Hawaii (5) – Food, Lodging and Transportation
July 15, 2018 Beautiful Clouds (Exciting world cup final!!!! Everybody in the bar were cheering for the underdog Croatia :):D I love the hug between Macron and Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović at the end of the game. Putin was there too to exercise his handsomeness, lol)
Finally, I had to write this boring post for future references 😉
Food: Unlike New Orleans, Hawaii surprisingly does not have many kinds of native food. The ones I know are Laulau (pork/veggie wrapped in taro or luau leaf), Poke (raw fish salad with spices and soy sauces), and preserved salmon heads (only found in the big island grocery stores near the Hilo airport). Hawaii is of course famous for tropical fruits like pineapples and papayas. You can see pineapple and papaya trees growing along the streets and in people’s backyard. Damn it, I was not able to eat any such fruits from our local grocery stores after I came back from Hawaii. Hawaii is also famous for coffee and macadamia nuts. If you are interested in seeing coffee trees, you should visit the beautiful Maui Tropical Plantation
As for restaurants, the must-go at Oahu is “Helena’s“, it is located in an unattractive shopping center, and even the food from the website is not terribly motivating. The parking lot is small and the waiting time is long. But YOU MUST go. The small dishes are all home created recipes, cheap, strange looking but surprisingly yummy. I also liked a Japanese restaurant Yoshitsune on Waikiki, it serves multi-course Japanese style breakfast, reminding of the time in Tokyo! If you look for Chinese, I recommend Jade Dynasty Seafood and Fook Yuen Seafood @ Oahu. The service is not acceptable from the western standard, but the food is authentic Cantonese. We also tried Camellia Buffet at Oahu. It is a place to cook your own Korean BBQ. Unlike fine dining, it is causal and eat all you can, fairly cheap. There are many fine dinning places on Lahaina maui and Waikki with beautiful views and sunsets. In one of the restaurants in Lahaina, I have seen fishes just keeping swimming towards my window, very cute.
(aww, not many pictures for food, I guess I have eaten them too fast :D)
Lodging: Oahu is more urban than Maui and the big island, I recommend you find an apartment or a hotel near Wakiki to experience some party atmosphere in Hawaii. Maui consists of many golf courses, clubs and is more of private rich people’s playground. I like our apartment located at Kanai-a-nalu near Maalaea. It has a big private beach, great ocean view from the porch, far from the commercial Lahaini, relatively close to snorkeling sites, and very relaxing. Finally, the big island is wild. Neither hotels or nice apartments can capture its temper. We lived on some people’s plantation/farm located in the rain forest. There is even not a paved road to the farm. Here, you listen to the rain drops on the roof, pick papayas for your breakfast, enjoy your books on a swing, wake up by roosters’ morning songs, see wild turkeys and boars peeking out from the jungle, get off the car and open a big gate to enter the mysterious place, chase the green lizzards, get up to the bathroom in the middle of night outside the house and then OMG you see milky ways … Recently, there are a lot of volcano activities around the area, I texted my host, and his place is surviving!
(view from the porch @ Maui)
(go to bathroom at night, feel like taking a picture :D)
Transportation: You can take 6-7 hours plane from the west coast to Hawaii. I think seattle, portland, SF and LA all have direct flights to Hawaii. There are international airports on Oahu, Maui and the big island. Hawaii airlines are used for inter-island hopping, taking typically around 50 minutes between two islands. The ferries between these islands are no longer active. There is a ferry from Maui to a small island lanai running daily. On the big island, you surely need to rent a car, you will need to rent a big car too as some of the places are not paved. In the holiday season, reserve the car early as they run out fast. On Maui and Oahu, you will need to rent a car as well. But if you plan to only stay at Waikiki, you might survive without a car. Hawaii is the cheapest place to do things like Sky diving, and the travel companies arrange shuttles to hotels to pick up and drop off people.
Hawaii is also famous for star gazing, biking, hiking … due to the weather and time, I am not able to do them all. Looking forward to visiting it again in the future!! If your time is limited, I recommend you only stay in one island, and consider my favorite so far, the big island …