Sunday, September 12, 2004
Memoirs of a Hawaii Trip
Wednesday
'Roomates' Edwin and Anita, left, and the woman responsible for this whole mess, Tarang.
We left LA at about 9PM Wednesday night. The flight over was blissfully uneventful, and I spent most of my time reading ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, watching the in-flight movie ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ (book was better!) and playing ‘Astro-Boy and the Omega Factor’ on my Game Boy Advance.
We picked up our Rental-Car and, somehow, managed to navigate to our hotel, despite not having a map or any idea where we were going. We asked for directions a few times.
Finally, we checked in and crashed out, 1:30 AM Hawaii time, 4:30 AM California time.
Thursday
Ian pointing at...nothing in particular.
The first order of the day was to figure out just what it was we wanted to do with our day. Derek and I looked through some of those free coupon-fests/vacation guides and decide it would be neat to do some ‘North Shore’ stuff. For those of you that don’t know, the North shore is the less developed, less touristy, less ‘spoilt’, more nature-y and local-ish. It’s also the home of ‘The Pipeline’. During the winter, when the ocean kicks up, surfers flock to Pipeline to ride the 20+ foot waves. Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous.
So our first stop was the Dole Plantation. Evidently dole has grown/does grow lots and lots of the fruit that you and buy in cans in our very own Hawaii. Pretty cool. There was lots of greenery to observe and lots of fruit plants to see. I saw my first pineapple plant. I always rather assumed they grew on trees. They don’t. They grow on the top of these aloe-looking bushes. The highlights of the Dole plantation trip were eating fresh pineapple ice cream and doing the maze. The Dole plantation constructed this really spiffy hedge maze at their plantation. Granted it wasn’t very hard, being as you would have had to work pretty hard to find a dead end or get really lost. That and there exist copious shortcuts, which look like they’re actually supposed to be there. Nice walk, nice time.
After that, we went up further to the actual shore of the North shore and stopped at one of the local touristy-spots, Matsumoto Shave Ice. It was really good shaved ice. Like a Slurpee, but with much better syrup, and much finer ice. Definitely a treat. I can see why it became so popular. They had some slick pictures on the wall of employees with the cast of ’50 First Dates’. An excellent movie, by the way.
We hit the beach for a little while, just to look around. The signs up there warned of tricky riptides and…well, you could see the jagged sharp rocks, like *right there*. But it was nice to see. Golden sand, turquoise water, all that. We chased after some tiny crabs, too. That was fun.
So after taking in the beauty of the North shore, we all scampered back to the hotel. When we got back, we heard everyone was going up to ‘Diamondhead’. So, like the puppy-dogs we are, we followed. Diamondhead is the name of a park/military base that exists inside the crater of a long-dead volcano. It was a fairly modest hike, though blazingly hot. At the top you got a gorgeous view of the island and the ocean from one of the no-longer used lookout-bunkers on the top of the crater. It’s quite a sight. We hiked back down and all caught limos back to the hotel. You know, I always thought that important, famous people ride in Limos. Now I know the truth, it’s usually just a bunch of poor college students trying to save money on cab fair. Not a bad deal, overall, I just wish there would have been some Crystal (champagne you always see rappers pouring over nubile young women in rap videos, cause it’s so expensive), that would have made it feel *right*.
We split into two groups for dinner, some wanted to go to a classy steak restaurant. Just…uh…there were entirely too many of us for me to believe we would ever be able to get organized enough to all make it. So some of us, 10 or so, decided to spit off and walk down the street for some super-quick buffet action. Fine by me. I was starving.
After that, we wandered around Waikiki for a while, seeing some shops (there is an ABC general store every 35 feet; by law, I believe). Then we came back to the hotel, changed into bathing suits and went out for a night swim! This is something you can actually *do* down in Hawaii. Over here in LA, beaches get a bit sleazy at night. Oahu? No problem. We were the only people in the ocean, locally, at least. There was a breakwater right in front of where we were swimming, and so no waves came to disturb us. Which was nice, because we were teaching Sabeen and Sakina how to swim. It was a good time, but that sea water tastes *nasty*.
All this…one day.
Friday
Left to right: Sakina, Russell above Puneet, Sabeen, Ian above Tarang, Mary, Me, Scott. Not even close to everyone on the trip, though.
