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Published: November 12th 2006
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There's not a lot to say about my time in Honolulu, really. Pete and John dropped me at my hotel, the Hawaii Polo Inn, and went off to their accommodation the other side of Waikiki straight from the airport. When I first walked in I think the best way to describe my feelings would be to say that I was less than enamoured. It looked a bit like a council estate the way the doors were set off a balcony corridor and the fact they were set in the back so were surrounded on three sides by much taller buildings meant that they were in perpetual darkness. Inside the ceiling was low, the "bathroom" dark and squashed and the whole thing a little disappointing. But I was out on my own and determined to make the best of things so I brushed myself off and made my way down to Waikiki beach where I wondered along as the sun went down.
It's a nice place Honolulu but it most definately is one for people looking for a certain kind of holiday; especially as everything costs premium price. It's all big tall buildings, wide expansive boulevards, cars, restaurants tourist shops and
Nu'uanu Pali
This place is where 400 O'ahu people were driven off the edge off this cliff during the unification wars of Hawai'i hotels. All-in-all a very American city, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but just wasn't my cup of tea to be honest. If you had a wad of cash, a few friends and were looking for sun, sea and sand then this would be the place to be, and perhaps if I'd had a little more time to seek out things to do I would have found them, but as it was I had a couple of days and that was all I saw.
On the Sunday Pete and John picked me up in the morning and we drove out to the north of O'ahu, stopping at a cemetary on the way. We didn't do much in the north except stop at some cliffs where several hundred local tribesmen were hoarded over the edge to tumble to their death during Kamehameha's push to unite Hawai'i. That was quite a moving place when you imagine those people staring death in the face in the very spot where you're standing and look out at the breathtaking beauty before you in the valley. It's an eerie mix of tragedy and majesty that I found gave the place a much more poignant feeling
than Pearl Harbour, where I visited later in the day.
Don't get me wrong, Pearl Harbour is a bit moving but where I went wasn't particularly awe inspiring, it was just a harbour, with some military ships and a history. I didn't make it out to the pontoons floating above the wreckage of the Missouri and the others, though I did tour round the submarine USS Bowfish, an old diesel-powered one, which really was mind-blowing. You cannot imagine just how small and cramped these things are as they sit in museum state, trying to imagine how bad they must have been with the heat and noise of the engines running, loads of other crewmen crammed in there with you and being stuck in there for months on end, not to mention you're in a warship needing constant attention and carrying with it the constant threat of anihilation, is just completely mind boggling. I've no idea how anyone did it.
After Pearl Harbour I went back to the hotel with a new sense of adventure, I was finally on my own, truly alone, and facing a few months of travel. The room didn't seem so bad when i got
back there either. The next day I lay on Waikiki and spent a few hours talking to a Native American anglophile from Conneticut called Marie about rugby amongst other things, got burnt - bastards - and had dinner in a Chinese restaurant where I was literally the only non-chinese person in there. And when I say only non-Chinese I don't mean Chinese-American, I was the only person not born in China in the room. I trooped on through making a fool of myself trying to eat my whole meal with chopsticks because I was determined not to give in to their expectations and ask for a spoon. I ate a lot of air.
On the Tuesday I took off for Fiji stopping on the way at Christmas Island. It is, in the words of the gentleman sitting next to me who got off there, a place where if you like salt water fishing is one of the best places in the world to do it but if you don't, don't go as there is ABSOLUTELY nothing else there. The airport was a tin shed for God's sake!
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