Friday, May 15, 2009

Guam Vacation

Mike decided a while ago to take leave this week. Since he is going to the desert for 4 months and won't have a chance to use up as much leave as he needed to in order to get below the use or lose cutoff, he had to USE some up or LOSE it. So he had the leave planned but we couldn't decide what to do. We considered Hiroshima, taking a few day trips, or Osaka. Then we decided to just go to Guam... well, he mentioned someone else we know was planning that and I jumped on it. Since I'm spoiled rotten and always get my way, he had no choice but to just agree. =) I thought a few days relaxing would be the best way to spend our last free time together. Good decision.

The trip TO Guam. We got on a bus from the base to take us to the airport at 11am. It's about a 1.5-2 hour ride to the airport in Tokyo. Jackson was a monkey (surprise, surprise) and didn't sleep at all on the bus. We got to the airport and they wanted to know why our passports didn't have Japan entry stamps in them. We all have 2 passports. One set of "official" passports to use when we moved here on official business. The other set are "tourist" passports for vacation, etc. Our official ones got stamped when we moved here, but we had our tourist ones with us. We won't make that mistake again. From now on we'll always carry both. But we got taken to immigration and they had us fill out a form that apparently gets done a lot because it had a sign by it saying "MILITARY" so obviously we weren't the first ones to have this issue. For a while there I was freaked out because I seriously thought they weren't going to let us on the plane! The rest of the trip was uneventful and Jackson still didn't sleep.

The hotel. We stayed at the Pacific Islands Club (aka PIC), and it was pretty nice.

We got a really good deal ($100/night including breakfast) so we were excited about that. Plus they have a great water park with kiddie pools, water slides, and a lagoon to kayak in. And it's right on the beach. There were a few downsides. One being that the lobby was not air conditioned which made for a HOT baby when we were checking in... and with Jackson hot=cranky! Plus it was late, 8:00 Japan time, 9:00 Guam time and he was in desperate need of some sleep. Also, the lobby, hallways, and water park were not non-smoking. That got pretty irritating because almost all the Japanese people smoke. But they also had a nice spa and I got a massage on Mothers Day. It was very nice! The one downfall of the room, which overall was great and had a balcony with a great view, was the lack of place for a crib. They gave us the crib for Jackson, but there wasn't really anywhere to put it that would be dark enough for him to sleep. Except the closet. We started with one closet door, but call a call from the front desk wanting to know what was up with our closet, so I put the other door back on, too. Mike took a picture of Jackson's "jail".

Guam.

Guam's main industry is tourism. And it's almost exclusively Japanese and Korean tourists. Obviously if Americans want and island vacation they go to Hawaii. So immediately everyone knew we were military since that's pretty much the only Americans that go there. So a lot of the restaurants and shops catered to the Japanese. Food, snacks, etc. I was just glad to see $$ signs and English words. =) The hotel was a little far from the main strip of hotels and stuff but still walkable. We walked "down the hill" two out of our first three days there. Then on Monday, Mike rented a car. Once again, great deal--$35/day including insurance and a car seat. So we had that for the last two days we were there, which made it really nice. We were able to travel around the island and do sight seeing and broaden our restaurant choices.

Sight seeing. We saw Two Lovers Point
the Latte Stones
and a couple of forts. (See earlier post from Mike's Guam TDY for descriptions of those.) Plus we walked through the Chamorro village, but all the shops were closed when we went. The native people on Guam are Chamorros, and that's also the language they speak along with English. Our last day we went to Underwater World. It has tunnels you can walk through with fish all around and above you.

It was very cool, and Jackson definitely loved the big fish.
At the end there was a touch pool where you could touch fish and starfish.
But Jackson thought it was more of a splash pool, so we didn't stay there long.

Food. We had breakfast at the hotel every day. We ate at a restaurants most other meals and had leftovers once or twice. The restaurants in the hotel were EXPENSIVE so we only had that the first night we got there and didn't have any other options. We had TGI Fridays, Tony Roma's, an Italian place called Vitale's, California Pizza Kitchen, a Jamaican restaurant, The Mermaid Tavern (twice), and Jeff's Pirate Cove. My favorite was the Mermaid Tavern (which is why we had it twice--see note above about me being spoiled). They had the best spinach dip I've ever had. Jeff's was also very cool. Some Japanese soldier hid on the island for 30 years and when he was finally captured he talked about how he could hear music coming from the Cove. The restaurant got sold a few times and now belongs to Jeff. He has kind of dedicated it to the soldier that was found. It's a pretty neat story and a pretty neat place.

The water. The beach by our hotel kind of sucked. It was really rocky and had lots of trash on it. So we spent all of our water time in the pools. There was one pool that was maybe 8" deep and had a bunch of toys for kids in it. Unfortunately to get to the main play equipment, you had to go where water was coming down on your head. That meant Jackson wanted nothing to do with it. But he did play with another thing that didn't require water on your head, and loved the pool in general. Especially when we brought down his watering can from the sand set (which we didn't use). There was another pool that was shallow, maybe 3', but obviously too deep for him to stand. It had big floating animals, which is why it was called the zoo. One was a crab that had a slide down its back. Jackson really liked that one. It got a little tiring for Mommy to keep catching him and putting him back on the top of the slide, though. They also had a lagoon that you could kayak in. I couldn't believe how much Jackson enjoyed that! We had fun just kayaking around a little, and there was a waterfall that he was mezmerized by.

Golf. Mike golfed three days, and the courses were beautiful! He also played pretty well.



The trip back to Japan. A NIGHTMARE. We got a late check out from the hotel hoping that Jackson would take a nap. No such luck. He did finally fall asleep as the plane took off, but only for about 20 minutes and didn't go back to sleep for the rest of the flight. After we got through the health screening, immigration, baggage, and customs, we were looking for our bus back to the base. It's normal schedule is leaving Narita at 4, 6, and 8pm. But due to the extra steps for swine flu, it had been delayed to 5, 7, and 9pm. But sometime while we were in Guam, they changed it back to 4, 6, and 8. We landed at 7:20 and walked outside about 8:10. Once we saw there was no bus, we called the base and found out they had changed the schedule back. Great. So that meant we had to take the train home from the airport. Luckily we got on an express that went from Narita to Tachikawa and only stopped 4 or 5 times in between. That took 2 hours. Then we had to get from Tachikawa to Fussa (only about 6 stops). The biggest issue was getting through the stations with 2 suitcases, a golf bag travel case, a stroller, a CPAP and 2 backpacks. When we got settled on the train in Tachikawa I looked at Mike and saw he didn't have his backpack on. When I asked him if he had the laptop bag he said, "Nope. I guess that's gone." Crap. We left it on the express train from the airport. We got off at the Fussa station and walked to the base (about 30 minutes). Got in the car and came home. By the time we got home it was almost midnight. Luckily on Thursday we called the train lost and found and they had the laptop bag. It took Mike 3 hours of travelling in rush hour train traffic to get it back, but we got it. Through all that, Jackson only slept for about an hour and a half divided between the two trains. He was really ready for bed by the time we got home!

All in all, it was a great vacation, with a few obstacles getting there and back.

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