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KIHEI PAST PERFECT, A Hawaii Mystery
A
Home Away From Home in Waikiki
Vacation and condo rentals have grown
tremendously popular over the past few years due to their
home-like feel and in-room amenities like full kitchen,
washer/dryer, Internet and private lanai. The Waikiki Shore
hotel resort is Waikiki’s only beachfront condo rental
situated in the heart of all the city’s sights and
attractions. Visitors will find a world class surf break
directly in front, great shopping and dining just footsteps
away, swimming, tennis, bbq’ing, and much more. With
great low rates, vacationers should experience a condo rental
for a change by booking online.
Waikiki’s
Largest Shopping Mall
The Royal Hawaiian Center sits in the heart of
beautifully rejuvenated Waikiki. The mall was recently renovated
and with over 110+ shops and restaurants, the Royal Hawaiian
Center boasts being one of the biggest Hawaii
malls. Visitors
will find a variety of shops in the Center’s four levels
ranging from gift shops, luxury and lifestyle retailers like
Cartier and Juicy Couture, and one of Waikiki’s most popular
restaurants, The Cheesecake Factory. You’ll also find one of
Honolulu’s hottest nightclubs and lounges at Level4. This
Honolulu mall also features free parking and a number of
Hawaiian culture classes and activities including a hula show
and lessons, ukulele lessons, and a lei making class.
Hawaii Blog:
Walking in Waikiki
With
Cloudia Charters
Battleships, Neighborhoods,
Culture
Aloha
You! Thanks for stopping by today. Where did Summer
Go? Suddenly the floats are being prepared for the Aloha
Week Floral Parade, and the Honolulu Symphony is tuning up
for a new season that will include "Ben" from the TV
show LOST (Emmy winner Michael Emerson) narrating
Poulenc’s classic musical tale, The Story of
Babar. . .
The
season just past was EPIC for South Shore surfers, and
forecasters are calling for perfect big waves (and soon!) for
Oahu's legendary North Shore. Just now, Waikiki is a
glistening jewel set in azure waters, perfect for revving your
engines - or just relaxing in style. China's Shaolin
Monks are here, showing off their amazing moves at the
Blaisdell Arena, and Aerosmith will perform here this Fall too.
So many choices! Why just the other day a friend asked me
if I was going to the Cazimero Brothers' Christmas Show
at the Hawaii Theater again this year. Of course!
But there's so much to enjoy around here before December.
Heck, we even have opera! One thing you WON'T be able to
do for a while is to visit the Battleship Missouri;
The "Mighty Mo" will be freed from her moorings on
October 14th for the first time since arriving in Hawaii 11
years ago. Beginning before sun-up on that day, all 887
feet, and 54,899 tons of the grey lady will be nudged by three
or four tugboats the two miles from Pearl Harbor's Pier Foxtrot
5 to the famous shipyard's Dry-dock 4. Dignitaries are
invited along for the 12 to 14 hour ride. But hundreds
more of us average folks are expected to be watching from the
sidelines. Some lucky people residing up on the hillsides
will be able to see the drama unfolding from their homes.
Engineers are custom building 310 wooden "keel blocks"
(8,000 pounds EACH) on which the giant will rest. Once
inside the dry-dock it should take 3 hours for the water to be
drained out while divers ensure the correct placement of bulk on
block. (The dignitaries will be stuck with each other's
company until the ship is high and dry ;) One of Hawaii's
top 10 visitor attractions, the Mighty Mo drew 48,111
guests and pilgrims in July. That's 12 percent of all
visitors to this island, including numerous WWII veterans from
EVERY side of the war. And yes, those are the big 16 inch
guns that Cher cavorted on for her "If I could
Turn Back Time" video! Sadly, the
Association that manages the ship is forbidden from firing them
(or the ships engines) inside Pearl Harbor. Watching the
grey ghost glide past Waikiki from the deck of my own boat on
Fathers' Day of 1998 was a surreal experience! Once tours
resume on January 29th you can also hold your function or
soiree aboard the ship's fan tail. What a place for a
birthday party! (I'm just saying. . . .) You will
again be able to walk the "Surrender Deck" where the
Japanese Empire and the United States signed the instrument that
ended WWII. While you are there, just look over one ship's
length to the Arizona Memorial, and you will be looking
at the spot where war began, from the very spot where it ended.
