Day 42/63

Aloha once more. This was our last day in the warmth. Now it’s North America and then home. We slept in late because we were in no hurry to see anything particular. Trip to the post office and some laundry was the range of the main missions for today. I posted off two packets of jerkey, one Kangaroo, one Crocodile. Also in the same pack is a tea plant seeds, which makes it highly unlikely to ever get through Finnish customs. But who knows, I live wildly and took the chance. The other packages contained a various of souvenirs and gifts for family as well as some of my summer clothes which sadly I feel I won’t really be needing in the October San Francisco.

We had Subway for lunch. I know what you are thinking: I am abroad, why should I have something like McDonald’s for lunch? However, having Subway in America constitutes as a local, cultural experience. It’s pretty much like back home, except you have more bread choices, you can choose a different cheese option and you have something called the ‘FEAST’ which has about EVEYTHING in it…

We then took a taxi to the Chinatown of Honolulu, which turned out to be a wide spread arrangement of shops and restaurants – pretty much what we can expect normally. Japanese playing cards and chess in the shades, a temple hanging around. We stumbled on a beauty barlor in which they gave Jonathan a hair cut. I had a pedicure while waiting. You know: Because I could! How many times are you in Hawaii anyways. I thought 14 euros for it was hardly a tough deal. And my toe nails have possibly never looked better.

We then tried our best to see the Maritime museum, but unfortunately it was closed for repair. At least we got to see the harbor with its luxury cruisers and the elderly passengers wondering around in dehydration, perhaps not seeing very much of Honolulu… Made me feel very good about taking this trip at the age of 28 and not 68. I must be one of the lucky ones.

For the last part of our day, we spent on the beach, me chasing the waves in the Waikiki shores and my husband reading a book, trying to escape from mad tourists stumbling on top of him while trying to take pictures of each other in the sunset. At least I can say that I’ve swam in the Pacific Ocean. I can see that the waves can be quite treacherous if you get in far… Fortunately, I am not a stupid Finn, I was out of the water before the sunset and ready to take some quality Granny Weapers (“Make your granny cry” is how my photography teacher describes a picture of the sunset).

Aloha Hawaii, welcome San Francisco. Now, if you’re going to San Francisco, I shall be sure to wear some flowers in my head.

This entry was written under the influence of one Maitai and one Long Island Ice Tea. No complaints considered.

(Hello and goodbye in Fiji)

Day 42/63

We decided to let the Mormons entertain us in the Polynesian cultural centre today. This involved an overly enthusiastic tour guide ‘Cousin Ken’ cheering us away for 1hour 15 minutes to the other side of Oahu, talking greatly amusing and informative stories and making us participate like we were 10 years old. As witty and happy Samoan guy as he was, we didn’t choose the extra 50dollars (on top of our 170dollars paid already) to hang out with him.

We had a peaceful tour on our own, visiting all the shows of the exhibition islands of Fiji, New Zealand, Tonga, Hawaii, Tahiti and Samoa. For someone with a good camera, this was a great opportunity to get some live-action shots of native dressed people hanging around and dancing… But yes, unless you are me or a 10 year old, there is probably more interesting places to see in the world. But not necessarily in Oahu and not necessarily in one place, neatly gathered. So well done Mormons, I was very well entertained without a drop of alcohol.

So the Fiji teaches you how to make music with bamboo sticks, the New Zealand is a whole etiquette entrance of a hut plus some of their dances, including the Haka, which is a war dance. It has now apparently become a popular entry for Rugby teams when introducing themselves on court. I say apparently, because the closest thing I get to Rugby is my mother-in-law’s spouse on Christmas shouting at the television. Anyways, you do Haka half naked and you hit your body to make noise and look dangerous. My kind of dance really, I enjoyed that.

On Tonga, you get the drums session. Sumo wrestler like man in a grass skirt and a lot of banging. However, the best part of this show was a bunch of volunteers, one of which was a Korean bloke that spoke no English what so ever. He was greatly enjoying himself while the audience took a piss of him just repeating after what the sumo man was doing. Bless.

