Hawaii Oahu: The Fun Island
The US state of Hawaii, formerly a monarchical kingdom, comprises eight main islands with several tinier ones that don’t usually count—Hawaii (the Big Island), Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Lanai, Moloka’i, Niihau and Kaholo’awe.
Oahu is the most populated (though not the largest—that honor goes to Hawaii, hence its nickname ‘Big Island’) and most popular. Honolulu, the capital city is located on Oahu as is the famed Waikiki Beach (below left).
I arrived on June 6 late at night, awfully jetlagged after a fifteen hour flight from New York’s Kennedy airport. My accommodation at the University of Hawaii’s campus was a tiny dorm room. It was fabulous to be a student again, to have a tiny cubicle in a dorm, to share common bath and dining facilities and to have a fabulous campus to explore at leisure.
When I awoke to a cloudy morning after a slight drizzle, I found myself staring wondrously outside my window at the verdant Manoa Valley (below left) where a rainbow was also staining the sky in varied colors. This was the first of many rainbows that I spotted in Hawaii. Every time it gets a trifle too warm, the slightest drizzle appears like a gentle spray. It stops in just a few minutes and as the sun emerges from the clouds, rainbows arch superbly across the skies. It was a sight of which I never tired.
For the next three weeks, I spent time in-between lecture sessions at the East-West Center, in exploring the island of Oahu beginning with the capital city which can basically be divided into two parts: Waikiki Beach and Downtown Honolulu—the two areas merge into one. Waikiki Beach is the most ‘happening’ place and buzzes with tourist energy.
It’s a great place to be after dark when the neon lights paint the streets in garish colors, the traditional torches are lit all over the main promenades of Kuhio Avenue and Kalakaua Avenue (right) and vacationers strut around in skimpy beach outfits. The avenues are lined with shops selling all sorts of tourist paraphaenalia from postcards to suntan lotion and beach mats. But it is the water that catches your eye and dazzles it. The tints and hues of the Pacific Ocean are impossible to describe—as the light changes, the ribbons of color on the water change from turquoise blue to jade green, from cobalt tones to aquamarine. The waves are gentle giants that do not churn up the sand on the shore, so that the sea remains crystal clear and fish can be spotted with one’s naked eye frolicking in the water. I spent a lot of time at Waikiki, sun-bathing with my 
friends, taking frequent dips in the sea, watching incredible sunsets from the poolside bars of the five-star hotels where we nursed maitais (pineapple juice and rum cocktails) or simply people-watching (see below left). There was never a dull moment as I merged in with the vacation crowds.
The city of Honolulu downtown is an architectural wonder–several styles merge effortlessly together: from Spanish mission style buildings to turn-of-the-century Art Deco buildings to new steel, glass and concrete commercial skyscrapers. In a few well-planned blocks, one can take in the interesting State Capitol Building designed to feature Hawaii’s volcanoes, palm trees and a moat that represents the Pacific Ocean that surrounds the islands. After a tour of Iolani Palace, a Victorian structure in the midst of sprawling green lawns, one felt sorry for the Hawaiian people whose monarchy was overthrown and 
whose islands were unfairly annexed by the United States for commercial reasons (thriving sugarcane plantations made the American sugar barons greedy enough to find ways they could start to own the land themselves). Queen Liliuokalani, the last Queen of Hawaii, is a revered figure in the state, not just because she fought valiantly to hold on to her kingdom, but because she went down fighting with grace and dignity, quilting bravely in the room in her palace in which she was imprisoned and composing a wealth of folk songs, 400 in number, many of which her people still sing daily including the famous “Aloha Oe”. Another revered hero in Hawaii is Fr. Damien, the Belgian Catholic priest, who traveled to Molokoi to a leper colony to work among the afflicted and to rehabilitate them until he too contracted leprosy and died on Molokoi. His statue adorns the State Capitol Building and there is a museum in his memory in Honolulu.
I toured the state’s Supreme Court and the City Hall, saw the Public Library and the beautiful church of Kawaiaha, constructed entirely of coral reef rocks that were hacked beneath the ocean and brought up by divers in order to build the church. Hawaii’s erstwhile royalty, after conversion to Christianity, worshipped in this church. I also toured the Mission House Museums which consist, among other structures, of a Cape Cod saltbox house that was actually hauled off to Hawaii from New England proving to be terribly impractical for the hot tropical weather! Anglican missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1820 and quickly transformed the native culture of the islanders, frowning upon traditional hula dancers who wore grass skirts and insisting that long-sleeved dresses be worn instead!
It was very easy to get around the city as an excellent bus system, simply called The Bus, plies all around and with a monthly pass (only $40), one could get unlimited rides all over town. At the extreme end of the downtown area, the demographics change and the presence of Oriental people becomes more noticeable. This is Chinatown where Chinese immigrants brought to the islands to work on the sugar plantations, settled down and made homes for themselves. The restaurants, markets, lei shops, bakeries, grocery stores and clothing shops have a distinctive Chinese look about them though everything closes by 4 pm. Chinatown also has some beautiful Shinto and Buddhist shrines, each one offering fascinating architecture and practices of worship. Later when Llew arrived, we treated ourselves to an unforgettable bowl of Vietnamese pho, a hearty noodle soup with meat, greens and bean sprouts at a nondescript place in Chinatown called Pho-To Chau where the lines were long and the locals waited patiently for the best meal deal in town—only $4.50 for a steaming bowl.
I did most of my sightseeing in Honolulu in the evenings, after classes, but at the weekends, I ventured outside the city limits, armed only with a map, a bus pass and schedule. On a trip to the north of Oahu, I passed thousands of acres of pineapple plantations, and the mist-enshrouded Ko’olau Mountains, drove through the town of Wahiawa and stopped at Hale’iwa, where I took a nap on a startlingly beautiful beach and purchased ‘shave ice’ (a snow cone) from Matsumoto’s, a Japanese general store that serves it with vanilla ice-cream and red azuki beans. The Japanese presence in Oahu is all-pervasive. At least 30% of its permanent residents are retired Japanese and the bulk of the tourists, other than Americans, fly up from Japan, so that prices in the upscale designer stores are written in Japanese and all public signs are bilingual.
On another Saturday morning, I took a bus past the volcanic crater of Diamond Head (which I also overlooked from my dorm room) and went to Hanauma Bay, a gorgeous semi-circular bay with coral reefs very close to the shores. Dozens of snorkelers were already in the waters by the time I donned my own snorkel mask and fins and joined them to take in the sight of hundreds of tropical fish that swam all around my calves and ankles, quite oblivious to the presence of so many human beings. Llew and I saw Hanauma Bay several times from the air on our many inter-island flights and it never ceased to amaze me that underwater volcanic action, thousands of years ago, could have given rise to a natural phenomenon that continues to delight swimmers today.
On another Saturday, I took the bus through southeast Oahu, past Diamond Head and Hanauma Bay and explored the quieter, less ritzy, more residential parts of the island where the local people lived. These areas reminded me very much of Goa or Kerala, with their modest, one-story ranch style homes, their gardens filled with plumeria trees in full bloom, mango and pomelo trees laden with fruit and hedges full of ilima (yellow hibiscus), Hawaii’s state flower. Of course, coconut and banana trees were everywhere which also caused me to recall vacations in Goa. Going past Makappu’u Point with its picturesque light house and Sea Life Park, I drove through the town of 
Waimanalo, then got off the bus at Kailua Beach where local Hawaiian families were picnicking with pleasure and the smell of barbecued meats assailed my nostrils. I took a long nap at Kailua Beach while facing the stunning jade green waters, before taking the bus back to campus on the wonderful Pali Highway that affords one of the most beautiful drives on Oahu.
Just a week after I arrived in Honolulu, the whole state celebrated the birthday of King Kamehameha, who in the 1600s, after many bloody battles, succeeded in uniting all the Hawaiian Islands. He is a cultural hero and his statue adorns the exterior of City Hall. The Parade in his honor passed down Kalakaua Avenue at Waikiki allowing us to take in the sights of local Hawaiians on horseback and in vintage cars, not to mention a succession of lovely, colorful floats that depicted the culture and history of the Hawaiians. Every float and passing car was made special by the addition of Hawaii’s glorious flora—anthuriums, orchids, heliconia, ginger flowers, birds of Paradise, elephant ears, crotons, etc. so that the flower-lover in me enjoyed this aspect of the parade more than anything else. The King Kamehameha Day holiday allowed the Japanese to participate in many cultural events so that for the entire weekend, I felt as if I were in Tokyo rather than in an American capital city. I saw a huge number of Japanese dances, performed in stunning costumes in Ala Moana Shopping Center, one of the principal malls, and at the bandstand in Queen Kapiolani Park. I sampled mochi, a delicious rice flour cake stuffed with sweetened red azuki beans, tried my hand at paper tearing and mask painting, watched my friends get a spiritual massage, and received many pretty freebies such as tiny Japanese beanie dolls, samples of exotic soaps in fragrances like lavender and ginger, bookmarks made by the talented paper tearers and note pads. It was a lovely way to spend the weekend and I made the most of it.
Upon Llew’s arrival in Honolulu, we made a beeline together for the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor where on December 7, 1941—“a day that will live in infamy”– hundreds of Japanese bombers arrived by top secret and sank dozens of American fighter ships with hundreds of crew on board. This frightful event dragged the USA into World War II and is the subject of several wonderful films that I had seen over the years, never dreaming that, one day, I would actually tour Pearl Harbor myself. Hawaii’s most visited site, it is difficult to get tickets to see the Memorial, so that Llew stood in line for hours while I attended classes. When I did join him at the site, we watched a fine film that filled us in on the historical details, then boarded a ferry boat that took us across to the USS Arizona that still lies sunk in about forty feet of water providing a watery grave for the 1140 crew who sank with her in five minutes when she was torpedoed. It was decided never to bring the sunken ship above water, so that the heroes who died in that attack lie entombed in the rusting ship. In recent years, a memorial was built astride the ship, containing a memorial wall on which is engraved the names of each one of the sailors who perished. It is a solemn venue, made more poignant by the fact that tropical fish could be seen swimming through the remnants of the ship, some parts of which are still visible above water. As someone whose research has encompassed mass-death and the memorials that are built to commemorate those deaths, I was fascinated by this visit and found more material for inclusion in my forthcoming book.
On a trip to the Honolulu Academy of the Arts, I made friends with a former Westporter named Manu Chakravarty, a docent who took us through the South Asian Art galleries, then gave me a tour of the Native Hawaiian Art galleries with their collections of feather leis and capes and al’i (chieftain) wands, paintings of volcanic action and engravings of Mission life, koa wood calabashes, etc. But what caught my eye, most memorably, was a marvelous vignette of Hawaiian marine life interpreted entirely in art glass by Seattle-based Dale Chihuly, my favorite glass artist of all time. It contained Chihuly’s signature pieces such as his gigantic glass shells, pearls, sea horses, starfish, etc.
Manu and her husband Gautam became friends of ours and treated us to a driving tour of Oahu, taking us to places that we were unable to reach by bus. Among these was a visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art, a drive through the towering Makiki Heights where we received glorious views of Honolulu and Waikiki Beach, a visit to the stunning Nu’uanu Pali Lookout which offers sweeping views of the leeward side of Oahu, the towns of Kaneohe and Kailua, and the Old Pali Highway, on which we drove through a thick rain forest with the most massive banyan trees that will forever remain in my memory. They also took us over a Japanese bridge to the red and gold Byodo-In 
Temple, a replica of a Buddhist temple in Japan which included a pond full of koi (Oriental goldfish), black swans, a Zen garden and grounds full of peacocks. It was like a scene out of a fantasy and we enjoyed every moment there.
On Kailua and Lanikai Beaches, we saw more vacationers who wished to get far from the madding crowd, as well as local Hawaiians in their outrigger canoes.
