Our Christmas Vacation…

Cher and I headed to Maui to visit Cher’s parents for Christmas. What a trip it was. The trip started with our driver being quite late to pick us up and then hitting really bad traffic. It got to the point where he finally crossed the median and drove for about 3 KM down the wrong way flashing his lights and blaring his horn to pass the blocked traffic. It was quite amazing! When we got to the airport we had three bags and the Christmas tree from our parties in it’s small box. Two of the suitcases were a few Kilos over while the tree was about 30 under… didn’t matter to them… so I asked for some plastic bags and shoved junk in from the two suitcases and then took this package over to the guy with the shrink wrap and we had it bundled up, not exactly Louis Vuton looking luggage but it worked! We stopped off in Tokyo to visit a friend for a day as well, what an experience. Tokyo was amazing, it was like going into “Future World” as Cher called it. The entire 36 hours we were there we didn’t hear one horn honk, it was such a pleasant time. Cher has billeted Javier during a conference in June at our home after I had left for Sri Lanka so it was nice for me to meet him. He took us for some incredible meals and some great shopping. We started with a meal of shubu-shubu which was really nice for me especially as I had been craving beef. We then took a cruise down the river and visited a nice pier shopping district. It was only 3 degrees Celsius out so we really enjoyed being cold for once!! It was great seeing Tokyo all decked out for Christmas too. We had another incredible meal of something we forget the name of – (we’re hoping someone can let us know what it is called, here is a photo…)both meals were great and were neat as we had to cook them ourselves. I hope to find a place in Vancouver where we can get it, maybe Hisako can help us out! After saying goodbye to Javier we boarded a train to the airport that was so nice, it was like sitting in First Class on a plane, quite a difference from our trains at home here!! We then flew to Honolulu and then off to Maui. I was worried about driving again as I hadn’t done so since the end of April and then having been in a left hand driving country for so long, but I fell right back into it. We were first to arrive and check into the condo which was great as we needed the time to get organized with the luggage. Cher’s parents arrived later that night and then the next day Nicole and Grant arrived with Michelle. We had a fabulous time with lots of snorkeling and body surfing and walks along the beach walkway. It was so nice to have such good roads to drive on, fresh air and quietness, and grocery stores. We probably indulged in things like Dairy Queen blizzards and Baskin Robins a bit much but oh well, it was the season! Our trip home was very very long. We left the condo very early for a 7 AM flight to Honolulu, then waited there for an hour for our flight to Tokyo where we had a four hour layover. We then got a flight to Singapore and that’s where things went bad :-) It was just before New Years (11:45) and we were told we had to clear immigration and leave the secure area. Well, that was bad advice as all the services like showers, chairs, hotels, internet etc. were on the other side of security and we couldn’t get back without a boarding pass which we couldn’t get for another 7 hours. So we celebrated New Years in the Singapore airport and without a place to sit. It was rather miserable. We then flew off to Kuala Lumpur where we sat for another hour and then off to Colombo. It was nice that it was a Sunday that we arrived as traffic was quiet and it wasn’t so hectic. I’ll post some photos on Flickr too :-)