Only in Hawaii!
The
Hawaiians of old divided the land into pie-shaped sections
called "Ahupuaa." These ran from the peak of the
mountain, broadening out as they reached the coast. Thus
the local village people would have access to the produce of the
forests, the plain, and sea. The Liliha / Nuuanu
corridor is one of my favorite such neighborhoods in our
Honolulu, embracing Honolulu Harbor, Chinatown, working class
commercial and residential Liliha Street itself, and the
foothills of Nuuanu. The histories of the Hawaiians, the
pre-statehood Chinese, Japanese, and Americans, all live richly
in this area that contains the Royal Mausoleum, (sacred burial
place of Hawaii's Monarchs) legendary Kunawai healing spring
& pond, Kuakini (formerly "The Japanese")
Hospital, which was the first such hospital supported by Japan's
emperor, as well as Hawaii's oldest lychee tree. My
favorite, 24 hour Liliha Bakery is a beacon to the whole
island, and her coco puffs are the stuff of
legend. Further along Kuakini Street, a well used cinder-block,
neighborhood, Chinese Temple is right across the street from a
Japanese Buddhist Temple & School, all just a few doors down
from the Pizza Hut. Did I mention the four consulates?
The Area is named for the Chiefess Liliha, Governor of Oahu
under Kamehameha. (It was her father, Hoopili, who
created the Royal Mausoleum). When his forces landed on
Oahu, here at Waikiki, Kamehameha fought the local warriors all
the way up into this valley. The famous Battle of the
Nuuanu Pali saw the local defenders spill over the cliff (or
Pali) rather than surrender. To this day, the Pali Highway
carries a supernatural aura that is felt by drivers,
particularly at night. Do NOT carry pork over the highway
either, but that's a whole other (ghost) story ;-]. This
year's "I Love Liliha Town Festival" opened
with a traditional Lion Dance at Kawananakoa Park. Who are
the Kawananakoas? Abigail Kawananakoa is the descendant of
Hawaiian royalty, and would have a clear claim to the
(overthrown) crown of the Kingdom of Hawaii. She has
recently been acquiring dispersed royal possessions and gifting
them to the Iolani Palace where we can all enjoy them.
There was a controversy a few years back, when a national
magazine photographed the lady sitting on the throne, and a fine
man named James Bartels, who had dedicated his life to
the heroic restoration of the palace, left his job in the
resulting ruckus. Ms. Kawananakoa has since used her
considerable personal wealth in aid of the Hawaiian patrimony
and people - especially in recent years. Most recently she
purchased one of Queen Liliuokalani's golden bracelets, a
very early example of the Hawaiian heirloom jewelry worn by
local women to this day, me included. Mr. Bartels has
since passed, but will never be forgotten for his unique
contribution to the restoration of the pride of Hawaii.
One cannot pass by the palace, let alone enter it, without
feeling the undeniable presence of so many loyal hearts.
In my opinion, it is one "Do Not Miss" for any
visitor, even if all you do is stroll the grounds - though the
interior is AMAZING!
But
we were visiting Liliha, so what about the food? No Hawaii
gathering is complete without it! We do love our
"grinds." That means "Kau Kau" or
"food" to you. It also means to "EAT!"
If you are in a western US state, you may have eaten at an
"L&L Hawaiian Barbecue." The first L&L
in the chain was a humble "plate lunch" place right
here on Liliha Street. And saimin, one of our foremost
local comfort foods, was also invented here. You can read about
saimin at: <http://comfortspiral.blogspot.com/2009/04/
comfort-in-bowl.html">
The world's greatest civic band was there too. They were
established 1836 by a King, and play a unique repertoire of
Monarchy era marches, Hawaiian music, western classics, Okinawan
songs and MORE. Can you tell how much I love the Royal
Hawaiian Band? They even played my favourite, "Kalakaua
March." Which reminds me, the band's prominent German
leader during the Monarchy, Henry Berger, would no doubt be
pleased to know that the Hale Koa Hotel, and various other
venues around Our Honolulu will be celebrating a full blown Oktoberfest
as usual this year. Now THAT'S an entirely different
ooompah altogether!
