Nassau, city of cheap eats and affordable golf rounds where they’ll even refund half your green fees if your group takes four hours to complete 9 holes just before sunset.

Just kidding, they won’t give you a cent for your slow ass.  And the only thing cheap you’ll eat around here are the instant ramen packages that you preemptively packed for those likely hangovers characteristic of an all-girls trip to the Bahamas to celebrate your buddy’s 40th birthday.

When you select friends, make sure you find find ones where you’ll never have to do any planning, thinking (ever) when you travel together.

I’m always blown away by my girlfriends’ hosting and planning skills where they circulate spreadsheets, update them with changed flight times, arrange alternative activities if weather doesn’t permit, line up restaurant reservations, and so on. Then don’t complain whenever you ask them “So, what’s the plan?’

And every time we return from one of our girls’ trips, I’m determined to get off my butt and up my hostess skills or at least contribute somehow on the next trip. But I never do. I’m a consumer, a taker, a reluctant giver, and I’m OK with that so long as I keep getting invited to these trips. It’s that old adage that’s become my 30’s motto—why fix what’s not broken?

Day 1: Community Pool and Baha Mar

At various times, we each traded our granny undies for something we’d never find reason to wear at home, handed off the babbling rugrats and then bade “peace” to the husbands and their pleading eyes. They knew this day was coming. No remorse what-so-ever.

We all arrived from somewhere else - Los Angeles, Ohio, New York, Virginia. Some of us, including myself, flew a red eye. But not for any heroic reason except that we are Asian. We want value. And if we go through the hassle of rearranging our regular lives for three short nights in paradise, we gonna maximize our time even if that means two interrupted three-hour naps. Because nothing legal gives you more energy than getting off the plane to this (next photo):

After a short ride from the airport, we arrived at the house.  And then we did nothing.  That’s right—absolutely, positively, nothing.  Unless you count drinking copious amounts of fun juice whilst staring at turquoise waters something, we did nothing.  And it was amazing.  There’s nothing like shutting off that piece of junk up there that incessantly pesters you about responsibilities, work, groceries, classes, future shit, and then reveling in the serenity of absolute nothingness. That view up there is like a life mute button.  You gotta hit it sometimes. 

Then after a bunch of nothing, we mustered the energy to walk three steps from the front door to the golf carts and as that weren’t enough, drove four houses down to the “community pool.” So I cant think of a better term because it is a community pool, but before you think tract homes and $30 HOA fees and white metal fencing around a 10-yard pool, stop. Like I said, think Encore in Vegas: bars, restaurant, cabanas around an Adult Only pool, powdery white sand and turquoise waters just steps away.