SATURDAY (10/07/06) – DAY 1:
We departed from LAX airport around 1pm and arrived into Papeete, Tahiti via Air Tahiti Nui around 6:30pm. Upon arrival, we were greeted by our tour agency with beautiful flower leis.
(I'll incorporate pics to my storytelling, bear with me. I'll have more pics up in an album when I get a chance to upload everything. Keep in mind that we took well over 1300 pics and video clips.) We were then shuttled to Radisson Plaza Resort where we spent the night. Much to our surprise, we received an upgraded room with a Jacuzzi tub in our room. Note: Our room was absolutely breath taking. We got a view of the swimming pool and ocean. Not to mention, we were able to hear the waves crashing along the shore as we left our window open and slept. We settled in, explored our hotel for a bit.  
   
Here's an ocean view of from our balcony: 
We ended up at the Lafayette Bar sipping on a Mai Tai and Banana Colada and had some fried chicken wings to go with our drinks. Guess how much this cost us?? The bill came out to be $45 USD. WOW INDEED!!! This ended up being our dinner cuz it's about the price of dinner. 
SUNDAY (10/08/06) – DAY 2:
Next morning, we woke early to take a stroll along the beach (locals call this beach “Black Sand Beach”) because the sand it black…go figure. The sand was soft and very fine.
 
We were walking on the rocks and hopping over tide pools that extends a bit out into the ocean. You see lots and lots of sea cucumbers all over the place, blue clams, sea urchins. I think my parents would be very excited about the sea cucumbers. Haha!! I even saw a white spotted eel in one of the tidepools. Couldn't capture a pix of it as it was really really fast. There are lots of fishes in the tide pools too. 
The cool thing about this beach is that we were able to walk really far out and the water only came up to our ankles. We also saw many women sun bathing topless and swimming topless. I took pictures, but won't post them. We came back to our room and had instant noodles for lunch on our lanai. We were able to enjoy our instant noodles while uploading our pictures and the view. We checked out around 1pm and headed for the domestic airport to take us to Bora Bora. (This is the inside of the airport for domestic flights in Tahiti).
 The plane ride from Papeete to Bora Bora was about 45 minutes, but it felt like the longest 45 minutes ever.
(This is the airport in Bora Bora.)
 I kept on nudging Eric, asking him “ARE WE THERE YET??” He was trying to nap. He said I was worst than a little kid anxiously to go to Disneyland! :smt019 They served really watered down pineapple juice on the flight. If you fly to Bora Bora, make sure to sit on the left side of the plane. You get the best view of Bora Bora on the left. Once we landed, we were greeted by hotel staff at the Bora Bora airport with flower leis. We proceeded to get our luggage and got on a boat to take us to our hotel: Sofitel Motu Bora Bora.  
Upon arrival at the dock, we were greeted by two staff members (one sang a song playing the ukulele while the other staff handed us wet washcloths to wipe hands. Her name is Agatha (French woman).
The blonde chick is Agatha. Most of the staff are really nice and friendly. There were only 2 ppl we didn't really like, one is Agatha and the other was this guy, we call "cho pi lian" (stinky skin face).
She then guided us to the bar where we checked in. While checking in, Agatha handed us two cold coconut drinks in an actual coconut to refresh and quench our thirst. And boy, did the FRESH coconut juice taste so good.
 We stayed at the Sofitel Motu on a treetop bungalow for the first 3 nights here. Here's what the treetop bungalows look like:
(We had the center bungalow on the hill.)
    
