I usually write about reverse culture shock themes, or running, when I'm back here in Hawaii. We moved here 3 1/2 years ago, mostly so our kids could experience the US education system, and Keoni is half a school year away from graduating high school. Kalani has experienced middle school for the first time this year, a big change from earlier elementary / grade school experience. This won't mostly be about them; they would just as soon stay anonymous online, so even mentioning them breaks form.
Christmas has been nice. I guess I've not experienced a Christmas here in nearly 20 years, back when Eye and I went to grad school in the University of Hawaii (at Manoa), where we met. It would've been 19 years ago now.
It never feels completely like Christmas in the tropics, related to the winter expectation, but that's familiar in Bangkok. There mostly malls and hotels decorate, and office buildings put up some token lights and a tree. You don't hear the Christmas carols there, but that music does play around here, in Honolulu stores. They put up lights as a city display, in two different places; that was nice.
I could add, about the kids, that we are terrible at observing holiday traditions in both cultures, but did ok for pulling together some token gifts this year. Kalani's favorite gift was something she said that she wanted, seeing it in passing, an inexpensive karaoke system. It's tiny, so small the speaker and microphone would fit in a woman's purse, but the function is decent. It can play music through a bluetooth connection; the technology is mature enough now. And it was so inexpensive; people buy coffee drinks for almost as much.
Keo's favorite gift was probably an above average quality headphones set, and he also got a Lego car set, both things he had mentioned wanting. They were surprised; we usually drop the ball. We didn't do much else for observance, walking around Waikiki some that day, but it was nice, spending time with family, even cooking basic meals.
Maybe adjusting to local culture, or the US version, went better this time, since I was last here 3 months ago. For whatever reason I don't need any adjustment time back in Bangkok, in Thailand, but here it feels a little strange for the first week or two.
Of course we are living in a tourist resort as a main residence area (for us), so that part is unusual. I did that back in Colorado for a decade or so, in a different life phase, in a ski resort, in the Vail Valley. It didn't seem so unusual then. Lots of vacationers were visiting, but then it takes a lot of locals to support that particular industry. Here resident locals might seem a little less integrated, since there isn't an isolated resort community; Waikiki is within a city of half a million or so people.
One part I always struggle to place is the emphasis on consumption, in local culture, to the extent it makes sense to call it that. On vacations that seems relatively transparent, that of course you go there to eat special meals, to participate in special events or activities, and it all keeps costing money. As a local there's a lot you just aren't doing. Of course I don't miss whale-watching outings or luaus, but everywhere you go everything you see is oriented towards a tourist spending money.
Even with the ocean right there, which you can experience for free, people rent or buy beach chairs or snorkels, or hire guides to take them places they probably could go, like to go snorkeling. At least the tourists do visit the beach. Surfing they couldn't do on their own; plenty take lessons for that.
Tourists don't always do much with the beach theme though. A chance earlier life-phase contact visited in the Spring and her family seemed to barely see the beach, for doing guided outings to different places. It seemed odd. Seeing Pearl Harbor makes sense, or a waterfall somewhere, but the Polynesian Cultural Center doesn't really accurately represent Polynesian culture. It's ran by Mormons, so it's like a Disney version of cultural summary.
My Thai family loves that place, so it's not all bad. Fire dances and whatever else are fine; there would be some historical basis for all of it, even though it also surely includes plenty of interpretation. Any cultural summary would be like that, so I don't intend that as a unique form of blame. It would be touchy summarizing "white American" culture, since half of what I valued in the late-middle of the 20th century might seem politically incorrect now, things like Thanksgiving, or pledging allegiance, that form of indoctrination.
This branches a little further into my own musing, not about local experience, but lots of this consumption-oriented tourism ends up dividing people into economic categories, more than they really need to be. It's not about a intentional, central guiding "them" causing that, it evolves organically. If you can spend $400 to 500 on a hotel that's who you will be surrounded by, and if you need to seek out "budget" alternatives it's a different class group. Activities, and all sorts of other offerings, will naturally divide out from there.
At least people can still dress casually regardless of what context they end up within, and nature is still available to everyone. Not a very natural version of it though; it is an intentional limitation, that tourists are steered to stay within either Waikiki or other appropriate areas. In online discussion groups it's taboo to mention anywhere else. I remember someone mentioning my favorite local beach, which isn't too far out of the way, and someone commented that they don't even tell their local Honolulu family members about that, never mind tourists in a broad Facebook group. There are many more isolated places locals would never mention. Not that it matters so much; going where lots of other people go instead is comfortable, and easy.
This reminds me of a discussion about tourists being airlifted from a popular local hike, which is definitely no secret, the Koko Head Crater hike. It's essentially a set of stairs up an old rail line. We've went up it twice, and to me once was already enough, given that context and theme. If you get injured along the way it would be problematic getting yourself back down. Of course locals were blaming people for not knowing their limits, which seems a little unfair to me. How could someone know how they would react to hiking up over a mile of stairs, at a conventional steep incline?