Hawaii tells you about the instruments used for making music before the westerners came on shore around 300 years ago. These were normally gords of some sort, or shells or the nose flute. Which you cannot blow unless you have a BIG nose. There was hula dancing attached by a slitty-eyed girl of course.

Now on Tahiti, I got a tattoo, which apparently wears off (paint) and on the show they thought us how to do shake your booty dance for women and shake your knees for men. We saw the Samoan show the last, which included the highly necessary skills of making fire with sticks, opening a coconut + making coconut milk and finally, a guy climbing the coconut tree. This was all done by a very self aware Samoan Adonis, which then allowed all the women to take photographs with him.

You think the day was over? No, there was also a canoe show, dinner and the REAL show. They do try their best to please at this place and I would claim that you miss out if you don’t go and at least have a half a day. There is so much to see that they even let you come back in the next three days for free. Could be worse of a deal, I think. The dinner was a whole pig cooked in the Polynesian style at the ground and the evening show involved all the cultures showing their dancing once again and spiced up with a fire show of possibly 50-100 people on stage with torches. You are not going to see that in many places in the world.

I went back to my hotel as a happy pixie. Three memory cards full (6GB) of pictures (all in JPEGS) and happive.

Day 41/63

We got up early and checked the complimentary breakfast at our hotel the Aqua Aloha Surf and Spa. This consisted mainly of pan cakes, fruit and muffins. If I have not told you yet, the Hawaiian fruits are gorgeous and brilliantly fresh. I can’t eat raw anything in Finland, but in here it’s no problem, since they don’t have to use toxins for keeping them up until the get to Finland…

After breakfast we consulted our lobby consierge who booked us into a shuttle to Pearl Harbor. We were there about 9:30am, which meant we didn’t really have to queue very much for the USS Arizona tickets. The USS Arizona is the main sight in Pearl Harbor, consisting a 15 minute film about the events of 7^th of December 1941, trying to get the audience into the mood of about 1100 men who were killed on board. They carefully tell the story in a way, that the ‘Japanese had to attack’, because they had no choice. Where as of course there has been theories that perhaps the US knew they were coming, but did nothing so that they could later on justify their own cruelties against Japan. None of this has been proven of course.

In 1941, Japan bombed all eight battleships in Pearl Harbor bay, sinking many of them. USS Arizona was hit to its ammunition storage which blew up and made it sink so very fast that most men didn’t stand a chance. The memorial is a white capsule built on top of the underwater grave of these men, the ship itself, which they left in place. All the other battleships have been recovered/taken out of the harbor. You can see some of the bits of it from the impressive memorial, in which, you should only speak in whisper. I think this was much harder for the Americans than for us.

After the theatre and the boat trip to USS Arizona, we scampered into the USS Bowfin, a submarine that served in the WWII and managed to get through two missions to Japan sea without harm. I am scared of submarines, as I find under water excursions to be scary in general – I wouldn’t want to drown as my death. USS Bowfin is an impressive sight on its own, and we had good audio guides telling us what was going on. We saw the torpedo rooms, the four big engines and of course the quarters of the submarine men. They were luckier than most sea service men, because their life expectancy was so low that they got better food in general. Fresh fruit and vegetables were available as long as they lasted and they even had an ice cream machine. The ship had less beds than men, so when one would get off duty, he would go and wake someone up, take their bed and keep it warm.

When the submarines would sail to shore, they would hang up a flag of their conquests, which are all presented in the museum of the submarine. They had small Japanese flags calculating the ships they had sunk. Some flags have even German flags on them. The whole experience of Pearl Harbor is somewhat contradictive to me, not because my grand uncles fought on the other side, but just the feeling of late events in the world: What is a good reason to go to war? You want something so badly that it justifies killing of others…

We couldn’t visit the USS Missouri, the great big Battleship that is normally one of the main big attractions. It had been taken on dry land, I am assuming for service. Instead there was a real air-craft carrier on the Pearl Harbor bay. It had arrived three days ago. Pearl Harbor is still a major military base, which you can see of all the army men in the hotels partying on their leaves.

