just came back from hawaii. best trip ever. officially, it was a 6d/5n trip but due to our flight skeds, it felt more like 4 1/2 days lang. anyway, here's the dish:
1. what makes hawaii expensive, aside from the food and ground transpo, is you'll feel forced to stay longer. we did the best we could but even a week isn't enough to cover half of one major island. from la, rt airfare starts at $300+. accommodations start at more or less $100/night.
2. waikiki beach is ugly, dirty. love the devil-may-care vibe though. for beach bums, in oahu, my pick is kailua bay beach park. lanikai beach is gorgeous and more ideal for swimming and technically, lanikai is part of kailua. but the beach park has more wow factor for me. seabed is finer and softer too than lanikai's. hanauma bay nature preserve is gorgeous too but beach is crowded and too rocky.
3. we did a tour of hilo and volcanoes national park. tiring because of the flights but so worth it. the park is, for me, the highlight of our trip. yun nga lang, it was foggy and there was no lava flow. we did get to see the glow though and we went inside a lava tube. and we got a look and feel of a piece of the Earth that feels like it's just being created. it felt like we were in the opening sequence of Prometheus nyaha. very rugged, desolate and vast.
for the tour, we went with discover hawaii tours. i thought we made the right choice going with them because their groups are typically small. also, their guides are very well-informed and funny but no nonsense. people can argue that a DIY trip is always better but we stopped at various points within the park we wouldn't have been able to discover had we been on our own. there's a wealth of information and insights that only an experienced guide and a native/local at that, can give you.
4. i loved the pearl harbor tour. we only did the free tour to USS virginia but i felt it was more than enough. im not a history buff & of course, they told it from a limited perspective but it was heartbreaking nonetheless. i really recommend doing this tour because for me, it was the emotional core of our trip.
5. there are things we didnt get to do like the luau, a trip to the north shore and the trek to diamond head. but we went to pali lookout, which i love, because it provided us views of kaneohe bay.
6. shaved ice is ok. nothing to really rave about. but the pinepple malasadas are yummeeh. i also liked the korean chicken from zippys hehe. macadamia nuts, the kona coffee glazed ones, are superb. try the honolulu cookie too. expensive so we just tried the samples nyaha.
7. you can sense that some hawaiians still begrudge the U.S. so tread carefully when you're discussing the history of hawaii. it's not true that hawaii doesn't offer much culturally or historically. they're very rich in those departments. so don't write off hawaii as a mere beachcomber's paradise.
hay i left my heart in hawaii! now i get why people who come for a visit find it unbearable to leave. next time i want kauai or maui. sobrang kulang talaga one week for one major island. those who feel otherwise simply dont know where to go.