Our balcony overlooks the ocean and over water bungalows.
 We unpacked and took a boat across to the mainland (less than 5 mins) to get some groceries (take the boat to the mainland, you end up at the ssister resort called Sofitel Marara, take a left, about a 5 min walk, you arrive at the market). Here's the boat: 
Unfortunately, we got there too late (almost 7pm) and the market was getting closing (they close at 6:30pm). So, we walked to a restaurant called La Bounty (almost next the the market) and had dinner.
It was known for reasonable pricing and good food. La Bounty is not a big and glamorous place and looks like a family owned little restaurant. While we were eating, there was a black out but didn’t last long. I ordered Fruitt de mer pasta and Eric had the peppered steak with side of fries. We had 1L bottle of water and a can of Coke.
There is no nightlife on Bora Bora. There is also nothing to do after dinner besides, you know. There are DVDs available to check out, but mostly old movies. I think the newest one is Collision (with Sandra Bullock). There is a DVD player in the room, so it might be a good idea to bring a DVD to watch. We sleep pretty early...around 8pm (11pm our time...they are 3 hours back). There are no big mosquito problems at the Sofitel Motu. I've got bitten once but didn't notice until I got on the plane heading home. We had 4 geckos in our room. They make noises all night long. I left the light on all night cuz I was afraid that they couldn't see where they were going and will fall onto our bed. They were on the ceiling.
 MONDAY (10/09/06) – DAY 3:
Its raining HARD today. We used our best judgment and decided to go to the market even though it was pouring. We bought juice, bread, ham, cheese, chips, Hinano beer, and water. Thanks to the hotel providing rain coats and umbrella, we were able to minimize us getting soaked. After returning from the market, we had ham and cheese sandwich and pineapple juice for breakfast.
The chips in the picture are ones we brought from home. I packed 10 little bags of chips. Then we bought more at the market.
The rain had let up for a bit so we decided to go snorkeling.  
We took a short nap woke up to sunshine. We went for a hike to the view point. The trail starts just right outside our bungalow (bungalow #106). The view from the top of the Motu was beautiful. We took pictures of ourselves which was quite fun. I wished I had brought my tripod. We noticed another Japanese couple brought their tripod too. It's really hard to find someone to take a picture for you because there is really no one around.       
After nearly two hours of hiking, we return on time for happy hour (5 – 6pm). It's literally "happy HOUR". Haha!! Drinks were HALF OFF so we weren’t about to pass up this opportunity. Then we came back to our room and had instant noodle for dinner TUESDAY (10/10/06) – DAY 4:
Today was a very interesting and exciting day. We got to go shark and manta ray feeding. We wanted to do the motu picnic too, but got cancelled due to the weather. The outrigger canoe picked us up from the dock around 9:40am. There were four other couples and us along with and two guides. We toured around the whole island. We made our first stop to see sharks in the water. Our guide threw chunks of meat into the ocean to attract the sharks. Lo and behold, a bunch of sharks were just swarming our boat. The tour guide then told us to jump into the water. It was scary at first, but awesome at the same time. This will be an experience we will never forget. These sharks (called Black Tipped Sharks) were three to five feet long.
 
After shark feeding was done, our tour guide took us to another spot and let us snorkel for 20 minutes. The water was REALLY clear, but nothing to see unfortunately. The guides were kind enough to serve us watermelon and water. The guides then took us to our last stop, which was swimming with sting rays. Boy were these rays HUGE!! While we were in the water, the rays came up and rubbed up Eric a couple of times and so he kissed one of them. I yelped a couple of times cuz I got freaked out. They were all over the ocean floor. I was afraid to step on them, especially after what happened to Steve Irwin.
  We returned after 2 and 1/2 hours and by this time, the sun was out. We even saw a few couples on the beach snorkeling and taking the kayak out. While walking on the dock back to our room, we saw a school of fishes along the shore. We asked for some bread from the hotel staff and fed the fishes. We went snorkeling for a few hours. We went to the beach and took more pictures. Here are some pics we took of ourselves.
    Now, we’re about to head out and go to dinner at Pirate’s Bar located on the main land. The food wasn’t that great nor were the drinks, except for the beer (Tabu). The entire meal cost us $84 USD. I had Beef Tartare (don't ever order that if you don't like grounded raw beef. I didn't know that.) Eric had bbq ribs (not good and usually you can't go wrong with bbq). The only thing that is interesting here is the deck where you can see manta rays. These things are huge and very intimidating to look at.
WEDNESDAY (10/11/06) – DAY 5:
This morning we get to over water bungalows. These are NICE!! Since it's was still so early (7am) and check out isn't til 11am, we had to wait. We packed everything up and went to the mainland for a morning stroll. We stopped by the Beach Bar (a little drink and snack stand, no bigger than a kid's lemonade stand). We got ice cream there cuz it's hot out and sat and relaxed on the beach. The ice is really good, but also pretty pricey. It's $2.35 a scoop on a cone. It's about half the scoop of a Rite Aid ice cream on a cone. The pineapple flavor was heavenly. I still crave for it and would gladly pay $2.35 for it now.
We noticed there were more ppl on the mainland and it made us really really happy that we are on our own motu. It's one of the best resorts that you can be on in Bora Bora as its on it's private little island. We do have to catch a boat to and from this motu each time you want to go to the mainland which is free. You don't have to wait long for the boat and it takes less than 5 mins each way. At the Sofitel Motu, you really feel like you're on a deserted island. You'll see people every now and then, but most of the time, you'll start to wonder if you're the only ppl on the island. We returned to our resort just shortly before noon and Seiko (reception staff) told us a room was ready for us. We got room#123. The room looks like the treetop bungalow except for the sundeck, the platform with outdoor shower, the stairs that lead into the water, the view of the beautiful ocean, the glass bottom windon on the floor. There were no geckos on the ceiling.
    
