For a mammoth of a trip, structuring the report seems relatively straightforward. As per the title, the trip had 2 legs which went like this: Hawaii (Oahu --> Kauai --> Big Island, 2-3 days each) --> California (San Mateo --> LA and back). Since every location had its own characteristics, it makes sense to write roughly chronologically with one post for each island and then err figure out the mainland stuff when I get there. Definitely gonna be writing into next year once again~
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1-3 Oct: Oahu
Oahu is where Honolulu International Airport is, so that was a natural place to begin the trip. For me at least haha, J1 had her own island-traversing for work + one bonus solo day thanks to my late arrival. Also due to my flight change, there were some schedule upheavals (apologetic for causing J1 some extra staffwork :x) so for practical purposes, I'll structure this post by location rather than chronology.
Before going into the meat of things, gotta point out that Hawaii is 18h behind SG (such extreme... it's so behind it's almost in front). After a drawn out time-travelling process in which too little sleep was involved, I arrived in Honolulu on the same day, just about 2h after the plane took off from Changi.
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| Cover photo: the only sunrise of the entire trip! I'll take it, as "weird" as it was hahaha. |
The very first stop was Dole Plantation. Yep, Dole, the same brand we see on fruit stickers at NTUC. It has origins in Hawaii. So we got to engage in some pineapple-themed activities over 2 days there, including eating the pineapple soft serve with pineapple bits, running around the giant pineapple-shaped maze and spending a disproportionate amount of time being amused at the pineapple jewelry at the gift shop (how huat it would be to wear a full set of pineapple crystal earrings+necklace for CNY hahaha). That wasn't even all of it - the plantation was a whole ecosystem of attractions that had its own app, but we were highly squeezed for time on this trip. And I think what we covered was sufficient enough exposure to the wonderful world of pineapples haha.
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| Lousy framing aside, I'd never seen a more pineapply place. |
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| I don't generally buy pineapples or pineapple-flavoured stuff. But this pineapple soft serve +USD1 for topping of fresh pineapple bits was gooooood stuff. And huge too, as with typical American portions. This was pretty much breakfast for 2 of us. |
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| Didn't get a pic of the pineapple jewelry we spent so much time discussing, but this was so cute. |
Shall elaborate more on the maze here since it was decently engaging. There was a map to follow (which is what J1 did, diligently tracing). But if it happened to me be in the lead... I took every shortcut I could find in the general correct direction, even if it meant a bit of bashing through gaps that mayyy not have been meant for passing through haha. Well, that helped us complete the maze about 20 mins faster than average!
Comparison of The Way vs My Way:
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| What the world's largest maze and its 8 checkpoints looked like. |
So Dole Plantation was intertwined with a few other key locations, namely Kualoa Ranch, Diamond Head Crater and Pearl Harbour National Memorial. In reality, this meant lots of driving back and forth to get to pre-booked activities on time. What this also meant was lots of eating lunch on the go or in carparks, in the car xD So it became a common occurrence for me to have various boxes/plates on my lap in the passenger seat, keeping an eye out for opportunities to feed the Permanent Driver.
Case in point:
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| My driver for 16 days <3 hahaha |
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| But as Permanent Passenger I had my duties too. Aside from keeping Permanent Driver awake and entertained, I had to be prepared to take on ad-hoc tasks such as shelling prawns. With plastic utensils. Just to note, these were garlic butter shrimps from a supposedly famous truck, but I think anyone who can cook can cook this at home. |
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| Gotta choose a unique selfie for every Part so here's another humble meal in the car. |
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| A closer look at the box I was holding coz in there lay the single tastiest mushroom I'd ever encountered in my life, courtesy of the Diamond Head Market & Grill. |
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| J1 said that the beef short ribs were the best she's ever had too. So it made it here! |
If there was a food worthy of special mention from Oahu, it would be the malasadas from Leonard's Bakery. Monster floorball-sized doughnut balls that came either filled with cream/custard or coated in flavoured sugar. We got all 6 flavours to try and it took us the entire Oahu leg to eat them anddd I think we still had a final one leftover at the end >.< The most interesting was the li hing sugar-coated one, with li hing essentially being 酸梅粉.
