US visa service scam.

If you have the need to obtain a US visa for travel to the US, please be aware of these scams, offering you the service of obtaining a visa on your behalf for a fee about $73, as opposed to the legitimate $14 fee charged by the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation.

http://canberra.usembassy.gov/esta_scam.html

The variant we discovered was courtesy of a search engine ad, which appears on Google and Bing, when you type the ESTA web site addess into your address bar, using http instead of https. 

Because you have not typed a valid address (https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ works but http://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ does not) your browser will perform a search, and clearly these scammers have paid for ads using the valid site as the keywords. The first ad, took us to a site that could have obtained 4 visas for us, for the pricely sum of $236. A fair hike from the $64 quoted on the legitimate ESTA SITE.

Thankfully, due to the unexpectedly high cost, we decided to look a bit closer. That's when we noticed the subtle difference and i decided to do a little extra Googling. we quickly doscovered plenty of references to these scams and saved ourselves a couple of hundred dollars. There's a few pina colladas in hawaii.

The legitimate site you're after is https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta

#HelwigsInUSA: Day -81

So it's 81 days out from the great USA family holiday of 2015, and for the last couple of nights I've been browsing the web, checking out the location of the hotel we'll be staying at in LA (Anaheim - Hyatt Regency Orange County) on Google Maps. What a fantastic way that is to get your bearing. With street view, it's like we've been there to check it out already, until that is, we actually do get there. The resort we're staying at in Hawaii (Honua Kai - https://www.facebook.com/HonuaKaiResort - @HanuaKai) looks awesome - can't wait for that leg of the trip.

Tonight has been Disneyland ticket price research night. Looks like we'll be settling for a 2 days, hopper pass allowing us to jump between both the Disneyland Park and the Disney Adventure Park, for 2 complete days. I think we'll need every minute, but the budget doesn't really allow for any longer. I hope the feet, legs, and kids patience can hold out that long.

Rach has also touched base with an old QCBB friend, who is playing in Vegas - a Bee Gees tribute show. Free tickets are being arranged and a night in Vegas is now on the itinerary.

Day -118 (and Day 1)

Today is Day +1 of the #YourTurn challenge is also Day -118 of the #HelwigsInUSA - something I've just started to go a little bit public with and something which is really in the forefront of our collective minds at our place right now.

When you've been telling yourself for months  years the importance of regular posting and content, and failing or succumbing to the Lizard Brain for just as long, then Seth Godin calls you out in such a blatant (how dare he see inside my head) way, you cannot shy away.

So here we are, Day 1 on the #YourTurn challenge and Day -118 of our great family adventure of 2015. We've been planning our US trip for a few months and finally settled on something affordable and yet still totally exciting for the four of us. We'll be at Disneyland, LA, and Hawaii this May! The kids can't wait for Disneyland, the grown ups are quietly looking forward to the Maui resort for those last 7 days.

I'm now working through the best ways to document our adventure. With the plethora of social media options available, I want to spend the time to get this right. I don't want to flood my friends' news feeds with show off pictures of us at Disneyland etc, but I do want to update them just a little.  I don't want to hide everything we do away in my DropBox folder either. I'm searching for that easy balance between Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, my blog, and simply storing all the photos and thoughts somewhere, for my own person record.

I don't want my the recording of the holiday to take over from the enjoyment of the holiday, but I do want to stay a bit "social" while we're away. The regime will need to be easy to follow on the run, mobile, remote, whatever, and thorough enough for my own personal enjoyment, years from now. My current way of thinking on this is daily blog posts (travel journal) all photos to Drop Box folder, every two or three days, a highlight photo post to Facebook. Then, using IFTTT, automatically Tweet all Facebook posts and automatically "Instagram" all Facebook photo posts...

Of course, I'll also need to have developed some really good, regular posting habits, so thanks Seth and Winnie for the #YourTurn challenge and bring on May.

Back to reality

Back from the much anticipated Queenland holiday and as always, desperately trying to find a way to bring that "holiday mood" back with me to everyday life.

There's something about having a daily grind to stick to, that kills off any feeling on "holiday freedom" though - I think the two moods are, by necessity, mutually exclusive.

Anyway, we just spent a week lounging by the "lagoon pool" at the

Paradise Resort in Surfer's Paradise, which was aweome and kept the kids thoroughly entertained. I can highly recommend this place, if you have kids between the ages of about 4 and 9. The activities were appropriate and plentiful. Any older and they may get a little board after a couple of days. The games room though was chocked full of video and pinball machines, including a retor style arcade game where $1 gave you three gaames, with choices which included Frogger and Galaga! Awesome! Take plenty of money because there aren't alot of options for food. The resort has a nice cafe for eating light meals by the pool and the smorgasboard breakfast/dinner is always an option although after a couple of visits, it a bit repetitive.

Naturally we did all the other touristy type things like the obligitory "Movie" and "Sea" World.

A holiday to remember for sure.