After we got situated, we took the boat over to the mainland to rent a car from the car rental company called Fare Piti to drive around the island. The total cost of the car rental was about $88 USD for two hours. We met a very nice lady by the name of Noella who works here and was very helpful. She helped us rent our car, provided us a dining guide of entire island, and gave us an extra twenty minutes on our car rental.
Noella told us which over water bungalow was good to get (room#’s 128, 129, 112, and 114) because the views from the sun deck overlooks Mt. Otemanu. She’s familiar with the Sofitel Hotel because she’s worked at the hotel for four years. We got the car. The cars here are mostly Pugeot (sp?). There are pretty darn small. It's a 5 door with A/C. The cars here are manual. Luckily Eric used to drive a manual. We were told it takes approximately 3L to fill the tank. We drove around the island and didn't go down 1 gap.
 
We stopped off at various spots around the island to take pictures. The entire drive took us less than an hour to circle the entire island. There’s only on main road. The road is wide enough for one car going in each direction. There are no traffic lights at all along this road, but were a few speed limit signs and arrow signs advising drivers about road curvatures ahead. We did manage to see a police car along the way. Their police car was a minivan with sirens and lights on top.
    
Along the way, we stopped off at a eatery called Snack Bora Bora Burgers to have lunch.
We both ordered a cheeseburger, Eric added fries to his, coke, and local Tahitian beer called Tabu. There were many hungry stray dogs along the road side. Its sad to see these stray dogs looking at you waiting for you to toss them some food. When we were eating, two stray dogs came right up to us and sat next to us hoping for some food to be tossed their way. Eric threw them some fries, but the dogs didn’t seem interested in eating the fries. So, he threw them a bit of his burger and they immediately scarffed up the food. Eric wanted to feed the dogs more food, but I got kinda pissy and said no more because the food we ordered was so expensive. This meal is approx $30 USD, no way is it going to the dogs! Are you kidding me? The cheeseburge alone was $8.50 and it looks like I grilled it myself. I don't recall any lettuce or tomatoes, or even pickles in it.
After lunch, we drove over to the biggest supermarket on the island called Chin Lee’s. Here, we bought some juice, chips, and cookies which totaled roughly more than $10 USD.
We continued to drive along the road after we left Chin Lee’s and headed back to return the car. Afterwards, we walked over to the local market near our hotel to get some more groceries. Here, we bought baguettes (three loaves – one to feed the fish and two to eat), ham, instant noodle, bottle of water, and Tabu (beer) which roughly totaled $23 USD. All the groceries we bought combined was for lunch and dinner for the next two days. (Instant noodle there is more than $2.50 a bowl. Before we left, I packed 8 to begin with along with 3 bottles of water and 6 cans of orange juice. I got a big bowl of noodle at 99 Ranch for $1.29 and under. The $1.29 here is the large bowl too. Their $2.50 bowl size would be like the $0.99 at 99 Ranch.) When we got back to our bungalow, we decided to go snorkeling because the weather was very nice and the water looked so inviting. It was early in the afternoon still. (We start our day really early cuz 6am there is 12 noon here.) We were able to see a variety of fishes underneath our bungalow.
   
View from our deck:
Drinking beer on our deck:
After snorkeling, we had dinner in our room while watching fishing through our glass bottom floor. We also fed bread to the fishes down by the water deck. Then it was lights out and we went to bed. THURSDAY (10/12/06) – DAY 6:
I woke up around 5:30am today and got a chance to see a beautiful sunrise. I couldn't sleep anymore. I made myself a cup of coffee. By the way, there are NO Starbucks on the island. The coffee in your room is instant Nescafe coffee. It wasn't the best, but it worked the same. ERIC was annoyed when I tried to wake me up so early to watch the sunrise with me. He finally woke up around 6:30am. Both of us sat on the lanai to watch the sunrise. He was glad I woke him up to see it. It was beautiful.
 
