Archive for July, 2008
Plan on it. It’s Hawaii’s most visited attraction for a reason. The USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor on Oahu lures 1,500,000 people a year, and nobody leaves the experience unmoved or uninspired.
Plan on a half-day, and make it in the morning as early as you can (from 7:30). The later you arrive, the longer you may have to wait to get started. There are lots of ways to get there, including car, public transportation, shuttles from some Waikiki hotels, tour buses and private tours. It will be easy for you to determine how you want to do it. Everybody in your party will have to get his or her own ticket, for which there is no charge.
The first thing you’ll do is watch a 23-minute documentary film that chronicles the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the worst naval disaster in American History. The film also will prepare you for the Navy launch trip to the USS Arizona Memorial itself. The launch is the only way you can get there.
Since 9/11/01, the security restrictions have tightened. You can’t carry anything that can provide concealment: purse, handbag, backpack, camera bag, diaper bag – either into the visitor center (where you start) or onto the boat. If you have a child in a stroller, the stroller’s pockets and compartments have to be empty. Yes, you may – and should – take a camera with you. There is no space for you to stow or check baggage; don’t take any. And no swimwear and/or bare feet.
As you wait for your tour to begin (every 15 minutes), listen in on the audio tour narrated by Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine. It’ll lead you through the Visitor Center, museum exhibits, and back-lawn exhibits.
Be prepared to be affected by the Memorial experience. Even if you weren’t born at the time of the attack and aren’t familiar with its full historical significance, you’ll literally be standing above a grave site where 1,177 men lost their lives when their ship was bombed by the Japanese Naval Forces. That’s more than half of the Americans killed that day during the attack.
The addition of the Battleship Missouri to the harbor and the 1999 opening of the USS Missouri Memorial has enhanced the Pearl Harbor area. Think about combining your Arizona visit with tours of "Mighty Mo," the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and the Pacific Aviation Museum. (While the Arizona Memorial is free, there is a charge at each of the other venues, which are operated by private, non-profit groups.) If you do the whole drill, plan on about five well-spent hours. Yes, there are places to grab a bite.
As you plan your visit to Hawaii, by all means include Pearl Harbor. Pick an agent from our Web site home page (Hawaii-aloha.com) or call 1-800-843-8771. We’ll fit your tour easily into your schedule and either talk you through your visit or make the arrangements for you.
Posted by Jim Winpenny
July 31st, 2008
You will be aware and probably make a list of all the "must-see/must-do" places among these islands. While Hanauma Bay makes most of the lists, it’s easy to put off until you’ve checked out most of the others.
Don’t shun it. Highlight it.
On the far-eastern end of the island of Oahu, Hanauma Bay is a Nature Preserve dedicated to safeguarding fragile marine life — the first Marine Life Conservation District in the State of Hawaii. Although your visit there will seem at first like just a day at a beach park, you will find it to be much, much more.
You will be welcomed with a nine-minute video (Actually, it’s mandatory) when you get there. It covers the formation of the bay, some creatures you will encounter, what you can do to protect the reef, and how to protect yourself — all so you can make the most of your visit. The preserve opens at 6:00 a.m. If you’re early, you can avoid delays at the video venue. If you do have to wait, browse through the displays in the education center to get familiar with the wonder of it all. (Your show time will appear on your ticket.) By the way, there is a parking lot, but it fills up early and you’ll need to find a parking spot at the Koko Marina Center a half-mile down the road. (Not a bad stop for its shops and restaurants.) The Hanauma Bay lot is closed altogether on Tuesdays for maintenance.
The admission fee is $5 for non-residents 13 years of age or older, and free for everyone else. The cashiers take only cash, traveler’s checks, MasterCard and Visa. The fee does not include snorkeling equipment. You can rent that on the beach for $6: a basic set of mask, fins and snorkel. (Do it!) The snorkel concession takes only cash and requires a deposit in the form of a credit card, cash, or rental car key.
There isn’t much shade at Hanauma Bay. Bring a hat and sunscreen, and drink a lot of water.
There is nothing beyond common-sense water-safety awareness needed to prepare yourself for swimming with the sea creatures. Once you walk into the bay, you’ll see amazing stuff: Turtles, Triggerfish, Tang, Surgeonfish, Moray Eels, Butterfly Fish, Parrotfish, Goatfish, Jellyfish, Urchins … and there’s no need to be afraid of them. They’re used to company, and aren’t very afraid of you, either.
