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Welcome to Jenny Lee! Our new “Roving Report” for Hawaii Trip Report!

Marnie and I would like to welcome Jenny Lee to our team at Hawaii Trip Report (dot com)! Jenny brings a vast level of experience to our small team! She made the Big Island “home” in 2001, and we’re jazzed to have a great person on board who can lend so much knowledge and “Aloha Spirit” to our staff.Jenny decided to come on board to help us with Lets Go Banners (dot com) as our in-house marketing and design expHPIM1421ert, and she’s excited to also help us launch this site.

We started this week filming at 69 Beach- we captured some awesome video and content for our “LGB Marketing Tips” which is our marketing video podcast for Lets Go Banners. We also completed several shoots for Hawaii Trip Report which will be uploaded here starting Friday.

I will have to say, it wasn’t easy focusing on work with the ocean waves crashing and all the locals and tourists taking advantage of what was a “pretty much perfect” day at 69 Beach! (You can find 69 Beach by traveling north on the highway just past the fire station and turning at your first possible right. Just follow the road! A GREAT BEACH!)

We were tempted to do some “on-site” interviews, but decided to hold until we had our marketing literature ready. But I think the folks enjoying the beach would have been happy and excited to share their experiences. We’re also planning to conduct “on-site” interviews at the airport, and we’re hoping to recruit some local correspondents on the other fabulous Hawaiian Islands. Check back soon to see our videos! We filmed this series with a simple Logitech Camera and PC (the sand is tough, but the rewards are worth it!) We’re planning on using a nice video camera in the future, but getting the right set up with proper microphones caused us a slight delay! No big deal.

Aloha from the Big Island! This week was really special (isn’t that special...:) It was Marnie’s and my 15 year wedding anniversary! To celebrate, we took the kids...:< (just kidding) to Kirin at the Hilton Waikoloa! Now, I may have mentioned somewhere in this trip report that 3 or 4 years ago, the last time Marnie and I visited the Big Island (prior to our move here,) we stayed at the Hilton Waikoloa, and we ate at Kirin’s 3 or 4 nights in a row! It is the BEST ChineHPIM1352se food in the world (or at least this part of the world..!) Well, last night (Thursday, April 24,) we ventured over to the Hilton and walked our way down to Kirin’s. Although we ate here about 12 weeks ago right after we moved here, the Hilton Waikoloa is so big that we couldn’t quite remember exactly where the restaurant is. So we started walking to the right of the grand entrance, and we thought we’d gone too far, but nope, we had a little way’s to go. But the cool thing is that I got some great picts on the way, and the artwork is simply astonishing.

Here’s a picture of the entrance to a set of rooms further down the walk (I forget the name of this area, I think it’s the King’s Suites or something like that, but it is simply breathtaking.) Looking exactly opposite is a picture overlooking the ocean (sorry, my camera doesn’t do it justice!) As we progressed down the hall, admiring the art, we passed many happy vacationers who we slightly envied for their experience, although we quickly realized we were having the same experience! HPIM1350I remember staying here several years ago. This place is soooo big and beautiful, that part of my “work out” each day heading to the spa and work out facility was simply jogging there! It was at the exact opposite end of the complex, so just getting there was a work out (unless, of course, you take the tram or the boat ride, that you can pick up about every 5 to 10 minutes. Well, we finally made our way to Kirin’s, and were seated promptly and we placed our drink orders. I ordered an authentic Chinese Tea, and the girls quickly drank all of it! For dinner, Eve ordered Orange Chicken which is awesome, and I had the General’s Spicy Chicken. I can’t remember what Marnie ordered, but it was good also, and Rose just shared ours. She’d had the flu lately and really preferred her soup! (Oh- I also ordered the seafood egg drop soup which was unreal!) After dinner, we walked down to the end of the walk and waited to catch a boat ride back to the grand lobby. While waiting we met a nice artist (Trey?) who paints awesome pictures of the tourists (caricatures) and we really enjoyed talking with him. Since we’re starting a sign company (www.letsgobanners) we thought we may be able to do some networking! We wondered over to the boat loading area and waited a few minutes and then caught a boat ride back. It was really relaxing listening to the tourists talk about their day! There was a guy from California talking about all the stuff he’d done this week as well as a brief history about Disneyland in California. The other couple were having a ball and were slightly sun burnt (don’t forget to apply it everywhere!) The one gentlemen mentioned he’d forgot to cover one of his cheeks and was showing bright red (not out of embarrassment). What’s weird about living here is that you don’t really (after a while) worry much about the sun, unless, of course, you’re going to the beach all day. I stay consistently tan, and onlHPIM1351y get burnt when going to the beach or a pool. So if you’re visiting, BE CAREFUL!