We started our day early by checking out an outrigger canoe. We soon learned that operating an outrigger canoe isn’t as easy as it looks. We paddled and paddled and kept on going around in circles. We finally gave up and asked for a kayak and life vests. We kayaked around our motu (mini island) for a few hours while stopping off at various points to snorkel. The water was so clear and calm that we saw lots of different types of fishes. We saw a big puffer fish hiding underneath a coral. We wanted to take a picture of the puffer fish, but we didn’t want to provoke it. We also saw a tiger or spotted eagle ray which we thought was a manta ray at first. We got freaked and got back on our kayak and snorkeled elsewhere. We then kayaked back to our bungalow to rest up a bit, recharge our camera batteries, and uploaded our pictures. Soon afterwards, we got back on the kayak and kayaked around the motu once more. This time, we kayaked to another motu. We were going to dock here and explore the motu, but saw dogs leaped out as another couple approached. We then saw a sign that said “prive” which is French for private. We stopped off at another snorkeling point and I saw a trumpet fish that looked about three feet long. I got spooked by this fish because the fish was staring at me. It looked like a cat that's about to pounce on me. This is what a trumpet fish looks like:
After spending another hour and half in the water, we kayaked back to the front side of the island and returned the kayak. We then had lunch on our sun deck eating a wholesome lunch which consisted of chips, cookies, ham/cheese sandwich, and Hinano beer. This made us really sleepy so we decided to take a three hour nap. Eric woke up a bit earlier than me and sat on our sun deck to catch the breeze and enjoy the view. He came into the room screaming in excitement cuz he saw a huge stingray swim past our bungalow in the water right below us. By the time we woke up, it was around 4pm. We decided to take some pictures around our motu. We were very interested in a section of our motu where there were two hammocks put up which we saw while we were kayaking earlier during the day. We took some pictures on the hammock before we proceeded to the market because we were low on juice and water. Here are more pictures we took ourselves:
  
We took the boat across to the mainland to go get some groceries in order to replenish our supplies for lunch tomorrow and the day after. We then returned from the market and had instant noodle and juice in our room for dinner. We also borrowed three movies from our hotel to watch while eating dinner. The three movies we borrowed were: Hitch, Triple X, and Aviator. While eating dinner, we watched the movie Hitch.
FRIDAY (10/13/06) – DAY 7:
We woke up around 6:30am and and had coffee and cookies on our sun deck. As we got ready, I find this big giant cockroach on the toilet paper. I was freaking out (I hate roaches). ERIC sprayed it with mosquito repellent. It ran up the wall. ERIC continued to drown it in the spray. It fell to the floor and he crushed it (with tissue paper). UGH! I heard the loud crunch. Eric said it smelled badly too. YECH!!! I saw another one the following day.
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i60/cwang1213/roach.jpg
We walked around our motu to take some pictures of us.
      
We took pictures of the island as well:
   
We brought some bread with us to feed the fishes as we on the bridge from our over water bungalow. We saw a fish, we threw in a piece of bread and the next thing we knew, more and more fishes were coming out to eat it. We saw this fish from the bridge:
We came back to our room, changed, and checked out a kayak. We decided to challenge ourselves and kayaked around the private motu close to ours. The water was very clear around the private motu. We afraid we might run into stingrays so we decided to stay close to the private motu. On the rocks of the private motu, we saw lots of crabs running around. I managed to get a very good picture Mt. Otemanu from the back side of the private motu.
Not Mt. Otemanu, but it looked pretty:
We then kayaked back to our bungalow and had some lunch on the sun deck. We ate ham and cheese sandwich with juice (all of which we got at the supermarket from the night before). After we ate, we snorkeled to the right of our bungalow to see what other fishes were out there. To our amazement, we saw some large trumpet fishes beneath us. We followed one of them and saw a few more. Next thing we knew, they all stopped all of a sudden as if someone hit a pause button on a VCR. Then we noticed there was a circle of them staring at us. We got intimidated and freaked because all the trumpet fishes looked like they were going to attack us. So, we did a quick U-turn and swam back towards our bungalow. We wanted to be courteous and returned the kayak because we weren’t using it anymore. We went back into the water and did more snorkeling seeing that it’s our last day we will snorkel. While short snorkeling, we found that between bungalow 127 and 128 had a big piece of coral underneath these two bungalows which had lots of various types of fishes. We snorkeled back to our bungalow to get some bread and headed back to the same piece of coral and started to feed the fishes. They were swarming all around us eating the bread that we provided. Some of the fishes were not scared and came inches within our fingertips.
   
