Yes, they are available (at a cost) but not as readily available. Bringing your own would be the best.
Hm. Okay, I will bear that in mind. Thanks.
Maupiti is fantastic if you like quiet out-of-the-way places. We were there over 20 years ago, so things might have changed, of course. We stayed at a place on one of the motus (little islands surrounding the lagoon). Lodging was tiny one-room bungalows. Electricity was provided by a generator that was turned off after the evening meal was concluded. When we looked out over the lagoon to the main island, there was NO artificial light visible, and the night sky was absolutely amazing.
I agree with previous posters regarding Papeete. The farther away you get from there the nicer the people are.
Another fascinating place to visit is Rangaroa.
My point is that most of those items are fairly small and easy to carry so I seem surprised that someone would go out of their way to purchase them.
What I was trying to get at is there are no 100 000+ square feet supermarkets there. The grocery stores that I saw were more along the 10 000 square feet size.
Similar products available as in the Megastores in North America, just not as much of a selection but a great place to load up with Fruits and Vegetables for less, if you are not eating out.
If you do need any first aid products, look for a Chemist store. There will be very little of that in the Grocery stores.
Both of your hotels listed are among the MOST expensive ones in the area. (I have not stayed there myself). They will be really nice but very expensive.
Some of the people in the area will have their own rooming house or “pensions” as they are called for rent at much cheaper rates. I was talking to this one lady who was driving me around and she mentioned that she had a one of these “pensions” for rent for about $120 US per night. She even took us there and showed us the place and it was quite nice and it was over the water.
However, as we already had accommodation, we had to decline but if I was going there again, I would take her (or someone similar) up on the offer.
Something to consider, if you are an adventurist.
For shopping on Bora Bora, is Vaitape the place to go? I checked it out on a map and there does not seem to be much there, but reviewers rave about the place.
An update.
We now have less than a month to go until our trip. Since my last post, we have made a few adjustments to our itinerary, and have contracted with a travel agency as they were able to get us a few deals we could not get on our own.
Instead of spending 3 nights in Tahiti and 4 nights in Bora Bora, we will spend 1 night in Tahiti and 6 nights in Bora Bora. The travel agent was able to book us for 6 nights at the St Regis in Bora Bora for the same price as the 4 nights we’d booked on our own, and daily breakfasts and dinners are included; we simply could not pass up such a deal.
A big change to our plans is my wife and I are now going to have a wedding vow renewal ceremony while in Bora Bora. It is a big deal for my wife, and bloody expensive, but we will probably never do this again, and it is doubtful we will ever go back to Bora Bora, so why not?
We have been working with a wedding planner located in Bora Bora for the last month or so, deciding on the type of ceremony we want, the apparel we both will wear, the location of the ceremony (which will be on the beach), the number of polynesian dancers we want for the ceremony, hair and makeup arrangements for my wife, menu selections for lunch, menu selections for the candlelight dinner on the beach, etcetera.
The entire affair starts at 9:30 in the morning when we will be picked up from our villa, and ends at the conclusion of the candlelight dinner that night, so pretty much the entire day. I am not sure how my composure will be after a few hours, but I guess I will have to roll with it.
Guests at our ceremony will be other vacationers. Anyone can attend the wedding as it will be held on St Regis’ public beach. We were asked if we wanted a more private affair as there are restricted beach areas for such events, but this would have cost us much more than we are paying now, and we don’t really care if strangers want to watch; it may actually make it more fun.
The most challenging aspect so far has been planning the wedding day meals. My wife and I are very picky eaters, and seafood is just not our thing, so that limited our options greatly. Just last night, we finally approved the dinner menu after spending weeks with the planner and chef, going back and forth over each meal course, what will be included, and how each will be prepared.
The wedding day will be an opportunity for my wife to be treated like the princess she truly is, which is especially important to her as when we were originally married almost 25 years ago, it was done at City Hall with no ceremony, a court clerk stood as our witness, and we had no honeymoon. Five minutes in and out and we were married, so it is very important to my wife that our vow renewal ceremony is done right. I was broke when we were first married, but I should have done something more than I did. Now I can. 
We are really looking forward to this trip. We are both burnt out at work. I was considering extending the vacation to spend a couple more days in Hawaii but decided to leave it as is. Making arrangements to be away from work for 10 days was stressful enough.
Update 2
For anyone interested, as of this evening, our wedding vow renewal plans are complete. The date for the affair is now confirmed for Wednesday, August 10. Below is our itinerary for the day.
9:30 AM: Jetski tour around the entire island of Bora Bora.