Well, we finished our boat ride and arrived at the lobby. Walking through, we were approached by four young ladies asking if we could take there picture in front of the huge dolphin statue in the lobby. They then asked if we would “hug” for a picture, since we found out they were on a scavenger hunt and needed a picture of a couple hugging. How appropriate, since it was our 15 year wedding anniversary?

Back to the car, and on our way home! The stars weren’t as bright, as the volcano is a bit busy- no problem!

We’ve been very busy with Lets Go Banners, and here’s a banner we printed today. It was from a stock photo and we are very happy with the quality from our first Mutoh printer, which arrived last week. We’ve been in the printing industry for 15 years, and I just wish we’d gotten into the sign and banner business 15 years ago!HPIM1356

Tomorrow we’re heading to Kona to purchase some sign supplies at Lowes and Home Depot, and are looking forward to eating at the Hard Rock, which is closing in a couple months. I just hope they re-open at the Queen Shoppes or King Shoppes. This Island is growing so fast, I can’t imagine not having a Hard Rock (their salads are unreal!)

If you haven’t added to our forum or picture upload, please do! It’s in the nav bar above!

Until next time,

Chris and Family,
Aloha!

HPIM1353

HomePict

If you’re planning a trip to one or many of the beautiful islands of Hawaii, we invite you to visit and learn from our members’ experiences of Hawaii. My family, after visiting Hawaii for 15 years, finally decided to make the move and make Hawaii our home! We hope to make this site informative to all who wish to visit and share Hawaii. It’s a slice of paradise. 

And we invite you to post to our forum to share your experiences with others to help make their trips the best!

Aloha, Chris Anderson and Family!

Bubbles The Crab joins our group for the day...

We visited the gorgeous Mauna Lani Resort (not sure the exact name of this beach....) with some of our friends on Saturday. Well, we were visited and befriended by Bubbles The Crab for most of the day. We’d seen the crab a few weeks ago, and I think he (or she) is taking a liking to us. One of his friends joined us later in the day too!

 

Would you like to write about your FAVORITE Hawaiian experience? Help us out by writing to our Community Forum, and upload some pictures! Share your Hawaii Trip experience with everyone! It’s not cheap to travel to paradise, so help others! Start now!

Here’s a video of our exciting delivery of our Matson 45 foot container! We were so tired of sleeping on air mattresses!

 

Are you nuts about Hawaii? Have you vacationed here before? Are you just getting ready to take your first trip to pa

South Pointe Extreme Divers

radise? 

As everyone knows, vacationing to Hawaii is (although a labor of love,) very time-consuming and expensive to do the “right way.” My family has vacationed here many times (until we actually moved here this year,) and every time we learned new things that helped make our trip even better every time. 

Although the internet provides a ton of resources, we found that it can become overwhelming. So we decided to do something about it and create this site to enable you to learn how to make the most of your vacation, while at the same time giving you the opportunity to share stories (good or bad!) about your trip to Paradise.

This site will morph over time, but we now have a Community cmkimosForum that will help us post anything and everything. We wish to keep it a family-styled forum, so please keep it clean. We also have a “Picture Upload” area that is kind of like a personal picture gallery. Here you can share your snapshots of Hawaii and look at pictures taken by others.

I hope you enjoy this site. And we hope that people share their stories so that we can help others make the most of their trip to Hawaii.

And please send me an email if you have any ideas or suggestions! I haven’t set up email accounts for this site yet, so you can reach me at:
chris@letsgobanners.com

Enjoy!

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