We also came across a dead fish that spooked me. It was scary looking in the ground and have this corpse look right at you. I told Eric and he was spooked too. I know how Ariel feels like. Oh...I was singing "Part of Your World" most of the time that I went snorkeling.
We got tired from the kayaking and snorkeling and headed back to our bungalow around 3:30pm We showered and took a short nap. We woke up around 5:45pm to get ready for our dinner reservations at 7:30pm at Bloody Mary’s. Bloody Mary’s, as we were told is the icon of Bora Bora. When you are here, it’s a must go place. We ran another couple at the bar and chatted a for a little while and they showed a video clip he took on his camera of the tiger ray which we saw couple days ago while snorkeling. He also showed us a video clip of a yellow headed eel. He said he captured these video clips right underneath our bungalow. Afterwards, we took the boat across to the mainland to catch our shuttle provided by the restaurant. We arrived at the restaurant where a lady greeted us and showed us a bunch of different meats and seafood and told us the price for each meat. Because of the many languages used by many tourists, she told us that the menu is a verbal one. We thought that was really cute. We told her what we wanted and she showed us to our table. The saw that the décor in this restaurant was very tiki-ish. It had yellow bamboo leaves hanging from the ceiling. Our flooring was just white sand. The tables and chairs were carved out of tree trunks covered in a glossy clear lacquer. To the very back and center of the room is a totem pole. The entrance leading into the restaurant were lined with tiki torches. We ordered our drinks and went around snapping some pictures of the place. I had a frozen margarita while Eric had a Pina Coloda. They make really good drinks here. Shortly after, our food came, ribs for Eriic and chicken me. The food was decent, though the ribs had a bit of a funny smell to it. In the middle of dinner, a beautiful white cat came and sat down next to us. I threw it a piece of chicken and it took its paw and flipped it right and then flipped it left to see what it is. It ate it. We were done with dinner and when the bill came, it was 8300 CFP (just under $100 USD).
  
We were then shuttled back to our hotel. During the drive, we talked to another honeymooner couple about all the hungry stray dogs on this island and she told us a local told her there there are about 7500 residents on this island and there are 6000 dogs. That is some serious numbers.
We got back to our room and the wind started picking up. We thought the roof was gonna blow right off our bungalow. SATURDAY (10/14/06) – LAST DAY:
Had my morning coffee watching the sunrise.
Since he had to pack everything, we didn't want anything wet, so we didn't snorkel or do any water activities today. We were surprised how quick the clothes dried on the clothesline in the shower. Speaking of the shower, we LOVE the rain shower head that's in our shower. It feels like you're showering in a tropical rainfall. It's sooooooooo nice! Eric wants one put in his future home. He calls this the orgasmic shower.
 Since it's our last day, we wanted to make sure we had plenty of pictures of us. Yes, we took more pics. We also didn't have to check out until our boat comes which was 5:40pm.
    We had our early lunch.
 Eric saw the tiger (or spotted eagle ray) again. This time it come under our bungalow. Eric said that it was thoughtful enough to come and say good bye to us. Hahaha!
 
We headed mainland and on our boat ride, we met a couple whose husband looks sooooooo much like Tom Crusie. No, it wasn't him. We went back to Fare Piti and said bye to our new found friend at the car rental place, Noella. She gave us a gift which is a shell with a black pearl on it.
 We got back just in time for our couple's massage back at the Sofitel Marara. It was very relaxing, especially before getting on an 8 hour flight home. The massage costs us about $250 USD. Eric felt it was well worth it.
  Our flight got delayed as there was a strict search of every piece of carry on was done. Our flight was supposed to depart at 10pm, but didn't until almost 11pm. We arrived back home close to 10am. We were supposed to have arrived at 9:15am. It was a very nice HM indeed, relaxing and beautiful, but we were happy to come home. I was craving for fruits. I wanted to buy fruits there, but when I saw a 1/2 ziploc bag full of giant globe grapes at over $13 a bag, I said, forget it. I was craving for mangos and pineapples and guavas. | 
*sob*.