Maui Trip - Day 1 (Banyan Tree, Jodo Mission, Luau)

October 25th 2007

Our hotel check-in time was only 3 pm. So, we decided to see some places before going to the hotel. We went straight from the Kahului airport to the Banyan tree in Lahaina. The drive from the airport to Lahaina was very scenic. There was sea on one side of the road and mountains on the other side. My wife had to take rest during the drive because she had some air sickness. It took us about 40 minutes to reach Lahaina from Kahului. Finding a parking space closer to the Banyan tree was quite challenging. So, I had to leave my rental car on a paid parking. It looks like this Banyan tree was brought from India when it was 6 feet in height. Now, it is about 60 feet in height. We spent about an hour there. Mitra (my little one) enjoyed playing there.

We then went to the Lahaina Jodo Mission. There was a temple and a huge statue of Buddha in that place. It was very close to the sea shore in Lahaina. There is a burial ground right opposite to the Jodo Mission. In Hawaii, you can see burial grounds everywhere in spite of the shooting real estate cost :) The Jodo Mission temple was closed on that day. So, we couldn't get into the temple. There were hardly any people except for us.

As per our original plan, we were supposed to go to Dragon peak. However, we were so tired. So, we decided to do some grocery shopping and go to hotel. We shopped in the Safeway store in Lahaina Cannery Mall complex and reached Resortquest Kaanapali Villas at about 4 pm. We were given a room in the ground floor in the Banyan complex. We were surprised to see that the room is like a home. It had a fully furnished kitchen, a sofa set, a king size bed, TV, DVD player, few DVDs, a double door refrigerator, microwave oven etc., All the appliances are very new. The room had a tile flooring and my little one enjoyed to walk on that. My wife liked the room very much.

We prepared noodles and had our dinner in the room.
We rushed to attend the Luau in Royal Lahaina. We reached Royal Lahaina at 6.30 pm. The Luau was scheduled to start at 7 pm. We were surprised to see that there were about 1000 people having their dinner there. We were the only family who were there just to see the show. Everyone else had booked for dinner+show. The show started on time. We were quite excited to see the traditional Hula dance. The fire knife dance was astounding. The show went for about one and a half hours. There were a few showers during the show. They gave us ponchos. But, the showers were just benign and we didn't use them.

We reached hotel at about 9 pm and retired for the day.