There’s a wide variety of tours to Hanauma Bay if you aren’t driving. Check with an agent at hawaii-aloha.com, or call 1-800-843-8771 and we’ll fix you up with a plan that fits your overall planning.
Posted by Jim Winpenny
July 30th, 2008
You’ll be eating at a wide variety of restaurants while you’re here, so it’s a good idea to get as familiar as you can ahead of time with some of the menu items you’re likely to encounter. We won’t attempt now to help you with entrees, since there are zillions of kinds of restaurants and the menus are so diversified there’s no way to summarize. But all good restaurants have something for you to try first. Appetizers. Hors D’oeuvres. We call them pupu. Except in the purely ethnic restaurants, you can expect to find the standards: caviar, shrimp cocktail, escargot, calamari, crab cakes, foie gras, oysters, steak tartare …
But you’ll see some offerings that may not sound familiar to you. Most of them are wonderful! Here’s what to expect:
Chicken Katsu
It’s sections or pieces of chicken, dipped, rolled in panko crumbs (made without crusts; finer and crisper) and fried, usually with a shoyu sauce or a sauce created by the chef.
Tonkatsu
Same as chicken katsu, but with pork.
Ahi Poke
The freshest raw ahi tuna is mixed with onion, shoyu, some seseme oil and Hawaiian salt (captured from sea water) and chilled.
Coconut Shrimp
The raw shrimp are peeled and deep-fried after being dredged in flour and eggs, rolled in shredded coconut and skewered. They’re served with a cocktail sauce and often crushed pineapple.
Hawaiian Spareribs
Regular spareribs are mixed with garlic and ginger and boiled, then drained, marinated with shoyu, sugar, tomato sauce and oyster sauce, and broiled.
Hawaiian Won Tons
Any lunch meat (Spam is popular in Hawaii) is mixed with water chestnuts, green onions, parsley, hard-boiled eggs, pepper and oyster sauce. Those ingredients are sealed in won ton skins and deep-fried.
Seafood Stuffed Shiitake Mushrooms
The shiitake mushroom caps are stuffed with a mixture of spinach, cream, shallots, crab, shrimp, and seasoning, then baked.
Char Siu
These are buns with a Cantonese barbecued pork filling, either steamed or baked with a light sugar glaze to produce a smooth golden-brown crust.
Dim Sum
There are restaurants devoted to these dumpling delicacies, of which there are many kinds. You’ll probably see some of these offered:
Gow
These are made of ingredients wrapped in a translucent rice flour or wheat starch skin: shrimp, chiu chau (peanuts, garlic chives, pork, mushrooms), served with a small dish of chili oil.
Potstickers
Potstickers are steamed dumplings that then are pan-fried with meat and cabbage.
Shaomai
Shaomai are steamed dumplings with pork inside a thin wheat flour wrapper, topped off with crab roe and mushroom.
Hey, we’re barely scratching the surface here. But you get the idea. Don’t ever pass on the pupu just because you don’t know what they are!
Posted by: Jim Winpenny
July 29th, 2008
The purpose of this Web site is to give you as much information as possible about visiting Hawaii, and to make arrangements for you when you’ve decided to come. Most of the visitors to this site aren’t looking to retire here, but we thought we’d pass along the following piece of news, which speaks well for our islands.
AARP has completed a report ranking the best cities in the nation in which to retire. Honolulu ranks second. We were a little surprised to see that Ann Arbor, Michigan tops the list. It gets COLD there in the winter! But Ann Arbor is a college town, and it’s a hotbed of medical innovation. The University of Michigan Health Center is one of the largest university medical centers in the world. And AARP points out that college towns are full of young people, and younger residents often create a demand for lifestyle perks such as bike paths and accessible fitness programs, which benefit all members of a community.
The physical aspects of the communities evaluated (clean air and water, for instance) were factors in the rankings, as were the health and habits of the people who live there. AARP notes that if you live near a hiking-and-biking trail and all your neighbors use it, you’ll probably use it, too. If a farmers’ market is just down the street, you’re likely to eat more fruits and vegetables. If your city has multiple hospitals, there’s a good chance you’ll get superior medical care. Honolulu scores high in all respects.
Honolulu’s warm weather and scenery encourage residents to spend more time exercising than do people in almost any other city in the survey, and those of us who live here enjoy one of the highest life expectancy rates. This is an outdoor life, all year round.