Smile
for your close-up Hawaii; Filmmakers announced the Fall
release of a period film entitled "Barbarian Princess"
a biopic about our beloved Princess Kaiulani. (We talked about
her - and the eponymous street she lived on here in Waikiki - a
few "Walkings" ago). And now we hear that Tia
Carrere will be playing the late beloved Rell Sun in a
project entitled "Wave Dancer." The $10 million
film is to be directed by Martha Coolidge.
"I believe that Rell Sunn is the kind of
hero that we need to see in film today," said Carrere who
reportedly spent years researching and writing the script with
husband Simon Wakelin. "Here's a woman who was not a
wealthy woman, she was a single mother, she was sick, struck
with breast cancer, yet she lived a far greater life than 99% of
us." Known as the Queen of Makaha, Rell
fought a very public 14 year battle before passing at age 47.
A professional surfer, she used her grace, wit, and notoriety to
mentor youth as the creator of the Menehune Surf Meet for
children. She also served as a physical therapist for
kupuna (seniors) out in rural Waianae here on Oahu. A
portion of the film's proceeds are slated to be donated to the
Rell Sunn Educational Fund. I can't wait to spend some
quality time with these great ladies in a darkened theater!
But of course, I'm fortunate to always be surrounded by lovely
people - local & visitor - when I'm out walking. . . in
Waikiki . . . ALOHA!
Here
are some more links you might enjoy checking out AFTER you get
off the phone with your travel agent. Thanks for Walking
Along!
Royal
Hawaiian Band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKv2VY2msgQ
Battle
of the Pali: http://comfortspiral.blogspot.com/2009/09/
from-beach-to-cliff.html
Liliha Bakery: <http://lilihabakeryhawaii.com/>
Iolani
Palace:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsfxTid_pQ4
http://www.iolanipalace.org
Liliuokalani's
Bracelet, A Video Report:
http://www.kitv.com/video/20679841/index.html
My
Hawaii Novel, Aloha Where You Like Go? :
<http://www.amazon.com/ALOHA-Where-
You-Like-Satisfaction/dp/1598006495/ref=sr_1_1?ie=
UTF8&s=books&qid=1227747134&sr=1-1>
And
YOU are always welcome at my daily blog too:
www.comfortspiral.blogspot.com
Lost and found in China
By Alvin Koo
Editor's note: I've just come back from
a 3 week in China, and here are some of my observations.
If you want to see more, go to Facebook
and look for Alvin Koo.
Everyday that I leave the hotel,
I’m lost. I have to find my way to a new hotel or I have find
my way back from sightseeing through a series of grunts, hand
signs, and poor Chinese. Wo yao qu… means I want to go… Wo yao
qu Guting Zhan. That’s “I want to go to Guting Station,” which
was close to one of my hotels. The trouble is they answer in
Chinese. Then I say, “Duibuqi, duibuqi. Wo shi Meiguoren. Hui
shuo yidian, dian.” I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m American. I
can speak only a little.
If Japan is the land of the
rising sun, Thailand the land of smiles, Hawaii aloha.
China is diversity.
Old and new. Rich and poor.
Mostly automatic flush toilets and a few troughs for both men
and women. Squat toilets are not pretty. I saw one on the “D”
or fast train that went straight down to the tracks. Everywhere
there is construction. In the cities. In the countryside.
New, new next to old. Chinese are coming to the realization
that old is precious. That it brings back good feelings of old
times. In the 80’s and 90’s, they tore everything down in a mad
rush toward modernization. Now they build old, Disneylike, or
refurbish old with toilets and electricity, air conditioning,
remote controls and designer ambience.