Most of Friday was spent at one of my favorite activities of the whole vacation. Snorkeling at Hanamua Bay. A crater similar to the one at Diamondhead, but the center got filled up with water, creating this beautiful natural bay. The whole middle of it is filled with this gorgeous reef, wherein live all those kinda crazy animals that you see on the discovery channel. I didn’t see any Moray eels (lucky!), but I did see a sea turtle and more exotic fish than I could possibly shake any sort of stick at. We brought an underwater camera along, but I haven’t had time to get it developed yet. I don’t know if there’s a limit on the amount of fun you can bring back on a fishing trip like that, but we nearly limited out, I’m sure.
After some rest, we went out to see the ‘lighting of the torch’ ceremony at one of the Waikiki Malls. It turns out it was less ‘torch lighting’ and more stand up comedy. One of the guys from the Polynesian Cultural center came up and showed us some stuff, making us laugh all the time. Stuff like shucking a coconut, drinking the milk, things like that. I thought it was *hilarious*. He was Samoan (Quote of the trip: ‘Ah…da happy people!’)
After that, more tooling around Waikiki. Let me tell you, those street performers aren’t half bad. Better than the ‘crazy guy yelling’ street performers we get down here. (‘I was in da waaaar!’) A couple guys doing the whole mannequin shtick. One guy who stat around in a suit made out of/covered in newspaper. We got our pictures taken with some trained exotic birds.
Saturday
Smile!
After all the productive vacationing so far, I wanted a lo-key day. Edwin and Anita took off to swim with dolphins, Derek went off with his Hawaii-based extended family. I rented a moped. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon tooling around Waikiki and doing my ‘gift shopping’. Chocolate covered macadamia nuts, now available at Noel’s Café.
And being on a Moped seems like good experience for the yes/no motorcycle experiment. It was definitely fun, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that if anyone else on the road decided to be stupid, I would have been road pizza. Defensive driving, kids.
In the afternoon, just some lounging. I read more of ‘Memoirs’. Good book. And in the evening, karaoke. Ian, Russell and I all went out to a local dive/karaoke bar and belted out some tunes. Ian and I did ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. (I did the high parts). Russell did ‘Hey Jealousy’. I did a bunch of them. My favorites were ‘Hemorrhage’ by Fuel and ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana. When I do that one in a Karaoke room, I have to keep my voice under control a bit; but in a bar, I could just *scream*. I held the last note of ‘Teen Spirit’ for about 7 seconds, and everyone went nuts. That was some fun.
Sunday
Leave love bleeding in my hands! In my hands agaaaaaaaaaaain!
Happy birthday to me!
Most picturesque activity of the vacation goes to Waimea falls, Sunday morning. It was amazing. It’s this great nature preserve/hike, where there are exotic plants everywhere. Some nice animals too, and feeding stations. I got a peacock to eat out of my hand. And at the end of the hike, Waimea falls. You can go out and swim in the lake and crawl up to the waterfall and everything. It’s pretty spectacular. I got to meditate under a tropical waterfall. It was…enlightening. I can see why monks do it.
And in the afternoon/evening, the Luau. There were fun activities to do beforehand, and free drinks. (Yum, dawg.) I volunteered to do the fish pull. Traditionally it’s something the men and women do before a Luau, pulling in the fish nets so that they can be munched upon. At our Luau, however, it mostly involved a bunch of tourists running around in grass skirts and making fun of themselves in front of ~1200 strangers. That’s my kind of fun.
After a few more drinks. (I think they put something in my Long Island Iced Tea…like alcohol.) We got to get some good ol’ fashioned Luau food. The pork was excellent. Then there were dance performances, including a fire dance by a Samoan guy. (Ah…da happy people!)
When we got back to the hotel, it was *pouring*. I just stood outside and let it rain on me for about 15 minutes. Yes I was still a little bit drunk, but honestly, it was the best part of the vacation for me. That amazing tropical rain. Water finds every crack, my friend.
After that, we went out to tromp around Waikiki and see if we could find some coffee for Mary. But they were all closed. Unfortunate.
Monday
Hang Loose, Bra!
Our last day in Hawaii. Edwin, Anita and I went out to Pearl Harbor, saw some of the memorials, and took a walkthrough of a retired submarine. Neat to see. They’d done some clever restoration work on that thing.
We also went to the Hard Rock Café in Honolulu. I got my favorite (only) souvenirs of the trip there: a couple of Hard Rock Café drumsticks with Honolulu on them. My favorite kind of souvenirs, memorable, neat, and *useful*.
Then it was off to the Airport, and back home. Everyone seemed a little down that the vacation was over, but honestly, I was excited. I learned a lot down in Hawaii, and I was excited at the opportunity to get back and apply that knowledge to the rest of my life.
