Back from Vacation

I'm back! Some people asked where the hell I went on vacation. The story is this: my girlfriend and I won extremely cheap tickets to anywhere in Canada or the US in a silent charity auction, so we decided to try a 10-day low-expense trip to Hawaii. Here are a few snapshots:

This is what the view was like from the balcony of the Aston Coconut Plaza when we checked in. I have lots of beautiful shots of Hawaii, but they don't do it much justice. You really have to stand in it to realize how incredibly beautiful Hawaii is.

Hawaiians really, really love Spam (as in the meat). Any time I was in a grocery store I had to check out their Spam section and this was one of the better ones. Multiple shelves and varieties. Stunning.

Here's what my foot looked like after I got stung by a box jellyfish. When you get stung by a jellyfish everyone tries to pee on it. I negotiated down to pouring vinegar on it in a grocery store parking lot. (The two blisters near my ankle are sandal wounds and unrelated to jellyfish.)

This is a blurry shot of our rented Subaru Forrester after somebody broke into it, smashing the driver's and rear windows while it sat in the Aston Maui Lu parking lot. Everyone we talked to about it blamed it on a rising Crystal Meth problem.

It was surprisingly hard to find Internet access in Hawaii. The craziest place we used was this computer inside of an old chipwagon on the north shore of Oahu. I should have taken a picture of the outside, but I lost my sense of humor somewhere around this point and became scared for my life.

This is a Turkeyfish at the Waikiki aquarium. I'm thankful it did not sting me or break into my car.

All in all, I had a great time -- though the crime outside heavy tourist areas like Waikiki sucked. We witnessed one car break-in on Oahu (in broad daylight, one car away from us) on our second day there and then two days after that it happened to us on Maui. No fun.

But the weather was awesome and most people we met (in and outside the tourist areas) were extremely friendly and we got to see a ton of Oahu and Maui without spending too much money. My knees are sunburnt and I have a lot of email to deal with.