and the speed are considerably higher.

As we climbed gradually higher, moving slowly along in the air above the coastline of Oahu’s lengthy North Shore, I came to my second surprise: The smoothness of the travel.
Having been in small aeroplanes, I figured that the smaller an air vessel was, the more succeptible to turbulence and hence the more bumpy. No sir-ee! Moving around the air in a helicopter (at least on this particular day and at this altitute) seems to incur little resistance, even less turbulence and provides in actuality, a far smoother trip than any aircraft I’d been on.

That is, until you rotate.

As we came to popular spots like Pearl Harbour, the Wahiawa world’s largest Hedge Maze (it’s A-MAZE-ING! – stole that joke from the pilot), and Waikiki Beach, the pilot dutifully spins the helicopter around on the spot to allow all passengers to see the sight from all angles. While it’s not the same as the abrupt bumpiness of airline turbulence, the albeit controlled swinging while simultaneously floating in the air was definitely a cause for a little stomach weakness the first couple of times it happened.

Which brings me to the fourth surprise: Floating.

If you’ve been in a plane you’ve probably observed the beauty and awe of large expanses of the earth observed from the viewpoint of the sky. What you won’t have experienced in a plane is the feeling of viewing the same expanse of earth for an extended period of time because you’re sitting in the sky but you’re not moving! (otherwise known as hovering) The feeling of floating over a single piece of earth was rather surreal, kind of like your dangling from a big string whose other end is hidden somewhere in the clouds above you. You also get the sense that maybe you should be falling.

When I hear a funny noise in an airplane, I often think, “what if that was the engine’s dying”, then in my mind, play out a situation where the plane’s forward movement gradually comes to a halt and then after hanging in the air a brief moment, instantly begins falling straight down towards the ground. (maybe that’s just me, but I doubt it!) When the helicopter came to a halt in mid air and began floating silent and still in the middle of the sky, I have to say I expected the same thing to happen.

However, floating soon became a joy, as we had more and more “hover stops” over spots like the Diamond Head Volcano and the old millitary bunkers dug deceptively into it’s walls, the snorkelers enjoying coral spotting at Hanauma Bay, and the giant swimming pools and uber ritzy mansions of the Kahala region, Oahu’s Beverly Hills.

Just like the terrain covered, the nature of the flight conditions never quite seemed consistent, keeping you always on the edge of your seat, a mix of enjoyment and trepidation. We next passed between the walls of the breathtaking Kahana Valley, where Jurassic Park was filmed and made our way to the Manoa Falls, Oahu’s highest waterfall. This is where things got dicey.

Final surprise was that, when you float down low, when valley walls surround you, it creates swlrling air. As the pilot moved around this crater type land mass to make sure we saw the falls, the chopper swung (what seemed to me like) just a little more wildly back and forth, and although the pilot didn’t seem in the slightest perturbed, I confess that at least for a moment, the enjoyment of the landscape was overcome by the fear of plumetting to our death. But this was soon all over, we moved on from the crater and continued up the coastline back to base, and the hour long flight which seemed more like 15 minutes had come to an end.

If you’re considering a chopper flight and you haven’t taken one before, I can confidently say that there’s no way possible that you’ll forget the experience and if you’re like us, you’ll remember and cherish it forever.

If you’re trying to decide which service to use, I can tell you that our experience with Paradise Choppers was completely professional, very easy, and more than great value for the price we paid.

I left the North Shore with the complete hope that whatever happens, Oahu won’t be the last place Elysia and I hover over on our travels.

Technorati Tags: Hawaii