A friend asked if I saw a guy in
a coolie hat pulling a richshaw to take a picture for him. All
the rickshaws I saw were powered by pedal bicycles or motor
cycles. But I saw an old lady staggering under the weight of
god knows what at each end of a dark flat sweat stained, stick
perched on her left shoulder. Her knees were bent and the
weight made the poles bend and flex to the rhythm of her walk.
There were a lot of farmers with coolie hats.
China is full of surprises.
For instance, the maps you see on
the internet are mostly wrong. They make places look small that
are huge. They love big open spaces. A park that looks small
on the map could be huge. Several laowai or foreigners who live
in China confirmed my suspicions. They said Chinese maps lack
scale. They make them to fit the page.
The Suzhou map I had looked like
you could walk from one World Heritage protected garden to
another. But the truth is Suzhou is a large city with a tiny
part of it preserved for both laowai and Chinese tourists. The
Shantang Canal with its red lantern lights glimmering off the
water is just one tiny street amidst several square miles of
high rises, buses, and
pollution. It takes 20 minutes city bus
ride from Lingering Garden to Humble Administrator’s Garden.
You have to ask the bus driver to tell you when to get off. You
need to know the names in Chinese… Liú Yuān and Zhuō Zhèng Yuān.
Very few Chinese actually speak English, though they learn it in
school.
If you ask them something, they
frown and look like they’re mad but they always answer in some
way. I think Chinese are basically very friendly and helpful.
Several went out of their way to help me.
In Guilin, in a mad rush to get
away from a tenacious taxi driver, I walked for several minutes
into the night not having a thought of where I was. When the
driver finally gave up, I was totally lost. A young man was
walking beside me. I asked in Chinese, “Hui shuo Yingwen, ma?”
He answered, “Yes.” He walked me 30 minutes to my hotel. In
Hualien, I sat next to a guy who taught English. We spent five
hours together.
The gardens and the canal are
beautiful. But the shops alongside and leading to them are
unabashed commercialism. Store after store of hawkers and
curios. And Chinese hawkers don’t know the meaning of the word
“no.” You say “no,” they keep going on. You need this, yes?
Very nice, yes? You like? You need body language and frowns to
make them understand you really mean “no.”
And people!
I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MANY
PEOPLE.
At the parks on a sunny day. In
the shopping malls. I have never seen so many shops. At the
train station. Mobs. In the subways, streams of people flowing
into and past each other. Chinese seem to be culturally
motivated to flow. If there is an exit or entrance, they move
to fill every last space, as if moving forward a few feet would
get them there faster. They don’t seem to believe in giving
each other space. If you’re waiting in line, they will move
ahead of you, to the side of you, up close behind you, until
everybody is packed into the line like sardines.

Not everything is cheap.
My standard for eating became if
the shop had glass in its front. The glass did not have to
cover the entire front. Just a pane of glass will do. Chinese
like open air. I guess air conditioning is expensive. But some
stalls are just that. They could easily be selling food in an
alley. They seem to like alleys too. If it’s food on the
sidewalk cooked on a hand pulled cart, jiaozi or dumplings could
go for yi kuai wu or one fifty yuan, which is about 25 cents
American. That’s six dumplings. In a fixed stall they easily
run 2 yuan. In a shop or restaurant with glass it could be 8
yuan. If it’s enclosed and the staff wear uniforms it is
probably 18 yuan. That’s almost $3 at 6.8 yuan to a dollar,
getting close to American prices.
You could go to a fancy
restaurant with a sign covered in gold leaf and pay maybe 48
yuan for noodles. I did.
Before I left for China, I read
and was told that people would approach me to practice their
English. I’m ethnically Chinese and look Chinese. No one, not
one person, came up to me to practice their English. I saw one
man on a bus give a 20 minute Chinese lesson to a Caucasian man,
who smiled and listened intently. Everyone within five seats of
the lesson was listening intently. I asked directions of a
policeman and he gave me a three minute Chinese lesson, holding
on to the card that I had given him with my directions written
in Chinese. I couldn’t just leave the lesson, I needed the
card.

Traffic again is flow.