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| Just another (heavy) box of food that spent some time on my lap in the car, especially since it was so tall and blocked my view while on the dashboard. |
We digressed, back to Kualoa Ranch set in Kualoa Valley which was the filming location for movies/TV series (most of which I had no clue of oops). But of course, gotta be familiar with the OG Jurassic Park released in 1993! Of all the things we did on Oahu, the zipline tour was the highlight for me. Part of why it was worth it was the trail bus rides between the visitor centre at the valley mouth and the ziplines up at the top of the valley floor. It was a decently long way with tour accompaniment introducing the various movie set pieces and cattle herds scattered along the way. This also marked our first foray (out of many many) into "Jurassic Park" on the trip~
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| Almost thought a herd of herbivores would go running past with a T-rex right on their tails (and ours too). |
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| Some bones from Kong: Skull Island which I've never been interested enough to watch. |
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| See, we did see dinosaurs! |
From the high point where the ziplines were, we could see all the way to the sea, and wow the view~ As much as ziplining is inherently a fun activity, the stars of this one were the staff. The 3 of them basically created a whole gameshow around the experience, making us answer pre-take-off questions, race each other, bet against each other etc. Not sure if this was a standard script used by all instructors but it went super convincingly haha. And then of course, the ziplining itself was worth it! It was a very safe way to enjoy the views of the valley and feel the rushing wind. There were 7 ziplines in total crisscrossing the valley floor, all different gradients and lengths. No scary drops involved, so it was suitable for all ages too. True enough, there was a older chinese aunty in our group who was super game for the whole thing!
The shots here are courtesy of J1. I was too cowardly to bring my own very new phone that was too big for easy and secure handling while zooming above the greenery.
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| One of the earlier lines, ft. me floundering around. |
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| This was the longest line which came with risk of not making it to the end without enough momentum. I.e. gotta scrunch into a ball to reduce drag and light and small ppl get turbo-ed off by the staff. Apparently I was considered light and small too! And we all made it to the end. |
On the other hand, I felt that the horse riding tour was rather meh. It was as basic as could be, with a pre-recorded safety brief followed by a longgg slowww walk on the horse through gentle terrain. Yep, no trotting/cantering or anything like that, just a sort of uninterested trudge all the way through - the horse's equivalent of heading to work. Well, I guess my expectations are my own fault haha. I'd been on good horse riding tours in the past but I could've also gone to read some reviews beforehand which I did not do...
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| At least the route brought us past some good views! |
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We also got to head into Jurassic Park Kualoa Valley once again, though it was just a short round before turning back. |
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| Yep, definitely heading to work. |
Side note: while selecting photos for this post, I found the photo of my Narita airport udon sitting innocently in the middle of the zipline series. Was confused at first but then I realised the confusion was merely a human thing and the phone did exactly as it was programmed - to record the photos I took at 3+pm on the very same day, caring not that I lived it twice xD.
This trip was a hiking/nature heavy one in general, but we did only one hike/walk in Oahu at the Diamond Head Crater. For such a straightforward trail, it felt disproportionately tough for me. Gotta admit that my condition was poor thanks to getting the yearly sickness sandwiched between 2 monthly downtimes right before the trip (although in the the bigger picture, that was the only suitable time left for falling sick this year). The scorching heat made it 200x worse coz most of the route was unsheltered. Oahu was already the hottest of the 3 islands we visited, with temps similar to SG, but in the dryness I came to understand how bread felt while being baked. The views were definitely a good reward at the hike's end at a former military bunker, but I was in no state for additional exploration by then.