And, in spite of Honolulu’s relatively high cost of living (We call it the “sunshine tax”), experts say other economic strengths—a very low unemployment rate, for instance—can offset that drawback. According to AARP, we residents benefit from Honolulu’s commitment to preserving the island, with strict growth limits, sustainable-tourism efforts, and programs to protect views and the shoreline.
Sarah Yuan, an expert on aging at the University of Hawaii, pointed out for AARP that Hawaiians embrace growing older. We feel more natural about aging, we have a lot of respect for our elders, and our older people have a high status.
And we really do remind each other every day, “Lucky you live Hawaii"
Posted by Jim Winpenny
July 28th, 2008
Throughout Hawaii you will encounter the lovely, lilting sounds of pure Hawaiian names. Don’t be surprised to meet a beautiful, blond, Scandinavian-looking woman whose name is “Leilani,” or an African-American man named “Kalani.” Many, many of us who live here, regardless of our heritages, like the sound of Hawaiian names and apply them to our own offspring.
There actually are two kinds of Hawaiian names. Traditional, or “authentic” names such as Ku`oko`a (koo-oh’-koh-ah), meaning “independent,” were originally coined for a child with care and perceived aptness. (There were no surnames in the early days.) When people from other lands began arriving and settling in the islands, their given names were translated into Hawaii adaptations. “Kimo” is the Hawaiian version of Jim; “Malia” is Maria or Mary. These are Hawaiian phonetic interpretations of foreign (to Hawaiians) names.
You certainly will be introduced to a local person with a seemingly unpronounceable name such as Hanauhoulani (ha-now’-ho-oo-la’-nee). Just deal with it as well as you can. Its bearer will understand; is used to the stumbling just as he or she is with residents who were born here. Usually (but not always), such names are shortened for convenience; in this case to “Hana” or “Lani” depending on the sex of the bearer. (Most Leilanis – the most common given name for girls in Hawaii — are called either “Lei” or “Lani.”)
What you never encounter in Hawaii is a case such as one that reaches us from New Zealand.
Parents actually named their daughter “Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.”
The little girl, who now is nine years old, hates the name and refuses to use it or tell anyone — even close friends — it exists. Then her parents split and a custody battle waged. A judge ordered her to be made a ward of the court until her name was changed. Her new name is being kept secret in order to protect the girl’s privacy.
We take naming a little more seriously here.
Posted by Jim Winpenny
July 25th, 2008
A terrific way to learn about Hawaii’s lifestyle and products is to attend the Made in Hawaii Festival that runs from Friday, August 15 through Sunday, August 17 in Honolulu. More than 420 booths will display and demonstrate locally-produced food, books, gifts, fashions, plants, art, crafts, and other products. In 2007, 36,000 people attended, and even more are expected this year.
If you expect to be in Honolulu while the Festival is going on, try to take it in. Nine of Hawaii’s top chefs will be providing cooking demonstrations, and that will give you a great opportunity to sample our locally-grown and produced food and ingredients. Hawaii’s tropical climate provides a year-round growing season. That creates flavors that are more intense than are the flavors of greens grown in “seasonal” climates. In Hawaii’s farming areas, plants grow in volcanic, muddy soil that’s fertile, easily worked, and loaded with minerals.
Some of Hawaii’s famous — and most honored — performers will also be showcased on the entertainment stage.
Festival hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, August 15 and Saturday, August 16; and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, August 17 at the Neil Blaisdell Arena and Exhibition Hall. Admission is $3 per person. Children six years old and under are free. You can get the full scoop at the Festival’s Web site: www.madeinhawaiifestival.com .
There’s always neat stuff like this going on all our islands. Check out our Hawaii Vacations Website , or call 1-800-843-8771.
July 24th, 2008
You may be aware that United Airlines will be laying off 7,000 workers and cutting its U.S. capacity by 16 percent. The job cuts represent about 13 percent of United’s overall payroll of 52,500 workers. That news had Hawaii’s travel professionals getting all huhu. United accounts for 18.3 percent of the capacity of all flights to Hawaii, and United is the biggest carrier for Mainland-to-Hawaii routes, with more than 20 daily flights.
The airline, however, has announced that it will not reduce the number of flights it operates to Hawaii, one of the few markets not affected by the flight cutbacks, and anyone who has booked a Hawaiian vacation with United as the airline has no need to worry.
That sound you hear is the collective sigh being breathed by the travel pros and United officials here in the islands.
