Hawaii - September 29, 2003
We departed Phoenix about 11:00AM aboard a Hawaiian Air 767, which was, fortunately, not so crowded. This allowed us to keep Michelle's car seat with us and use it. Normally we'd have needed to pay for a full fare if we wanted to strap her in.
The in-flight movie was a remake of The Italian Job, which I wasn't too interested in, and since they charged $5 for the use of the headphones, I decided to give the movie a miss.
Michelle chose not to sleep on the flight, despite being slightly drugged with Benedryl, but at least she wasn't too difficult. I've had a dread fear of taking her on planes after her 14 hour marathon scream-fest the first time we took her to Taiwan.
My first impression of Oahu was somewhat similar to Singapore, although the signage everywhere seemed to be in English and Japanese. There certainly were a lot of Japanese tourists running about the airport and rental car lot. The comparisons to Singapore broke down rapidly once we reached the car rental lot, which was crowded and slow. Apparently car rentals are extremely common in Hawaii - not only because so many tourists arrive but because inter-island travel is exclusively by plane. Even locals rent cars when they island-hop. You'd think that would mean a fast and efficient system, but it didn't.
After we finally got out of the rental car lot we were on our way towards Waikiki. Of course, Chu-Wan forgot the map to find the hotel so we winged it along on the assumption that a good grasp of English would help us find our hotel without problems. Once we realized that was going to be a complete failure, we decided to stop at the first food place we could find and grab a bite to eat and dig out the map.
As we drove down the highway through Honolulu, I was amazed at how much it looked like a city out of the 1950's. We were seemingly driving through some form of warehouse district and the illusion of old neglect was everywhere.
The first food place turned out to be McDonald's.
This particular McDonald's somewhat reminded me of overseas' McDonald's. (Which, I suppose, is technically correct, since I did travel over a lot of water to get there.) It was two-stories, and, although I was never able to identify it, the language spoken by the staff did not appear to be English. We had a heck of a time trying to communicate. Even when the manager came over to help (apparently the cashier was on her first day) things didn't get much better. She spoke English, but with an accent so thick it was nearly unintelligible. Add to that the fact that the food was sub-standard (even for a McDonald's!) and over-priced and it summed up to one unsatisfactory visit. I vowed not to eat at another McDonald's for the remainder of the trip. It remained to be seen if I could accomplish that goal.
We finally arrived at our hotel (The Ocean Resort Hotel) which was further complicated by the one-way street arrangement of Waikiki. After a few orbits of the hotel, we managed to disembark, our car parked across the street at another hotel's car park.(An arrangement agreed upon by both hotels, apparently.)
The three-hour time difference between Arizona and Hawaii was just enough to mess us up. I certainly felt it was much later than it actually was. It was 4:30PM by the time we got settled into our hotel, but Michelle was already beginning to think it was bedtime. Nonetheless, we headed out for a stroll down Waikiki Beach.
The beach was swarming with tourists; hardly surprising since Waikiki contains most of Hawaii's hotel rooms. Many tourists never venture beyond this area. The Japanese were everywhere, but there were a large number of domestic tourists also. It could not have been easier to tell them apart. It seemed the domestic tourists, by and large, are paunchy, unclean and tattooed while the Japanese, cover themselves practically from head to toe in UV resistant swim wear- looking rather like scuba suits.
We picked up some food and supplies at the ridiculously ubiquitous ABC stores and returned to our room, just as the sun finally went down in a beautiful sunset.
After dark, we ventured forth again, trying to accustom ourselves and Michelle to the new time zone. At night, the main thoroughfare along the beach swarms with nightlife. Nightclubs, restaurants and street singers all vie for attention. We eventually reached the International Market where we grabbed some dinner (I had "Hawaiian BBQ", Chu-Wan had Korean BBQ, Michelle had a crying fit - at least it was an outdoor market place.)
After eating, we were all plenty tired and retired for the night.
First glimpses of Oahu. The rental car lot. |
Oahu - Rental car lot |
Oahu - Waikiki, from hotel room. If you look carefully in the center of the picture, you can see water. |
Michelle and Chu-Wan in hotel |
Oahu - Red-headed bird |
Oahu - The famous Waikiki beach |
Oahu - Waikiki with Diamond Head in background |
Oahu - Bike rack on Waikiki |
Oahu - Unidentified flowers |
Oahu - Sunset at Waikiki |