Later on, we went shopping in the neighborhood. I bought some tiki-tat and immediately sent it home. Not only was this a relatively cheap sending service, but they say it’ll get there in 5 days. This kind of post looks really effective in comparison to the Australian “maybe it’ll be there in three months -policy”. There is a ton of Twilight crap around and I am hoping to run into some quality TV series tat shop in San Francisco/New York.

Finally note to self: When you are deciding which size your drink/soda/shake should be, bear in mind that this is America. So ‘medium’ size means the size of my freaking head…

14^th of October.

Woke up in 16 Murray Drive, Melbourne. We said our teary goodbyes to the Tomlin family who had looked after us for ten days like their own family. Australia is FAR away… But so is Finland if you look at it from here. Then we were picked up by older Tomlins who kindly gave us a ride to the airport. As it was once again pouring down rain, it was most appreciated. It’s somehow miraculous that someone on the other side of the world would do such a great favor to us, but sometimes the world amazes – there has clearly been that up in the air in the last two weeks.

I then decided to try and figure out how long our day was going to be, and more importantly, how long was our *flight* to Honolulu. After careful calculations, I came to the conclusion that the time difference is 21 hours, (or three, depends how you want to look at it) so our day was to last 45 hours. I doubt the day will ever be longer than this. We started from the future and went back to the past. You might think that no one noticed… What does it matter which day it is? But there you would be wrong. In the evening we realized that my husband’s credit card had been canceled, because he had made the suspicious purchase of buying supermarket dinner for us in Honolulu *before* he bought a jacket in Sydney… This is what happens when you do the day twice. Better to use cash, I am telling you.

After the long airport complications and flights from Melbourne to Sydney and Sydney to Honolulu, we arrived in the past at 9:30am, on the same day as we had left. This was my first entry to America, so I was expecting a whole good two hours of customs at least. Instead, we were through in ten minutes after the plane landed – which was amazing considering that we also had bought Kangaroo and Alligator Jerkey, which qualified as a meat product and needed to be declared. They laughed and thanked us for showing the items and we were through. Seriously the quickest immigration so far…

Our hotel is the Aqua Aloha Surf and Spa near Waikiki Beach, which I chose because it had complimentary internet in the room. We were blessed to get a room at 10:30am, after which we showered and head for lunch. It’s a good feeling to be back in the warm again, even if this is our last time on the trip… We managed to burn our noses through the sun cream, thanks to the ravaging sun that points almost directly at you.

We had Japanese for lunch and headed to see Waikiki Beach, after which we decided to walk to see the ‘Iolani Palace. This was the residence of Hawaii’s king and queen in the 19^th century and the only royal (monarch) residence in American soil apparently. Two monarchs governed from ‘Iolani Palace: King David Kalākaua and Queen Lili’uokalani. We took the self-audio tour around and it turned out to be really good and informative.

The King Kalākaua was a modern man and had travelled around the world (first monarch to do so) and collected modern items such as a flushing toilet and the telephone. There was even the electrical light installed into the Palace much before European equivalents. He ruled with his queen Kapiolani, but they had no children, so when the king fell ill and couldn’t get the remedy even from San Francisco, he died and left his sister, Princess Lili’uokalani in charge. The events on her time of power were quite contradictive, because a small group of influential men in court took her out of power and enprisoned her in one of the rooms of the Palace for eight months. This was done against the current President of United States as well, but unfortunately monarchy was never re-established in Hawaii. President Clinton did a public pardon for these events of the power taken from Queen Lili’uokalani without any legal right. This was a second museum that had a very guilt-driven story to tell. Perhaps the like that around the Pasific Ocean.

As far as what I think about Hawaii after the first day: It’s clear that Waikiki is a holiday resort for tourists, which we are not accustomed to see, but in anycase welcome the constant 7-11s and cheap food. When ordering food, or paying for services, one must remember around here that 15% is the current tip. It may look like things are cheap, but add tax and tip and they are suddenly expensive. It’s also a country built for private cars. I was actually surprised to find pavements to walk on in the centre of town. We are determined to survive without the hassle of renting a car, paying for the petrol and parking as well. Not to mention the stress of reading a map. So I think we’ll try some of the tours that the hotel offers for at least Pearl Harbor and the Polynesian Cultural Centre.