July 23rd, 2008
Ahab and Quint had their fictitious quarries in “Moby Dick” and “Jaws” respectively, but real people have a similar — and equally challenging — quest every year at this time in the famous warm and deep fishing waters off the Kona Coast, on Hawaii’s Big Island. The prey is the Pacific Blue Marlin – specifically one that weighs more than a half-ton called a Grander. The annual event is the Hawaii International Billfish Tournament (HIBT), now in its 48th year; the “Grandfather of All Fishing Tournaments.”
The top prize (There are ten in all) is the prestigious Governor’s trophy, awarded to the boat that earns the most points based on the cumulative weight of all the billfish and tuna it catches. Billfish must weigh at least 300 pounds to qualify; tuna 100 pounds. The prizes are trophies; the $3,500-$5,000 per-boat entry fees are reimbursed only by the thrill of the chase. Participants are urged to “tag and release” – to get the leader in hand and tag the fish with an official tag, then disengage the hook or cut the leader as close to the hook as possible and release the fish alive and capable of survival. (Tagging and releasing is not essential; a lot of good fish for eating are caught.)
But the grand prize is the Grander. Fewer than 70 Granders have been caught in Hawaii waters in the last 70 years; in the tournament, boating one is rare, indeed. Blue Marlin can swim at speeds of up to 50 mph, leading to exciting chases, and the angler is equipped with a mere rod and reel. Once hooked, Granders have been known to turn, leap and become predators — 1,000+ pounds of spear-armed fish lunging back at the angler or an onlooker on the boat.
If you happen to have a sturdy fishing boat in your back yard and want to get it some exercise, you might consider registering it for next year’s tournament. If not, and as a fisherman you’re intrigued by the challenge, you can charter a boat in Kona for HIBT. Pick an Aloha Travel agent from our Hawaii Vacation Website or call 1-800-843-8771. We’ll get you started with the right source for the tournament and arrange for a great vacation surrounding the event.
Posted by : Jim Winpenny 07/2208
July 22nd, 2008
Someone on the mainland calls his Hawaii-resident casual friend and says, “A guy who works with me is taking his family to Hawaii for a couple of weeks next month. He doesn’t know what to expect, or even where to stay. Can you help him out?”
This is big trouble for the local guy. A whole family is coming to his island with no place to stay. His casual friend knows he has some extra space and lives near the beach. (In Hawaii, we ALL live “near the beach.”)
The recommended action is for the Hawaii resident to refer his friend’s friend to Hawaii Aloha Travel (hawaii-aloha.com or 1-800-843-8771).
But if he is stupid enough to say, “Sure. Have your friend give me a call,” he is doomed.
To begin with, he will have to put those people up. At his place. Regardless of how many of them there are. (Hopefully it will be four or fewer.) He can swing that, of course, by borrowing a cot and a futon and relinquishing his spare room, and destroying his routine for the necessary week or two. That’s pretty easy.
But now he will have to pick his guests up at the airport. His car probably isn’t big enough, so he will have to either recruit a friend to provide and drive another vehicle, or rent a van.
Now he feels he has to entertain them! Bad thought. That could cost big bucks. Does he want to take them to Sea Life Park? Good idea/bad idea. The admission into that marvelous facility is reasonable enough, but they’ll want to do the neat stuff. They’ll want to swim with the dolphins, of course. That costs between $100 and $200 a swimmer. Hanging out with the stingrays costs $15 a hanger-out. Encountering the sea lions costs $70 - $100 per person. Plunging into the Hawaiian Reef Tank to mingle with eels and turtles costs $60 per mingler. Doing a gamut – playing with dolphins, stingrays, penguins, sea lions and wolphins – runs from $300 to $340 per person. Sea Life Park is a good suggestion … but for heaven’s sake we can’t afford to host the tour!
Whatever we do, we local residents must avoid the temptation to show off our exquisite Hawaiian Regional Cuisine. Sensational as they are, we must resist Roy’s, avoid Alan Wong’s and eschew Chef Mavro. If we have to take our guests somewhere, we take them to Zippy’s, a popular family chain with local comfort food. It’s okay to send guests to the special places where the menu prices hover at about $40 per entrée with the rest of the menu a la carte, but we can’t consider taking them there!