12:00 PM: Free time (lunch)
12:50 PM: Bride is picked up at villa and taken to the spa
1:00 PM: Bride’s make-up session
2:15 PM: Bride’s hair session
3:15 PM: Beginning of 2 hour photo session throughout resort grounds
4:15 PM: Beginning of 1 hour video session at ceremony site
4:20 PM: (Quoted from the brochure for the package we selected): Traditional Polynesian wedding ceremony. Takes place on the Resort’s Main Beach. The Groom, wearing a traditional pareo and crown, is picked up by canoe from his Villa’s terrace, while the Bride, wearing a traditional pareo and a floral haku, is driven by club car. The couple is taken to the beach, where the priest and a troupe of dancers and musicians are waiting. The bride and groom are carried by “warriors” to the ceremony site.
4:30 PM: The couple meets the Priest, and the ceremony starts. Songs, Polynesian music, and dances punctuate the ceremony, in beautiful harmony.
6:30 PM: Candlelight dinner on private island.
8:00 PM: Polynesian dance show on main beach.
This should be something. I almost wish I was an on-looker instead of a participant.
Although this seems to have become more of a log than a conversation, don’t hesitate to chime in if you have any comments or questions.
Update 3
It is now a little more than two weeks until our dream vacation begins.
We have made the final payment to Custom Tahiti Travel (http://customtahiti.com), our travel agency. We were originally going to go with Pacific For Less (http://www.pacific-for-less.com), which has a higher rating on TripAdvisor and more reviews, but Custom Tahiti got back to us first and seemed more eager to please us.
Custom Tahiti was able to create an amazing package for us for much less than we would have paid on our own, which includes (in addition to a much lower rate for accommodations): breakfast every morning, dinner at any of the resort’s restaurants each night, a 50-minute couples massage, a shark and stingray excursion where we can swim with and touch the stingrays and sharks, one VIP dinner at a restaurant of our choice on the main island of Bora Bora on the night of our choice, all inter-island air travel, and champagne, fruit, and pastry in our villa.
As previously advised, we will now be staying at the St. Regis in Bora Bora instead of the Intercontinental Le Moana. The villas at St. Regis are much larger than the bungalows at the Intercontinental. Here is a YouTube video of the premier overwater villa we will be staying in. It is 1905 glorious square feet, and includes butler service.
My wife and I have both gotten our hepatitis A and Typhoid vaccinations, which our doctor recommends to anyone traveling to French Polynesia, so we are all set there. We have even purchased sets of swimming goggles and earplugs to further minimize the potential of infection when we are in the water, not that this is really much of a concern, but better safe than sorry.
It is now less than a week until my wife and I embark upon what could be the best vacation we have ever taken.
My wife is about 90 percent packed; I haven’t started. We’ve stopped our mail deliveries, alerted the local police department, given one of our neighbors a key to the house and a temporary code for the alarm system, and discarded all perishables in the fridge we know we will not consume before we leave.
We have accomplished or purchased all items on our vacation prep checklist. Passports and all other necessary documentation have been accounted for.
I have made arrangements for coverage at work, and have alerted all my clients of my limited accessibility during my absence.
Although our flight out of JFK on Thursday is at 10:00 AM, because we live a couple of hours from New York, a car will pick us up at 5:00 AM to try to beat the rush hour traffic.
Because of the change in our itinerary, I don’t believe we will have enough time to visit the island of Moorea after our arrival in Tahiti, but we will play it by ear and if the opportunity arises, take it.
I will post links to photos and possibly videos as our vacation progresses.
Probably one more post here prior to our departure.
How much do you expect this trip to cost for the two of you in total?
Good question. Let me break it down.
Please note that I went high-end on most things, which is really unnessesary.
**-- Car service to and from JFK - $510 **(if we’d driven ourselves, between gasoline, tolls, and parking at the airport, we would have spent $380. I decided the extra $120 was worth not having the hassle of dealing with all of that)
– First class flights from JFK to HNL, HNL to PPT, PPT to HNL, HNL to JFK - $9,933 (Flying coach would have cost $5,283)
– 2 nights at Hilton Hawaiian Village in Hawaii - $974 (We could have stayed at the Hilton Waikiki Beach, which is pretty nice but not on the beach for $705)
– 1 night Intercontinental in Papete, and 6 nights St Regis in Bora Bora, including meals, interisland flights, excursions, etc… (travel agency package) - $10,178 (The only way we could have gotten this cheaper would have been to stay at one of the other many resorts)
– Wedding ceremony - $4300 (XPF 466000) (There were more bare-bones packages for approximately $1800 but I wanted my wife to have an experience she would often reflect on fondly)
So, all together, excluding anything we do and pay for on our own, the cost for this vacation is $25,885.
Great Caesar’s Ghost!
Worth it for a possible once in a lifetime experience.
No doubt. Enjoy yourself to the fullest!
Yep, I plan to. My wife is so excited it is all she talks about lately. 
Another point of interest before I forget.
Whenever I go away, whether it is for work or pleasure, I always try to stay at either Hilton or Starwood properties to earn points. I travel quite a bit and the points really add up, allowing me to stay in nicer accommodations, sometimes for free.
