Day 5 - In transit

Saturday 24 July 2004, 14:30 NZST (GMT+12)
Current view: A nice, but very stationary, mountain and harbour outside my plane window.

I certainly hope that events like today's don't recur during my trip, although I guess there's almost a certainty they will at least once. I got up at 6am, had a lovely motel breakfast, then left at 8:20am aboard the Airbus. I arrived at 9:02am at the airport, got my boarding pass at 9:57am after a long queue.

I should add here that Auckland International Airport charges a NZ$25 departure tax per person which cannot be paid overseas or by a travel agent, and you can't depart without paying it. They put a sticker on the back of your boarding pass. Just as well I had $30 in my pocket :P

Anyway, the board said boarding at 11:05, which for a flight departing at 11:50, was fair enough. This then changed to 12:25, and then 13:05. By 13:05, the passengers were getting restless - and I'd bought myself an oversized thin-base pizza slice and a Diet Coke for prices not atypical of airports - and there was still no sign of anything happening. Several announcements apologised for delays, but gave no details. I phoned the taxi I'd arranged in Hawaii to let them know of the delay. Finally at 13:55, boarding commenced. 20 mins later, we were all ready to leave and the announcement was made that the captain was doing final documentation and we'd be given clearance for takeoff soon. However, that was not to be - the little loader loading our luggage onto the plane has apparently spilled fluid (water or oil? not sure) onto the tarmac and they reckon it will take 25 minutes to clean. Grr. It's a beautiful day outside, too.

Saturday 24 July 2004, 03:30 Hawaii time (GMT-10)

I am now in my hotel room in Hawaii sweating like anything. It is apparently 31°C at the moment (I'm getting used to all these Fahrenheit conversions).

The plane took off at 14:55. We had two really nice meals - chicken cordon bleu and calzone, each with salad, cheese and dessert - and watched three movies. My partner in crime for the 8.5 hour flight was Logan, a boy from Aspen, Colorado, who I exchanged info about Hawaii, NZ and Australia with. A flight of this length would be miserable without interesting company, and usually I've scored lucky on my national and international haulage. For movies, we got Hidalgo, 10 minutes of Mooseport dubbed into Japanese (ended by demand from passengers), 50 First Dates and Jersey Girl (again).

Arrival at US Customs took a while because of the queue but was both friendlier and easier than I expected. Walking outside, though, was an experience - from 13 in Auckland to 31 and humid in Honolulu in a jacket and trackpants (both necessary both in Auckland weather and for transporting small items safely) was quite a shock to the system. I'd got some insect bites in Auckland and these now really started to itch. My taxi arrived, but the security guy (who was apparently new) was hassling him over some registration issue, which turned out to be a non-issue, and I felt a bit caught in the middle. Honolulu's H1 freeway is a really nicely maintained road, and the driver seemed amused by my fascination with right-side driving and all the weird disappearing lanes.

My hotel in Waikiki is huge (and cheap, thanks to PlacesToStay.com) - 44 storeys in all. I'm paying about the same for this hotel room as you would for a decent Perth or Melbourne motel room. I arrived at 3:00am and after 10 minutes waiting, was sent to an 11th floor room that turned out (on one whiff) to be a smoking room. I came down and reminded them of my non-smoking stipulation on the booking, and got a 7th floor room which is really nice and is on a corner so has both a south and east view. Despite being only 3 blocks from the beach, though, there's that many skyscraper hotels here that you can't see beyond the next two or three.

I'm going to have a shower with aloe vera and aqueous cream, plug the bath while doing so, then have a nice relaxing bath before bed.

Saturday 24 July 2004, 18:50 Hawaii time

Sitting in a cool, airconditioned net cafe not that far from Waikiki - just returned from walking from Honolulu downtown. In order, the events of today:

4:00 - Bath.
4:45 - Abandoned plan to sleep and went out exploring the hotels of Waikiki looking for a decent map. Found a semi-decent one.
5:30 - Watched the sunrise on Waikiki Beach.
6:15 - Had a quick nasty breakfast for US$3.39 at a fast food outlet called Jack In The Box which, judging from the number of outlets here, is more popular here than McDonalds (I have yet to see a Burger King, and have seen one (1) KFC, near Ala Moana shops).
8:00 - Got a Hersheys bar, a Tootsie Roll and a decent map of Oahu at a small discount supermarket 3 blocks from my hotel. The roads are chronically dug up around here.
9:00 - After a walk around the Ala Wai Canal and neighbouring boulevard (reminds me of some of the riverside drives around inner Melbourne, and Riverside Drive in Perth), I had a proper breakfast at my hotel for just US$8, went to bed for a while.

13:00 - Woke up and walked to Ala Moana Shopping Centre. It is big, quite open, and not particularly well air-conditioned, but the shops are awesome. I checked out The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch - and the food court is just enormous beyond belief. Saw a local band called Mixed Nutz playing live in the middle of the centre - they did a fantastic cover of Chevelle's "Send The Pain Below" as well as some of their own songs. I talked to some band members and their manager after the event, and even scored a free CD :D They deserve to do well, I hope they do.15:20 - Got a bus to Honolulu Downtown. It's actually quite beautiful, if somewhat ignored - the place looked empty when I was there, and most things were closed. I took a few awesome photos - hope they work out! Had Subway for dinner - US$3.99.
16:20 - Started walking back to Waikiki. At present I'm about 9 blocks from it.

Couple of notes about this place:

1. The right-side driving is very confusing for me, as I've never been out of left-side drive countries. I've created a rule for checking that I'll try to keep in mind - Near Left, Far Right (it's exactly the opposite in Australia, where you'd first look right when crossing). At least with four words in a logical processing order, I should be able to survive the next 9 weeks :P The weirdest thing for me was seeing cars turning left on roads with no median strip - it looked almost like the Melbourne hook turns until I realised it's just a mirror image of our own roads.

2. Money.

(a) I ALWAYS convert in my head back to AU$ to determine whether a deal is a good deal or not.

(b) They add 4% or so tax onto the displayed price - it's a great way of getting rid of cent change that builds up though.

(c) Change is exact here - they have 1c, 5c, 10c and 25c pieces, and $1, $5, $10, $20 and $100 notes:
- 1c (One Cent) is copper and about the size of our (Aus/NZ) 5c.
- 5c (One Nickel) is silver and a bit bigger.
- 10c (One Dime) is silver and almost exactly the same size as the 1c. Confusing!
- 25c (Quarter Dollar) is silver and slightly larger than our (Aus/NZ) 10c.

(d) Most things are sold by the pound. Multiply by 2.2 to get kg. Petrol is sold by the gallon - around here about 246c/gal seems about right. Aus$1/L ~= NZ$1.10/L ~= US$2.65/gal.

3. Newspapers cost about 50c here - far less than in Australia.

4. As in NZ where I observed Maori in most service occupations, here you see big Hawaiian dudes all over the place keeping the economy and security industry going. I had trouble initially telling Japanese and some of the Hawaiians apart, but I've learned how to tell the difference in facial features/eye shape - it is subtle.

Anyway, enough writing for now. I'm going to go watch the sunset.