If we want to show off our island (and of course we do), a personal “circle-island” tour will occupy an entire day and use up a tank full of the most expensive fuel in the country. The Iolani Palace Grand Tour? Polynesian Cultural Center? A Haleakala Sunrise tour? A tour of Kauai’s Na Pali coast? A Kilauea Volcano Tour? We’re talking serious time and/or money here. And we can’t even consider having parties at our homes, where friends can help entertain these people whom we barely know. The guests’ kids will terrorize everyone who comes, and at least six people will be offended by one faction or another … with us being burdened with the blame for all of it.
So if you’re considering a trip to Hawaii and have been referred by a friend to someone who lives here, call Hawaii-Aloha Travel first. We’ll do all the heavy lifting. Then you can call that friend in Hawaii and arrange to buy him a cocktail – and spare him the burden of hosting your vacation. He’ll appreciate your aloha.
Posted by: Jim Winpenny 3/21/08
July 21st, 2008
If you live somewhere such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston … well, almost any U.S. metropolitan area, you put up with horrendous traffic.
Those of us who live in Hawaii bitch about the traffic all the time, too.
This is not a “commuter” place. We have a pretty-good bus system on Oahu, but that’s about it. For those of us who drive, there’s a freeway system on Oahu, and it’s free. No tolls. Between 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., it’s easy going. We start early here. Heavy rush hour begins at 5:30 a.m. and lasts until 9:00 a.m.; begins again at 3:30 p.m. and lasts until 6:30 p.m., and it’s a hassle both ways. When there’s a big event at Aloha Stadium or in Waikiki, traffic is both chaotic and slow.
If you are a visitor with a rent-a-car, Waikiki is all one-way streets and there are frequent events that create changes and detours.
On the outer islands, there aren’t many roads, but the populations of all the islands are growing and the populous areas are nothing but traffic snarls, with insufficient roadways and inadequate control. Even on Oahu, the western part of the island is usually a mess. A $3.7-billion elevated rail system has been approved to help alleviate that problem, but infighting continues in order to determine the type of system that will be implemented – steel wheels on steel rails, rubber tires on concrete, magnetic levitation or monorail. The committee that was set up to make a recommendation has gone for steel and steel, but now the decision falls into the hands of the municipal politicians, and that’s always fun. Some of them, along with a public groundswell, are trying to kill the whole caboodle by having it placed on the ballot this fall.
Drivers, you will find, are a little strange here. We slow down to let people into the lanes ahead of us, even on freeways. We wave thanks when granted that courtesy. Slow drivers hang in the left lanes – presumably because they perceive less traffic there since no one is ahead of them. No one signals a left-hand turn … until actually making the turn. Most of us have no idea how to enter a highway from an on-ramp. We stop, then have no way to regain merging speed.
In shopping centers, no one is polite. There’s no aloha. Most of the stalls are too small to accommodate SUV’s, which it seems most of us drive. We get a lot of door-dinging here.
Urban parking is impossible just about everywhere, just as it is where you live or work. And it’s expensive. Residents pay an average of $250 a month to park in business districts. One-day parking can cost up to $50. When the cost of parking is compared among U.S. cities, Honolulu consistently ranks among the top five.
We have no all-news radio stations here. A couple of stations will report major traffic problems when they occur outside of rush hours, but their listenership is very low at those times.
On the outer islands, we drive long ways to get to work because we like where we live. On the Big Island of Hawaii, most of the jobs are on the Kona (west) coast because of the visitor industry there. Hotel workers who live on the more-populated Hilo (east) side think nothing of driving from their side of the island to the other side and back every day, which can take three or four hours.
The windward side of Oahu embraces bedroom communities whose residents use two highways (the Pali and the Likilike) that cut through the Koolau mountains to Honolulu. When there’s an incident in or near one of the tunnels in either direction, traffic stops. Period. Landslides and flooding take their tolls, as well, and they occur pretty regularly.
In Waikiki, you can stay at your hotel, walk to most of the Waikiki attractions, take busses to the shopping centers and outlying restaurants, and use cabs when you need to. When you rent a car, you join the melee and become one of us. It’ll feel like home, wherever you live.
If you’re considering a vacation in Hawaii because you want to get away from everyday hassles such as traffic, you may want to consider one of the outer islands (Hawaii, Kauai, Maui, Molokai or Lanai). Talk to us. Pick an agent at our website (hawaii-aloha.com) or call 1-800-843-8771. You’ll wind up with exactly the vacation you’re looking for.
Posted by: Jim Winpenny
July 18th, 2008
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