Which is what I’m doing now.
-N
Wednesday
'Roomates' Edwin and Anita, left, and the woman responsible for this whole mess, Tarang.
We left LA at about 9PM Wednesday night. The flight over was blissfully uneventful, and I spent most of my time reading ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, watching the in-flight movie ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ (book was better!) and playing ‘Astro-Boy and the Omega Factor’ on my Game Boy Advance.
We picked up our Rental-Car and, somehow, managed to navigate to our hotel, despite not having a map or any idea where we were going. We asked for directions a few times.
Finally, we checked in and crashed out, 1:30 AM Hawaii time, 4:30 AM California time.
Thursday
Ian pointing at...nothing in particular.
The first order of the day was to figure out just what it was we wanted to do with our day. Derek and I looked through some of those free coupon-fests/vacation guides and decide it would be neat to do some ‘North Shore’ stuff. For those of you that don’t know, the North shore is the less developed, less touristy, less ‘spoilt’, more nature-y and local-ish. It’s also the home of ‘The Pipeline’. During the winter, when the ocean kicks up, surfers flock to Pipeline to ride the 20+ foot waves. Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous.
So our first stop was the Dole Plantation. Evidently dole has grown/does grow lots and lots of the fruit that you and buy in cans in our very own Hawaii. Pretty cool. There was lots of greenery to observe and lots of fruit plants to see. I saw my first pineapple plant. I always rather assumed they grew on trees. They don’t. They grow on the top of these aloe-looking bushes. The highlights of the Dole plantation trip were eating fresh pineapple ice cream and doing the maze. The Dole plantation constructed this really spiffy hedge maze at their plantation. Granted it wasn’t very hard, being as you would have had to work pretty hard to find a dead end or get really lost. That and there exist copious shortcuts, which look like they’re actually supposed to be there. Nice walk, nice time.
After that, we went up further to the actual shore of the North shore and stopped at one of the local touristy-spots, Matsumoto Shave Ice. It was really good shaved ice. Like a Slurpee, but with much better syrup, and much finer ice. Definitely a treat. I can see why it became so popular. They had some slick pictures on the wall of employees with the cast of ’50 First Dates’. An excellent movie, by the way.
We hit the beach for a little while, just to look around. The signs up there warned of tricky riptides and…well, you could see the jagged sharp rocks, like *right there*. But it was nice to see. Golden sand, turquoise water, all that. We chased after some tiny crabs, too. That was fun.
So after taking in the beauty of the North shore, we all scampered back to the hotel. When we got back, we heard everyone was going up to ‘Diamondhead’. So, like the puppy-dogs we are, we followed. Diamondhead is the name of a park/military base that exists inside the crater of a long-dead volcano. It was a fairly modest hike, though blazingly hot. At the top you got a gorgeous view of the island and the ocean from one of the no-longer used lookout-bunkers on the top of the crater. It’s quite a sight. We hiked back down and all caught limos back to the hotel. You know, I always thought that important, famous people ride in Limos. Now I know the truth, it’s usually just a bunch of poor college students trying to save money on cab fair. Not a bad deal, overall, I just wish there would have been some Crystal (champagne you always see rappers pouring over nubile young women in rap videos, cause it’s so expensive), that would have made it feel *right*.
We split into two groups for dinner, some wanted to go to a classy steak restaurant. Just…uh…there were entirely too many of us for me to believe we would ever be able to get organized enough to all make it. So some of us, 10 or so, decided to spit off and walk down the street for some super-quick buffet action. Fine by me. I was starving.
After that, we wandered around Waikiki for a while, seeing some shops (there is an ABC general store every 35 feet; by law, I believe). Then we came back to the hotel, changed into bathing suits and went out for a night swim! This is something you can actually *do* down in Hawaii. Over here in LA, beaches get a bit sleazy at night. Oahu? No problem. We were the only people in the ocean, locally, at least. There was a breakwater right in front of where we were swimming, and so no waves came to disturb us. Which was nice, because we were teaching Sabeen and Sakina how to swim. It was a good time, but that sea water tastes *nasty*.
All this…one day.
Friday
Left to right: Sakina, Russell above Puneet, Sabeen, Ian above Tarang, Mary, Me, Scott. Not even close to everyone on the trip, though.
