For consistency more than anything, here’s the summary post, with special guest highlights.
Rule of Three
Highlights (Alex): Ridge hike, swimming with turtles, being with everyone again after so long and having a hug from mum.
Highlights (Dave): Snorkeling with turtles, meeting Alex and Jim after 6 months, Hawaiian food (finally portion sizes suitable for Dave)
Highlights (Diana): The surprise!, personal chats with James and Alex, dinner to celebrate the engagement (bonus fourth: getting to the top of Diamond Head)
Highlights (Heather): Pearl Harbour, snorkelling, sunset on the first night
Highlights (James): Missouri battleship, Japanese meal, Diamond Head hike
Highlights (Lottie): Turtles and whales, running a Hawaiian half marathon, hula show
Lowlights (Alex): Not being able to relax on arrival, losing everyone trying to find fireworks, seeing a man on the beach wearing a “I can’t hear you over the sound of my freedom” t-shirt and being all the more anxious for mainland USA.
Lowlights (James): Crappy accommodation on night one. Still hounded by angry hounds! Only one week with family.
Takeaways (Alex): there seems to be an island mentality (that the UK misses) of helping your neighbour/fellow community member just because it’s the right thing to do. Following that, people just helped us out without expecting a tip, and this was a welcome surprise after so many months of basically being demanded tips for everything and anything. There was so much more to World War 2 than just what happened in Europe, and there was grace, forgiveness and understanding amongst the pain inflicted, it’s a shame we seem to have forgotten so much that was learnt during that time.
Takeaways (James): Once again I wonder what Hawaii would be like if it had not been handed over (to put it nicely) to the USA. There is still an essence of native culture but it’s on the brink and secondary to the dominant American consumerism, there is an ABC store on every block! Sure it would not be as developed, accessible or popular but the world needs more hula and less battleships.
Description (Alex): Expensive, beautiful, bigger than I thought, (wild chickens EVERYWHERE)
Description (James): Beautiful yet built-up. Everything is a size up, from the portions to the houses and cars. Pricey but worth it.
Entertainment
Beef, Blown Away 4, Selling Sunset, Street Food: Asia, The Platform, The Office, Dumb Money, Moana, No Hard Feelings.
Where We Stayed
Waikiki Beachside Hostel: 2 ⭐️, if it wasn’t for the terrible quality beds, the facilities here were actually decent, with a good kitchen (in our room and shared), events, and right in the centre of town. Plonking 2 creaky, metal bunkbeds in the middle of a room does not make it a dorm and it was so expensive for what it was.
Airbnb: 5 ⭐️ Fantastic find by James, exactly as the photos, host was very helpful, everything we needed and more, quiet.
Cutting Room Floor
- We kept seeing a flag with the Union Jack on it and wondered what was going on. It turns out that the flag of Hawaii actually features the Union Jack in the corner!
- This is from when James Cook visited and presented the then King with the red ensign.
- The luau we went to see featured many older women, showing off their amazing dance skills. It was beautiful to see older women honoured and revered, something we could take a lesson from in the western world.
- After a few seconds of trying to dance like those in the luau, you realise these people must have legs of steel, it’s basically holding a squat the whole time. No wonder the older ladies were so mobile!
- Our Uber driver told us about the Queen of Hawaii and how she wrote in her will that all hawaiians should have free health care, and when she goes to the Queens hospital she demands this as a native Hawaiian.
- Some later reading on the history of Hawaii tells how Hawaii was actually the territory of the indigenous royal family, until the rich, white, immigrants from the UK and USA joined forces to take over and claimed the territory as their own, a bit like a coup. This was, a la Latin America, ‘to protect their assets‘ as they were all wealthy land owners and the Queen wanted to give power back to the people instead of them.
- Supporters of the Queen were arrested and sentenced to death, unless the Queen gave up her rights. She could not live with the blood of those men on her hands and so she signed, but continued to protest the theft of her land.
- After many decades under this ‘rule’, and the attack on Pearl Harbour, the Hawaiian Republican party was voted in and they sought statehood.
- Hawaii was not a USA state when it was attacked by Japan.
- There was no internment of the Japanese-American population like there was in the USA.
- Nikkei means a Japanese emigrator and their descendents.
- The USA added Hawaii and Alaska as states thinking they would balance each other out politically with Hawaii being more right-leaning and Alaska more left-leaning, but it’s been the other way around. Hawaii has voted Democrat in all but two elections.
- The Clinton administration admitted that the territory was taken through illegal means and made a formal apology. But the territory, that was of the Queen and therefore her people, still remains that of the USA who is selling it to the highest bidders.
- This all sounded very familiar to what I was told about Isla de Pascua/Easter Island when I was there over a decade ago, but with the Chilean government taking the land from the indigenous population.
- The Uber driver tells us how it is actually foreigners who are the ones making the biggest stand for the indigenous population to rewrite the wrongs and get the land back to the rightful owners. They are the ones fighting for the rights of others.
- I often see people critiquing privileged groups fighting for the rights of the less-priveleged, and whilst there is definitely cause for critique in some instances, that doesn’t mean the cause any less justified and for it to be written off.
- She tells us about how the indigenous ethnicity and culture is being watered down by all the intermixing with immigrants (admitting she and her children doing the same), but this has been happening and encouraged for centuries.
- I hope things like the cultural show we went to does something to keep the culture alive.
- Although White Lotus makes me scared to see any cultural show ever!
- Alcohol isn’t served with abundance on the beaches here, which is nice in a way. Although we did miss having a cocktail on the beach.
- The youngsters learn the saying “don’t spoil ship for ha’p’orth of tar” from Dave. Tell us what you think it means in the comments 😉
- It’s almost impossible to get around the island without a car, or spending hours on the public bus, unhelpfully called The Bus, which does nothing for Google searches.
- There were a lot of similarities to Moana, mainly the wild chickens lol.
- We only experienced a tiny part of one island! There’s still so much more to explore!
The Photos
A whole lotta luck in Houston getting us to the next flight:
A huge playing field with people playing all kinds of sports, wild chickens roaming around and hiding in trees, all with the built up town in the backdrop, and the ridges beyond them:
Sunsets:
How to remove a charred pineapple from a BBQ without oven gloves:
Manoa walk profile:
The roots that rightfully thwarted the marathon runners who thought better than to twist an ankle on these:
The wooden throne:
Pearl Harbour:
One for Hector and Sophie 😉:
Who needs refuse collectors when you have robot arms? This started our now-regular conversation of… what jobs are safe? Answers on a postcard:
Imagine living with Diamond Head at the end of your road, so cool:
Rainbows upon rainbows:
Mother Theresa on board:
The misadventures of Alex:
Some kind of Mysterio
Nature. Beauty, everywhere!:
The tiniest birds:
Run:
Night:
Inside the airport there is a beautiful open-air garden, featuring flora from Hawaii, China and Japan. It’s a lovely space amongst the usual noise and concrete of the airport:
