Hawaii 2015 – Day 1

Holiday time!!! Yes, after 8 months I’m going on a holiday.

So firstly, really annoyed. I was supposed to leave on the 19th of December. I was to fly to Brisbane and then grab a connecting flight to Honolulu. However, when I checked in at Melbourne, my flight to Brisbane was delayed by an hour. And they kept me waiting for up to 30 minutes before the gate opened to tell me that I wasn’t going to make my connecting flight AND that they could only get me on a flight the next day!!! So the picture you see was take 1. I had to go home, spend the night at home and do a take 2. Take 2 finally found me in Honolulu. We were staying at the Discovery Bay Apartments. The view was great!

So the guys decided to give Josh and I some couple time. We used it to take in the sights and sounds around Waikiki.

Okay,  I found a Tony Roma’s!!! This was a great restaurant my family and I used to go to in Singapore. I love the loaded potato skins and I checked, it’s still on the menu! Dad and K always loved the ribs here. I remember loving the booths and tables, also remembered it always being really dark. After being a complete tourist in front of this restaurant, we continued to explore.

Josh took me to a really lovely lagoon.

Such beautiful weather!

A really cool thing about the buildings in Waikiki is that a lot of them have murals painted along the side. By this time, Josh and I were parched and hungry. So we went to the Waikiki Brewery!

Here, the beers are brewed on the premises. We ordered some home made sausage sliders and the hummus plate which came with chipotle hummus and falafels.

 

The food here was amazing. And Josh and I enjoyed some amazing dark beers.

So after this, we went back to the apartment and met up with the rest of the guys. And we got ready for a Luau!!!! First we caught the bus to Germaine’s Luau…

Had a mini heart-attack on the way. The engine light came on and we had to stop the bus to make sure everything was okay.

For a moment there, we might not have made it!! But the bus driver (the Captain) and Kale (the tour guide) decided to power through nonetheless.

The view was amazing so we took the opportunity to take some lovely pictures.

Germaine’s Luau had a really lovely show. Full of different examples of Polynesian dances.

While the show was going, we began dinner. First we had kalua pork. This is pork that is buried in the ground with hot stones and cooked for 4-6 hours. This is called an Imu.

We got to see when they pulled the pork from the ground.

We got to have a great buffet dinner after they had prepared the pig.

So starting from the top right, in the little cup is lomi lomi salmon. This is salmon that is cooked, then the bones are massaged out and cut up into little tiny chunks and tossed with tomatoes. It’s served cold on salad. Next to that is chicken long rice, a misnomer because the ‘rice’ are long noodles. It tasted like chicken soup and was lovely. Next along is roasted chicken. Below that was battered mahi mahi, I didn’t rate this as it was a little dry. Next to that is the kalua pork, which is pulled pork served with a sweet roll. That was lovely.

After this, we rode the bus back. We had a full day and  were nicely exhausted. Looking forward to day 2!

Talk soon,

Love Sim