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

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

The broken meter… The missing meter… The excess surcharges… The longest route… The “Sure, I know where that is” lie… The negotiate-a-fare scams… The “I have no change” guy…

Just to name a few

Unfortunately however, trying to make our way from Waikiki to the North Shore of Oahu, we forgot about and consequently fell prey to the most rudimentary taxi scam of all… and got the biggest cab fare of our lives as a reward.

Here’s the story:

So we’re heading out to the North Shore on our 3rd morning in Hawaii for our Helicopter Tour and were understandably excited to be doing so.

Strangely, we’d been having trouble working out how long it actually took to get there on the bus.

The helicopter people told us 1 hour, the lady at our hotel desk told us 2 hours, and the shuttle driver who brought us from the airport told us 3 hours.

Anyway, our breakfast took longer than expected so by the time we got to the bus stop we realized we probably wouldn’t make it out there, however long it took, by the time we needed to arrive. For added speed we thought “Let’s just take a cab”… That was our first mistake.

I asked the lady at our hotel desk “About how much do you think a cab to the North Shore would be? About $50?”

“Oh no, more like $80″. She replied.

At that point, we decided we were happy to pay $80 to avoid missing our helicopter flight, so we went out looking for a cab. That was our second mistake.

I walked up to the window of the first cab we saw and asked him how much it would cost for him to take us to the North Shore.

“I’ll use the meter… but about $50″

BARGAIN we thought!

As we get in, he did, so honestly adjust his estimate for us to “Maybe $70″.

At this point, I really have to take responsibility and say that I should have seen it coming.

After all the meter shenanigans in South East Asia, I had this idea in my head that as long as we were using the meter, everything would be ok. That was my third mistake.

Have you ever had the feeling when something bad is happening to you and you realize you can’t do anything about it, so you just have to sit there and take it as you stew in a pot of your own anger?

That’s the feeling we had as we watched our meter tick past $100, $120, $150, not knowing how much longer it’d take to get to our destination.

At $100 we decided this driver was getting NO tip.

At $130, Elysia was moved to say to him “Not really $70 is it buddy…”

At $150 we realized that on top of him giving us an estimate about 1/3 of the fare’s actual cost, he’d also taken us the scenic, and surely the longest route in a sick combination of taxi scams that if he were playing a taxi driving video game would have surely earned him double points.

And as the cab came to a halt with the meter at just over $160 we hastily departed, slapping the money in his fat little hand and turning our backs in disgust.

Lessons Learned:

1. Waikiki to North Shore is not a journey to take in a cab.

2. Just because a meter is turned on, doesn’t mean you’re not getting scammed.

3. The “downplay the fare” trick is the simplest and most effective taxi scam there is and it’s genius because you don’t even know you were ripped off until it’s too late.

Fortunately all was not lost. We had a memorable day on the North Shore, definitely became wiser travelers, and got a good travel story out of it to boot.

If you’ve got awesome travel taxi scams, we’d love to hear em!

Technorati Tags: Hawaii, North Shore, Oahu