Most of Friday was spent at one of my favorite activities of the whole vacation. Snorkeling at Hanamua Bay. A crater similar to the one at Diamondhead, but the center got filled up with water, creating this beautiful natural bay. The whole middle of it is filled with this gorgeous reef, wherein live all those kinda crazy animals that you see on the discovery channel. I didn’t see any Moray eels (lucky!), but I did see a sea turtle and more exotic fish than I could possibly shake any sort of stick at. We brought an underwater camera along, but I haven’t had time to get it developed yet. I don’t know if there’s a limit on the amount of fun you can bring back on a fishing trip like that, but we nearly limited out, I’m sure.
After some rest, we went out to see the ‘lighting of the torch’ ceremony at one of the Waikiki Malls. It turns out it was less ‘torch lighting’ and more stand up comedy. One of the guys from the Polynesian Cultural center came up and showed us some stuff, making us laugh all the time. Stuff like shucking a coconut, drinking the milk, things like that. I thought it was *hilarious*. He was Samoan (Quote of the trip: ‘Ah…da happy people!’)
After that, more tooling around Waikiki. Let me tell you, those street performers aren’t half bad. Better than the ‘crazy guy yelling’ street performers we get down here. (‘I was in da waaaar!’) A couple guys doing the whole mannequin shtick. One guy who stat around in a suit made out of/covered in newspaper. We got our pictures taken with some trained exotic birds.
Saturday
Smile!
After all the productive vacationing so far, I wanted a lo-key day. Edwin and Anita took off to swim with dolphins, Derek went off with his Hawaii-based extended family. I rented a moped. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon tooling around Waikiki and doing my ‘gift shopping’. Chocolate covered macadamia nuts, now available at Noel’s Café.
And being on a Moped seems like good experience for the yes/no motorcycle experiment. It was definitely fun, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that if anyone else on the road decided to be stupid, I would have been road pizza. Defensive driving, kids.
In the afternoon, just some lounging. I read more of ‘Memoirs’. Good book. And in the evening, karaoke. Ian, Russell and I all went out to a local dive/karaoke bar and belted out some tunes. Ian and I did ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. (I did the high parts). Russell did ‘Hey Jealousy’. I did a bunch of them. My favorites were ‘Hemorrhage’ by Fuel and ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana. When I do that one in a Karaoke room, I have to keep my voice under control a bit; but in a bar, I could just *scream*. I held the last note of ‘Teen Spirit’ for about 7 seconds, and everyone went nuts. That was some fun.
Sunday
Leave love bleeding in my hands! In my hands agaaaaaaaaaaain!
Happy birthday to me!
Most picturesque activity of the vacation goes to Waimea falls, Sunday morning. It was amazing. It’s this great nature preserve/hike, where there are exotic plants everywhere. Some nice animals too, and feeding stations. I got a peacock to eat out of my hand. And at the end of the hike, Waimea falls. You can go out and swim in the lake and crawl up to the waterfall and everything. It’s pretty spectacular. I got to meditate under a tropical waterfall. It was…enlightening. I can see why monks do it.
And in the afternoon/evening, the Luau. There were fun activities to do beforehand, and free drinks. (Yum, dawg.) I volunteered to do the fish pull. Traditionally it’s something the men and women do before a Luau, pulling in the fish nets so that they can be munched upon. At our Luau, however, it mostly involved a bunch of tourists running around in grass skirts and making fun of themselves in front of ~1200 strangers. That’s my kind of fun.
After a few more drinks. (I think they put something in my Long Island Iced Tea…like alcohol.) We got to get some good ol’ fashioned Luau food. The pork was excellent. Then there were dance performances, including a fire dance by a Samoan guy. (Ah…da happy people!)
When we got back to the hotel, it was *pouring*. I just stood outside and let it rain on me for about 15 minutes. Yes I was still a little bit drunk, but honestly, it was the best part of the vacation for me. That amazing tropical rain. Water finds every crack, my friend.
After that, we went out to tromp around Waikiki and see if we could find some coffee for Mary. But they were all closed. Unfortunate.
Monday
Hang Loose, Bra!
Our last day in Hawaii. Edwin, Anita and I went out to Pearl Harbor, saw some of the memorials, and took a walkthrough of a retired submarine. Neat to see. They’d done some clever restoration work on that thing.
We also went to the Hard Rock Café in Honolulu. I got my favorite (only) souvenirs of the trip there: a couple of Hard Rock Café drumsticks with Honolulu on them. My favorite kind of souvenirs, memorable, neat, and *useful*.
Then it was off to the Airport, and back home. Everyone seemed a little down that the vacation was over, but honestly, I was excited. I learned a lot down in Hawaii, and I was excited at the opportunity to get back and apply that knowledge to the rest of my life.
Which is what I’m doing now.
-N
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