Two weeks from today I'll be boarding a plane as a homeless man. Assuming everything goes as planned, I won't actually have a home address until sometime in January! I suppose that means I should say something about my soon to be previous home of Maui...
It was great while it lasted, and I'm grateful that I'm leaving on my own terms! I've seen a lot of people leave Maui in the last year or so of living here, and none of them were happy to leave. The reasons they left were varied (school project ending, couldn't cut it financially, too far from family, etc) but the feeling was always the same... sad to be leaving paradise.
I, however, cannot bring myself to feel sad even while leaving this beautiful island behind. It has truly been a tropical paradise, but the upcoming year and a half is so exciting that it keeps me from looking back!
To be completely honest, there were enough not-so-paradisiacal aspects of Maui that got me looking elsewhere for my future. However, I knew I had to plan something big and exciting to overcome the seemingly inevitable sadness of leaving Maui. And judging from my current feelings, I apparently succeeded!
But what were Maui’s shortcomings that prompted me to continue my journey westward across the Pacific? There’s probably some rule about not dissing your girlfriend right after you dump her… but here goes anyway!
House prices – As you might expect, house prices are absolutely insane here. Before we decided to leave, we looked into the possibility of buying a house and were shocked to find that junk houses cost $600k and upward!
Small town shopping – This one drove me crazy the most! Maui is basically the countryside in disguise as a tropical paradise. There’s no Fred Meyer 10 minutes down the street for your one-stop-shopping needs. My closest bet was a 30 minute drive to the Kahului WalMart! And when it came to computer/electronics stuff, if WalMart or Office Max didn’t have it, then I’d have to order it online. This lack of convenience/instant gratification was a HUGE killer for me…
Nothing to do – There’s actually plenty to do on Maui: hike, bike, snorkel, play at the beach, etc, etc. But sometimes you just feel like doing something not outside… and in that case your two options are see a movie or walk around the mall. There aren’t many concerts/shows, museums, variety of restaurants, etc. It’s basically the small town issue again, but when it comes to entertainment.
Miniscule job market – There are probably 25 or so programming jobs on Maui. If you don’t like your current job, there isn’t much else out there to look at! And imagine you buy a house and settle down here and then lose your job… In a big city you have a wealth of employment options, here you could get royally screwed (small town problem #3).
Racism/sovereignty – I was never knowingly a victim of blatant racism, but there’s an ever-present undercurrent of it. I never lost sleep about it or anything, but it kind of sucks feeling unwelcome in your own town. The other side of that coin is the push for Hawaii to become a sovereign nation separate from America. Admittedly the U.S. acquired Hawaii through some pretty shady dealings (American business owners overthrew and imprisoned the Hawaiian queen) so maybe reestablishing sovereignty should be considered. However, that doesn’t make me feel comfortable as an American, living in a place where some people want to break away from America!
Well, there is a nice little handful of reasons why Maui wasn’t right for me. But don’t get me wrong, it was absolutely wonderful living here for the past year or so. With every weekend being a Hawaiian vacation, it’s easy to overlook the negatives. Looking back, I am very glad that I moved here. It sated my feverish desire to live in Hawaii; the good parts were better than I expected and the not-so-good parts weren’t terrible. It lowered the mental barrier for making the exciting leap to Australia! It taught me plenty about myself (I’m a city boy, who knew?) And it left me with some of the best memories of my life.
Plus, there’s always Oahu... I hear they have a big city!
You forgot the biggest reason to leave Maui: The ghost boy that comes out when it rains.
Also, wherever you go, I'm sure you'll find a way to hate it.
Let me expand on the racism issue. Since moving to Japan, I run into racism regularly. The most frustrating one was finding a place to live. Something like 70% of the apartments we liked refused us coming to even look at it because we were foreign. "Japanese only apartment sorry...". In the end, we had to find an apartment which was foreigner friendly (read: we had to pay a lot of money). For our tiny flat, it was 9k USD to move in – of which, 4.5 USD was gift money to the people involved.
I think racism is alive and well today. Some places in the world just accept it as the social normal. It’s sad and if I could, I would punch racism in the face.