Aloha Hawaii

It all began with a 10 hour plane ride from Sydney to Honolulu. Although if we were to get technical, it actually all began with a one hour drive to Adelaide and a two hour flight from Adelaide to Sydney. Flying with Hawaiian Air was an interesting experience, and let’s face it, anything is better than flying with Tiger, an airline on which my travel companion Lizzy experienced an aircraft fault and has since developed a fear of flying. What better way to cure it, then, than with a five week tour of the United States and ten plane flights varying in length from 35 minutes to ten hours? But I’m getting ahead of myself… 

The flight to Honolulu left Sydney at 9.20pm, which meant we had the pleasure of a ten hour overnight flight on what appeared to be the prototype of the Boeing 767. Unfortunately, we were without the help of our old mate Valium, and therefore had to endure a restless night with only an ill-conceived movie screen/projector system, that produced a shaky picture in the centre of the aircraft even when there was no turbulence, for entertainment. The Hawaiian Airlines staff were extremely pleasant and helpful, and even doled out a hot towel or two to refresh a weary traveller. 

Upon arrival in Hawaii we had the pleasure of being leid, and while waiting for a shuttle to our hotel we met the Kiwi from Karratha. A pleasant fellow, but on hearing that he’d been to Bali 34 times we thought it wise to retreat back into our shells of normality. Perhaps he is a Schapelle groupie. Or Mercedes’ dentist? Either way, it did nothing to dispel the notion that quite a number of Western Australians are marching to their own little tune out there in the desert, all power to them. 

Wandering around near our hotel we stumbled on some markets, and ran into a lovely racist gentleman named Donny. It’s Donny’s job to ride around Waikiki on a bicycle, preying on tourists in an effort to entice them to join his pub crawl and his ‘booze cruise’. When I told him I hadn’t brought my sea sickness tablets and politely declined to jump on a boat with him, he told me not to worry as he would supply the sea sickness tablets, they’d be in the shots of tequila. Well gee Donny, sounds to me like you’ve got yourself the perfect little date rape scenario. 

“Here, have a tequila shot! Don’t worry about that tablet at the bottom of the glass, it’s just a Kwell, not a roofy or anything like that, by the way, are you single?” 

So having potentially dodged a night in accident and emergency, we headed to Pearl Harbor in a shuttle bus so full I was beginning to envy the spaciousness of a sardine tin. Here we encountered many a character, including John, wearer of toe shoes, and his mother and father from Iowa. Mother Iowa had a special interest in our recycling habits in Australia, and on finding out that we do in fact recycle plastic and cardboard etc, she exclaimed, “We’re all interconnected!” several times, before telling us about her “dear friends” in Sweden who also recycle, so, “we’re all interconnected!”. There were some Canadians on our shuttle bus too, and as fate would have it, Mother Iowa’s compost bin was made in… CANADA! “We’re all interconnected!!!!!!”. 

Our hotel was right on Waikiki Beach, which was pretty hard to handle, and the weather was perfect. After two nights here I was so relaxed and refreshed I was ready to go home, but the holiday had to go on. From Honolulu we flew to LA, where on the flight I had the pleasure of sitting next to Brian the marine-biologist-in-training, who after speaking to me is going to investigate the presence of a wholphin (whale/dolphin hybrid) in Hawaii. A few hours in a hotel room and it was onwards to New York city. 

To be continued.