When they beep their horn, it
basically means watch out I’m not stopping. Usually it also
means I’m not slowing down either. They sometimes stream past
red and green lights at 40 miles an hour in city streets. One
electric tram which operated on a sidewalk and park walkway
didn’t even beep. He seemed to expect people to sense he was
coming and move out of the way. I rode with him ten minutes and
he didn’t hit anyone. Came close. Everybody moved or at the
last moment he stopped or slowed.
The buses are the worst. Big 50
seat buses don’t slow down, and they squeeze through openings
with three inches to spare on each side. At least they’ll slow
down for that. Crawl through to be more precise. If you meet
one on a one lane road or a road packed with stalls, parked
carts, vendors and pedestrians, the rule seems to be the smaller
vehicles backs down. The bus will go nose to nose with the
offending vehicle and almost push them back. Lanes mean
nothing. They seem to be a general guide. I’ve been stuck in
the middle of the road with traffic flowing on either side of
me.
Nobody stops. Nobody slows
down. And in three weeks, nobody hit me. They beeped at me.
Can you bargain?
The consensus is no. The Chinese
are smarter than you. My friend says my Chinese is not good
enough. She says her Chinese is not good enough. You need to
speak the dialect of the place you’re at. You need to know the
lowest possible price.

Chinese seem to believe that
anything that is not the lowest possible price is a bad price.
You got ripped off. Though themselves would be glad to rip you
off.
One tout waited for me while I
went into a tea garden to look around. When I came out, she
finally wore me out and got me to follow her to her home. “Pianyi,”
was the only word I understood. It means cheap. “Pianyi,
pianyi yidian.” She wanted 50 yuan for a small box of Longjing
tea, considered China’s best. At the tourist street in town,
one stall wanted 25 yuan for the same box, and you know he will
go lower. At the airport, they wanted 140 yuan. She said you
can trust the airport tea is fresh.
The only deal I got was on a boat
ride. Six ladies followed me for 30 minutes. I had been told a
boat ride on a small boat was about 40 yuan. But the river was
too high, and the small boats were not going out. The first
price for the big boat with the engine was 250 yuan. Even for
me, I think my voice was indignant. I told her I was told that
a boat ride was 40 yuan. She countered that was for small boats
which were not going out.
I said no, I wanted to see the
river. She pointed me down a small alley. We walked. I was
afraid she was leading me to get mugged. The alley was very
small. We walked more than 10 minutes. Finally, we

broke out
in a clearing at the boats. Apparently the bus driver had let
me get off too early. I said I wanted a Coke. I told her I
wanted to go to the fishing village, which I had read was
quaint. Actually, the town I was in was plenty quaint enough.
She led me to a restaurant. I
didn’t want a 5 yuan restaurant Coke. I wanted a 2 yuan Coke
like you get on the street. I drank the Coke. Another lady sat
with me. She spoke even better English. Why did I want to go
to the fishing village? The boat didn’t go there. I said I
didn’t have to go. I just wanted to see it. She said, well
then. So, I said, how much? She said 148 yuan, but don’t tell
anyone I got it for that. Hao de. OK!
I also got a cotton Chinese style
shirt with cloth buttons for 50 yuan. The silk ones cost
upwards of 600 yuan or about a hundred dollars. The lowest silk
ones were 450 yuan. The most expensive cotton ones were 90 yuan.
You have to know numbers to survive in China.
If they sense you’re laowai, I
think they are very liable to charge you more. I paid 10 yuan
for a 4 yuan bus ride. I got charged 10 yuan extra for a meal
after I had walked out of the restaurant and not disappeared
fast enough. I paid a whopping 100 yuan too much for a taxi
tour that lasted two hours. I admit I am now prejudiced against
Chinese cabbies.

I think I rode every mode of transportation
possible. Airplane, city bus, double decker bus, mini bus,
taxi, subway, tram, trolley, tuk tuk, rickshaw, ferry and feet.
I caught the rickshaw when no one could tell which bus to take
and they pointed me across the street in an area where you
cannot cross the street for a very long block. The sidewalk is
barricaded from the street. The only people to proposition me
for women were the rickshaw drivers. And China has something
called KTV, which is a very fancy karaoke, where you can pay
extra...
Continued, click here to see.
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