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| This type of view is best paired with 15 deg C weather but it was more than twice that temp. Amazingly, we saw someone walking barefoot back along this path due to broken sandals. I hope the soles of her feet weren't cooked coz the concrete was pretty much a giant hot stone. |
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| The crater view from the top. |
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| And the view of Honolulu, prob the most built up place in the Hawaiian islands. |
The last specific must-visit location in Oahu was the Pearl Harbour Memorial. It would've taken an entire day to cover all the free and paid exhibits (which we didn't have). Over our very short visit, we could only walk around some of the free museums and go for our pre-booked USS Arizona Memorial tour which required a short ferry ride out.
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| This was because the Memorial was built over the actual sunken ship which accounted for the single greatest loss of life for the US at Pearl Harbour. |
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| Part of the ship that still remained visible above the water. |
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| Since most of the bodies couldn't be recovered, this also marked their final resting place. |
Once again while visiting an overseas war museum showing a different facet of WW2 from the one taught in our history textbooks, I kinda wondered how others from other countries felt about it. In this case particularly, the Japanese, since there was their country's involvement on one hand. But on the other, they have long roots in Hawaii which in modern times also seems like a popular tourist destination for them. But then, this wasn't a solo trip so I didn't have much time to do any deep thinking to myself haha. And maybe this is just history to everyone all the same.
Oh yes, we went for a luau at my request, since that's a thing to be done in Hawaii! I have nothing to say about the food, and the complimentary mai tai tasted like medicine, but the performances were very impressive. Ah but I think the poi is worth mentioning. Not that it was good, it simply was the first time I'd had it and I was surprised at how unimpressive something could taste - imagine unsweet+slightly sour orh nee. It's supposed to be typical Hawaiian food but we did not seek it out again for the rest of the trip haha.
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| I wasn't sure what to expect, but a garden party seemed about right haha. |
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| My sis had something to say about this that she learned from Sociology of Tourism, but I guess "culture" sells. |
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| Must admit that I was struggling very hard to stay awake by nightfall (since this was within my 42h-long 1 Oct), but the best part was saved for the end. |
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| Actual speed! |
To round off, got a few more photos for everything else I'd like to remember from Oahu!
The only sunrise we (ambitiously) attempted to catch was at some beach that was not the intended destination of Lanikai Beach. We must've left at 5+am to drive to Lanikai. But after getting confused by the roads, parking a distance away and having to do a morning jog to make it in time at some beach, any beach, we were sort of successful!
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| I'd like to think the partial cloud cover gave us this unique view hahaha. Just saying, all the photos so far are unedited except for alignment and whatever my phone did to them of its own accord. The pink rays in the sky and in the reflection on the water look damn good to me. |
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| We stayed to watch for a while. Since the sky was in modesty-mode that morning we also got to see this pretty golden-lining type view. Beyond this, the sun came out in full force and it got too bright to look in that direction any longer and we left on our packed schedule for the day haha. |
A bit more on food! Unless I missed something out, the luau was our only proper sit-down meal. The following photos were taken at a small table in the hotel room haha.
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| Poke!!! After having it in Hawaii, I feel like whatever I've had before in SG doesn't come close in terms of authenticity (but anyway nice can alr, travelling for authentic poke is too much). These were from Foodland where poke could be bought from a counter, salad bar-style. There were sooo many varieties of ahi (tuna) especially, so we picked some interesting ones like the chili garlic and seaweed. |
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| There was a papaya. I don't fully remember how we acquired it tho my guess is that it was picked up at Foodland along with the poke. Clearly it was a good idea to have it with malasadas and sake, which was chosen mainly coz it came in a pretty bottle which we kept hahaha. |
As Permanent Passenger I had the privilege of enjoying the views from the car. But for Oahu there was nothing much to say actually. It was the most touristy of the 3 islands we visited after all.
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| This view brought back some memories of the UK roads. The roadside colour scheme was similar, but for lack of cows. |
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| Oh yes and the car... This is something I wasn't expecting to see in 2023... |
I'm more excited to cover the next 2 islands haha. Part 3 will be for the Garden Isle, Kauai~
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