When you visit friends in Hawaii....

[missydog1]

I never have company here because my parents are too old to fly and my old friends aren't island types. Those who travel, go to Europe. But I know people who get run around by guests and I've heard some real horror stories. A friend of mine in Kona, has A/C but really can't afford to use it. Guests turned it on all day, ran the HELCO up $400 for their stay ... ate hosts out of hundreds of dollars worth of food, demanded transport throughout, and never offered even a meal. Many people don't want to have confrontations. Those guests will not be welcomed back, that's all.

This talk about the hot water reminds me of a long ago party at my house up in a very chilly part of Washington. The guests were truly out of control but they were not the kind of people I could confront. Bikers mostly. So I went outside and turned off the propane at the tank and there was no more heat, it got bitter cold inside, and then they left. Or passed out.

Guests like this make me think passive aggressive thoughts, like, why not let the frig and cupboards get empty, and if anyone says they're hungry, say, hmm, there doesn't seem to be any food left. Or beer. I bought my regular amount of groceries this week too. Odd.

I have a pretty low tolerance. I especially won't put up with people filling my sink up with dishes and not helping.

Honestly, when we moved over here, we had a spare room for guests, with a bed bought for guests, and no one came. We sold that house and no more guest room. Now we have the kind of company that can sleep on couches or air mattresses. I have a "no loan" policy on my car. Period. My one old friend who did want to come and mentioned the free room, set off the alarms in my head, because she's known for being very cheap, and I knew it would cost a mint to host here ... so I didn't encourage.

Personally, if I were a guest, I'd rent my own car, take my hosts out to dinner, buy my own groceries, only accept cooking that was going to be done anyway, and would say if I weren't coming back, and would try to give them space. I would ask how things work before using them. etc. It seems common courtesy to me.

[David M]

Carol - Thanks for starting this thread. Except for a detour or two, I've found it very informative and even entertaining. It's good we can share our actual experiences.

Pam - great post, especially the Mom thing. Sophie's Mom has been here 5 or 6 times (I'm losing count), but back when we were still living in the shed and actively building the house, she was repeatedly giving Sophie a particularly hard time about not taking her shopping enough. That lady can do Hilo Hatties EVERY day she's here. That visit was when we were painting, so we'd rented equipment and had even planned on the extra help from the visiting brothers. Of course, Soph was much more polite than I reminding her that she "knew that" before coming. Me, I just kinda blew up - not something I have a history of doing with MIL, but then I'm rather intolerant of ANYONE giving Sophie a hard time.. We've all got passed it.LOL

Some other thoughts for anyone interested. We've really only had 1 guest that had us looking forward to her leaving, but that was back when we first moved here and it rained, rained, rained that whole week.

We've hosted 2 major family events involving Sophie's family - that involved 12 sleeping here at the house at crunch time. One of the things we did was suggest staggered arrival/departure so while most planned on 2 weeks, we only had 5 or 6 days of everyone here. During those days, each family unit was assigned their day to be responsible for the major meal - buying and preparing. This was all made part of the email updates and everyone made it fun. Otherwise, we ate out a lot and that was done equitably for the most part. Truthfully, we are looking forward to the next round.
My own family, has never visited. Just the thought of all those smokers... Anyway, as I'm not buying them any airfare in foreseeable future, guess they won't be visiting.

Cat - If you don't post your letter, I'd like an email copy, please

David

Ninole Resident

[DanielP]

Whadayado with a guest who won't stop dominating conversations with little new to say?

[csgray]

Boy, there are sure a lot of assumptions going on here about my life, my friends, my family and my computers; all because I was just trying to let fellow punawebbers know a little bit about ins and outs of visiting/hosting here in Hawaii.

For the record, my computer is a laptop and no one uses it but me, ever. The desktop computer has a separate log in for guests with no bookmarks on it. Most of our friends and family are not particularly plugged in to the whole internet using lifestyle, those that are are not interested in Puna per se, just interested in visiting us. I think almost everyone who visited thinks we live in a suburb of Hilo called Paradise Park or in the town of Pahoa, so while the concept of a place called Puna is central to all of our lives it means nothing to these people.

None of our visitors know each other, and none of our friends or family read Punaweb, so the example about the book was just that, an example, not a back door way of shaming anyone. As I stated before, while we were in the whirlwind of visitors it was hard to measure the impacts, although we sure tried hard to let people know we were in a drought, had already had to buy water once due to the impact of our first set of visitors, and that electricity is the most expensive in the country here. But after we had a chance to evaluate the impact, I wrote my OP as advice to potential visitors and to let others who had not yet figured it out that they might want to lay down some ground rules before guests come. I sure wish someone had clued us in before all our guests came, because we sure would have sent out a "before you visit here's some stuff you should know" email. Some things we really couldn't anticipate, like having the people who were staying in our fairly well equipped separate Ohana expect meal service and want to stay up visiting with us WAY after my bedtime every night. We thought they would be off having wonderful Hawaii adventures, not parking in our kitchen every night.

SH keeps harping about why didn't I tell my guests up front (or get someone else to which is a really weird suggestion) and now I have stated for the third time that we didn't realize how big the collective impact was, until it was all over. I hope that it gets through this time.

Hindsight is always 20/20, especially when judging other people. So please just take my OP at face value and don't over analyze it. Sometimes people just want to share some advice to punawebbers, and really aren't trying to send subliminal messages out to other people via the internet.

Carol

[Rob Tucker]

Thanks Carol.

[rbonplaza]

I would also like to thank you Carol. Coherent, well composed posts are a pleasure here these days! Rob, I'd like to nominate Carol Gray and Jerry Carr to the tribal council. []

[mella l]

Carol I just want to thank you as I'm currently on island. Yes me the cat lady cat sitting in Volcano! Most of my cat sitting was on Oahu the last year.

Anyway I want to say thank you for sharing these items with us! As I don't have a laundry where I'm staying, I did do a load of laundry at a friends home. Now I know electricity is 3 times the cost here than at my home and there has been a drought. I will cheerfully help with my estimated laundry expense being so happy not to have to use the coin laundry where the machines cook your clothing!

So good thread and I for one am so sorry it went sideways, but those things happen sometimes :-)!!

mella l

Paris London New York PUNA

[Royall]

Hey, Carol....... Are we having fun yet!! 8^)

Royall

[rbonplaza]

I guess this is hijacking, but Mella, having just returned from three weeks traveling in CA, I appreciate how nice it is to be able to wash clothes when you're on the road. So, when you come over for brunch on Sunday, please feel free to bring your laundry. I normally take the clothes lines on the lanai down when we have company, but I'll leave them up for you! What a deal: a great brunch and Puna Fresh laundry! Our tank is almost full and the solar system is giving us lots of power! So bring those dirty clothes with your smiling face!

Both of us are looking forward to finally meeting you in person!

Ralph

[mella l]

quote:

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Originally posted by DanielP

SH, 9 posts today on this topic alone? and 6 hours to go! Need more bandwidth?

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Oh well so much for the 5 a day! LOL fruits nuts, and vegetables 5 a day!

mella l

Paris London New York PUNA