It's a different story not knowing your limits about swimming in an ocean current, even within 100 meters of the shore. Once you panic everything changes, and your danger level doesn't match what you might normally expect. Once Eye and I were caught in a fast current just off a beach in Kauai, and she panicked, and even though she's normally a very strong swimmer it was all she could do to stay afloat. The irony is that she can't sink in the ocean; salt-water makes you more buoyant, and when we would see sea turtles she couldn't swim down to get a closer look. So out we went.
A surfer girl was passing, and read the situation, and put Eye on her board, and she and I pushed her straight back in through that current. Ordinarily the worst case is that you go out 100 to 200 meters and swim back in (a different way), but right there who knows. We were at the "corner" of that island, and maybe we really would've been caught in a broader current, and headed out to Australia.
Enough of that tangent. Tourists are safe and sound in crowded Waikiki beaches, in luaus, and overpriced happy-hour beach bars. They sometimes feel an inclination to get out and see "the real Hawaii" but that's always a little contradictory, a tourist wanting to go somewhere tourists never go.
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in a Waikiki McDonald's; a nice touch, the decoration |
Homelessness and drug use
It can be hard to avoid touching on these darker themes when discussing US culture, but instead of adding more general perspective here I wanted to share a couple of unusual related experiences.
Of course I see mentally ill and drug-affected homeless people in Honolulu on a daily basis; it's almost not that big of a deal. Until you are out late somewhere you shouldn't be, and then it is. But we recently passed through one part of Chinatown, a sort of rough part of downtown, at mid-day, and saw two sets of people using drugs. I see people smoke weed about a dozen times a day, but this was something else. Two guys had a blowtorch and glass pipe of some kind; I guess that's crack? Right in a crowded plaza space too; kind of strange. It was a full-sized construction use blowtorch, along with elaborate glassware, straight out of a chemistry set; surely they could've used a smaller and functionally equivalent set-up.
We walked on to a bus stop where a guy was selling some sort of drugs, and one guy smoked some right there. Off foil; I'm not sure what that means. It was really something, seeing people walk up to buy drugs, and one guy smoking some. He didn't react to doing the drugs all that much; that part was a little anti-climactic. It all seemed normal enough to them, as if that bus stop was just their space for that kind of thing. I guess it had good customer foot traffic?
It changes things a little seeing it, versus just knowing that's a part of where you live, and what those people are doing. I don't mean "those people" in some sort of generalizing, negative sense; homeless people would surely all have different stories they're living out. But at least a half dozen people are living that life, based on what we saw with our own eyes over the course of a half an hour or so.
Honolulu wouldn't be ok with tourists seeing that; it would get cleaned up in Waikiki. Which reminds me; they had an extensive "spread Aloha" neighborhood watch sort of program before, maybe even back in the spring, and that's not going on now. Maybe it's cyclic? There are a few places that homeless people set up camp within 3 blocks or so of our house, with mats and bedding and such. We don't live far from the zoo, for people familiar with this area. I don't mean the sizeable encampment area by Paki park, or the outposts by the library, or the edge of the golf course, all within a 5 minute walk of the places I am talking about. Over in Dillingham road there are whole homeless encampment villages.
Where am I going with all of this? Nowhere, I guess. It's a real issue. That's not news to anyone living in any US city.
We always had a few homeless people around, 20 years ago, when I went to grad school here, maybe a half dozen or dozen you'd always see in Waikiki. And many in other parts of the island. But the numbers are different now. I'm not the right person to shed light on what it means, the causes, or how to resolve it. Of course I feel worse for those people than I do for myself for experiencing it, for being caused to see them.
Having my kids be around relatively unstable people is a third thing; I also get it why people see it as a real issue beyond the aesthetic part. In general not much violent crime is adjoined with homeless issues, but some it. I've always discussed most themes with my kids, so talking about what drugs are and how they destroy lives is normal ground for us. People smoke weed every 100 or so meters in Waikiki, so you get limited exposure to that other part of it everywhere else.
I should close on a happier note. I met with online tea friends here this stay; that was a highlight of the trip. They were here for the Honolulu Marathon. I run, but I've never ran in an organized race, at least not since my teens, when I did run cross country and local 10ks. I've been off running for half this stay, due to a minor tendon tear, and have been happy to get back to my normal route over the past week or so. It's a fantastic place to run here, around Diamondhead. It's a great environment for lots of reasons, and purposes. The positives vastly outweigh the negatives. I've been swimming even more, seeing sea turtles regularly, on a 200 meter route out in a lane from a local beach.
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in Foster botanical garden, in Chinatown |
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with pineapple ice cream, sort of |
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gardening; we have two small boxes at Kalani's former school |
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each cat's favorite cat was themselves. I'm not so sure about that. |