St Regis is a Starwood property so I will earn beaucoup points for my stay there.
Hey dopers!
I am in Waikiki on the first leg of my vacation. We arrived at 3:00 PM yesterday. 11 hours on a plane is not my idea of fun, even in first class. On top of this, WIFI was not available, which was disappointing, but I dealt with it.
We didn’t check baggage so we were out of the airport by 3:10 PM and on our way to our hotel, Hilton Hawaiian Village. We are on the 15th floor in a corner room. The place is massive, with many shops, restaurants, convenience stores, and even a post office, on premises.
After getting our bearings, we took a walk down Kalakaua Avenue, which is a miles long shopping area with many well-known and international shops and restaurants.
On a side street off of Kalakaua we stopped at a food truck called Mami’s Empanadas, which has the best empanadas I have tasted in my life, the absolute best. Their empanadas a not fried, and the shell is made with maize and are so soft and flaky, and the meat so flavorful you’d think you’ve gone to gustatory heaven. I have never tasted anything like it. They include a homemade green picante sauce on the side that is actually hot, not like most other sauces that say they’re hot but are just a little on the spicy side. If you like empanadas and want to try them prepared differently than you may have, I strongly recommend Mami’s Empanadas.
Today, we are headed to the Polynesian Cultural Center. I am not looking forward to it, but my wife wants to see it so off we go.
Photos later.
Well it looks like the OP started his 10 day vacation 17 days ago so he should have been back for a week–which should have been plenty of time to recover and write us a report.
Or did he decide to move there permanently?
No, I am back! I have a ton to post about, including photos, which I will try to get to before the end of the weekend.
Sorry for the delay; I had a lot more to take care of at work when I got back than anticipated.
I think the best way for me to do this is to break each day into a separate post, at least that is the way it looks now. We’ll see as I go.
First off, to PastTense, yes, I wish I could have stayed in French Polynesia. The people there are so warm and unassuming and, from the outside, seem to actually enjoy their lives.
Off we go…
In a nutshell, our combination vacation / anniversary / recommitment ceremony was everything we’d hoped and more, and actually was a vacation of a lifetime. I have absolutely no idea how I am going to top it.
Day 1 (August 4, 2016)
We awoke at 3:00 AM, finished packing, closed up the house, met the driver in our driveway, loaded our bags, and headed to New York. I hadn’t driven over the Goethals Bridge to Staten Island in many years so imagine my surprise when we saw that the toll as $18. Thaaaat’s right.
As early as we left our house in New Jersey, we were still met by rush hour traffic in Staten Island, which cost us an unanticipated hour. We’d built in plenty of time, so we were okay. It was still frustrating.
Once we traversed the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, traffic lightened up a bit. Within the next 30 minutes, we were dropped off at Terminal 5 at JFK airport.
We didn’t check anything but went to the counter anyway to ensure we had Pre Check on our tickets before they were printed. We did! We breezed through security within a minute and began searching for the Hawaiian Airlines Business Class lounge. Contrary to what I’d read, there is no Hawaiian Airlines business class lounge at JFK. There is a Jet Blue business class lounge that Hawaiian shares, but it is only free to Hawaiian business class passengers who are also American Express Platinum card members, which I am not. Otherwise it is $40 per person, and I wasn’t going to pay $80 to sit in a lounge, so we decided to have breakfast at one of the terminal restaurants instead. Here’s a short video from inside Terminal 5 at JFK prior to boarding our flight.
After breakfast, we went to the gate and, shortly thereafter, were called to board. We had seats 2H and 2J on Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A380. A few things about the first class experience on this plane: 1. The accommodations do not compare favorably to any international first or business experience I have ever had. Yes, I know business to Hawaii is not international, but for an eleven-hour flight, I was expecting something much better. The seats are your standard 30-degree (or so) pitch recliners with manual adjustments. There is no WIFI on Hawaiian’s A380s, which I was extremely disappointed about. There is a very limited selection of foods and beverages. Flight attendants were very pleasant so there’s that. Here is a quick video from my seat. The amenities kit, shown in the small blue, brown, and white package in the seat-back in front of us in the video, consists of a sleeping mask and earbuds only, so really no amenities at all.
Here are photos of a couple of the meals we had in-flight. Appetizer, Main Course. They were just okay.
Hawaiian is in the process of completely overhauling its business class accommodations on its A380s, adding lie-flat seats and other amenities, which should be completed by the end of 2016 across its entire fleet but, for now, I’d choose another airline like United if you want a true contemporary business class experience. United flies non-stop to Oahu out of Newark and has lie-flat seats.
I won’t spend too much time on our experience in Hawaii as it was really just a day and a half and not the focus of the trip, but here is a photo of the lagoon from one of our balconies at Hilton Hawaiian Village on the day of our arrival.
Day 2 next.