Vacations Blog

Call him 'Lance' and you're in trouble.

Listen, I’m not going to lie to you, okay? I’m in Hawaii on a tour where we’re being treated like rock stars. Meaning, I am anything but slumming as far as hotels go. When I get a spare few hours, I will find some funky cool little places to stay in for less than usual, I promise. And let’s be honest, any quick search of cheap hotels in Honolulu will pull up more info than even I could steal and attempt at passing off as my own.

But, having been traveling for over 11 straight years now, I can offer some little tips on how to have a lot of the same experiences as the happy family on the brochure, without having to pay as much.

Take today, for example, I had a few extra hours before a welcoming party.

I could have easily picked up the guide book and read that the Iolani Palace was just down the street from me.

I could have found out through, well, a number of resources online, that it was an easy walk from my hotel.

I could have walked around outside, sat under the giant banyan trees and taken this monument in.

I could have gone inside, paid the $20, and read the information given by one of the older volunteers at the door.

I could have found out that it had electricity 4 years before The White House, or, perhaps, that this was the official residence of the monarch until the King was overthrown in 1893.

In fact, I could have easily cut-and-pasted all sorts of wonderful information about this downtown jewel right here and, thanks to this handy thesaurus that pops up with a click, might have even convinced you it was my own.

Or, I could have taken up a friend-of-a-friend’s offer to show me around.

Which I did.

See, Hawaiian’s are some of the most accommodating people in the world, they’re also some of the most laid-back; these are things you probably know. But in this day and age of social networking, everyone is one degree away from anyone else in the world.

And people like living here, they like talking about living here – so take them up on it.

I guarantee that with one ‘friend invite’, or one ‘tweet‘, you can find someone anywhere who has an hour.

That’s what I did, and now anytime I come back to Honolulu, I’ll have a new friend-guide, known to most as ‘Lancey-Poo’.

And that’s something everyone should have.

Aric Q. is traveling to Hawaii and he’s trying to do it on the cheap.  We will be following his adventures here on UpTake and we will be wishing him well, but we will NOT be wiring him money.