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Published: September 6th 2019
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The breakfast area at the hotel is massive and full of hungry guests. My confidence in the food isn’t helped by the dispenser of hand sanitiser I’m urged to use as I queue for an omelette. I ask for one with the lot. In most places we’ve been to on our travels this would get me a few tiny pieces of ham, plus lots of mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, and a bit of cheese. We’re clearly not in Europe any more, and I watch on in horror as large handfuls of sausage meat and bacon are piled into the frying pan. The egg is almost an afterthought, and vegetables, well .... Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse a large glob of some orange shredded substance which is probably supposed to imitate cheese is thrown on top, and my order is now apparently complete. Scott tells me I’m lucky it didn’t come topped with whipped cream.
We wander down onto Waikiki Beach. The palm trees are swaying and the waves are rolling gently in, and the scene is very pleasant. It’s noticeably less crowded than the European beaches we’ve been to recently, and there are no sunlounges and beach
umbrella rentals on offer.
We’re on a sandy beach backed by a grassed park full of palm trees, but signs tell us we’re in the Fort DeRussy US Military Reservation. Huh? Where was the razor wire we needed to cut through to get in here? If there are any soldiers guarding the place they’re carefully disguised as Japanese tourists dressed in skimpy bikinis. I hope the Russians and the North Koreans haven’t cottoned on to this apparent blind spot in the US defence network.
Honolulu feels like Surfers Paradise on steroids - sky scrapers everywhere, masses of cafes and restaurants, and shops selling everything from cheap souvenirs right up to expensive designer clothes. The vast majority of tourists here seem to be Japanese, which seems just a tad ironic given the whole Pearl Harbour thing. There seem to be quite a few Aussies here as well, keen to escape the winter.
We go into a shop to buy some snacks. Items on offer include bright orange toilet brushes; the bristles are The Donald’s orange hair, which stick out of a plastic statue of his head, and his body is the handle. They're marketed as Trump Brushes that
will “Make America Clean Again”. I think this says it all about what’s happened to the dignity of the office in the past three years. I doubt there would have been much of a market for Abraham Lincoln toilet brushes 150 or so years back. There seems to be no escaping The Donald, even way out here in the middle of the Pacific. Scott says there’s a Trump Tower right next to our hotel. Who names towers after themselves? I also couldn’t help but notice that the quite short list of wifi networks I have to chose from at the hotel includes “Trump_WiFi”. This is very worrying. I’m sure someone from the Department of Homeland Security must be monitoring our every breath. Maybe they can’t deport the people who made the Trump toilet brushes because they’re probably Americans, but foreigners who make snide remarks about the great leader in obscure travel blog sites mightn’t be so lucky.
Yesterday’s long day of travel has caught up with us and we spend most of the rest of the day sleeping and relaxing by the hotel pool.
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
Welcome to the States...
I hope you can get away from Waikiki during the day. At Fort De Russy there is a Armed Forces Recreation Center hotel...the Hale Koa. We stayed there. As for Aussies, they are probably going to catch the repositioning cruise from Honolulu to Sydney. That's what we were there for. The cruise was 90% Aussies, 9% Kiwis and us Americans. We had a great time!