Things to do in Honolulu, Hawaii

 

the main part, doing things with family (I'm not actually conservative, as implied)

As I've mentioned in at least one post that I'm back in Honolulu, this time for 2+ months until the end of the kids' school year.  Job hunting never did work out, so I'm still working remotely in an IT job based in Bangkok.  The kids do well, and schooling goes ok, so the main themes are on track.

This is really about what we've been doing, what a Spring Break is like when you take your local kids to do outdoor activities in the local area.  I guess it overlaps a good bit with what a tourist would do, just without the emphasis on spending thousands of dollars in a week, which just isn't an option.  There is a zoo, aquarium, and museums around, with two great versions related to art and science (Honolulu Museum of Art and the Bishop museum), but this doesn't go into that, even though we covered it all last year.  

Let's go with a few examples to clarify what tourist oriented themes we don't get to:

luaus:  I've never experienced this, even though I spent two years in grad school here, and two other short spans living here recently.  I suppose the food would overlap with what I have already tried, roasted pig and such, then there would be hula or fire dancing.  It's not completely separate from a dinner show at the Polynesian Cultural Center, which I have experienced.

PCC:  this is a theme park based around demonstrating old forms of traditions in Polynesia, in Hawaii and other "local" islands like Guam, Samoa, Fiji and so on.  It's ran by Mormons.  I don't see it as necessarily authentic, but surely most of the show themes tie back to actual cultural history.  In Trip Advisor review comments people either love the experience or hate it, tipped towards people liking it based on self-selection, mostly people on that page going there.

awhile back

Disney / other venues:  I have no idea what a small local Disney outlet is all about.  It's nothing like the full scale Disneyland or Disney World versions, but I don't what it is like.

we did go to a local water park recently, Wet and Wild

whale watching, other boat tours:  we wouldn't go on a boat or take any tours; we are poor locals.  We did go on a whale watching boat tour once, and it was pretty cool, since we saw humpback whales breaching.  You don't need to take a tour to snorkel, although going in the wrong place you will just see the sandy beachfront bottom.

What we have been doing:

Hanauma Bay:  a main draw on Oahu, a nature preserve with great snorkeling.  It's a little sad that high tourist visitation in the past, combined with use of sunscreens with ingredients that harmed living coral, has impacted the ecological health of this area.  They offset that now by requiring use of reef-safe sunscreen and closing the area for two days a week to let it recover, and limiting visitor count.  A good alternative right in Waikiki is Queen's beach, beside the old film screen framework across from the zoo and Kapiolani park (the beach in the local pictures here).

monk seals joined us, sunning on the beach nearby

hikes:  we've did three in the past three weeks, a waterfall hike outside of the city and two ridgeline hike variations at the near edge of the city, one out of St. Louis Heights and the other out of the Manoa valley.  Those last two are essentially the same place.  Manoa falls is the main local hike, along with walking up Diamondhead (volcano crater).  

The great part about local hikes is that you can take a bus for a half an hour or so and be at the foot of a trail, where it's a 45 minute commute for us to get to most local places back in Bangkok, still another 45 minute commute further to completely leave the city.  

Tropical forests are great, the look and feel.  To me ridgelines have an even nicer energy to them, along with great views and pleasant sunny and breezy weather.

Lulumahu falls; a nice spot, but the trail route is a bit confusing

Beaches, Waikiki and others:  some are crowded and not so great, but towards the edges crowds thin and some parts are really nice.  I was seeing sea turtles on most of the early snorkeling outings.  

From our house we can walk over to the nearest nice beach for snorkeling in under 10 minutes (Queen's beach, but it's really just the end of the Waikiki area).  My kids are learning to surf, with my wife trading homemade Thai food for lessons from a neighbor who is an instructor.  It all works out.

the beach near our house, the one edge of Waikiki

mountain view from a North shore beach

12 years ago, in the same place

running:  I'm back to running around Diamondhead, in much cooler weather than I could hope for in the cool season back in Bangkok, down to 21 C or so, in the 60s F.  I've been too busy with the kids to lean into training, so I've only ran that loop three times.  It seems that with any degree of consistency I could train for cardio improvement easily, with working through heat exhaustion dropped out.

including a walk to a park and stretch; the real pace was a little faster

12 years ago, at the local zoo, with Diamondhead in the background

local parks:  parks are parks, to an extent, but the feel of them here is a little nicer.  The weather is ideal, cool, sunny, and breezy, and the tropical theme makes it all look like a postcard.  

Kalani has been playing volleyball in a park league so we've been practicing for that in the nearest park, and I've been to a couple of her practices, and two games (drifting off the vacation outing theme).  We just bought Keoni a new bike, and he has already started biking around the large local park (Kapiolani), and will move on to wherever else through city streets.  

The parks are mostly for locals to have outdoor space access, for events or picnics and such, with tennis courts there, and with a concert venue (Waikiki Shell) and local event area (Kapiolani Park Bandstand), but tourists might also like walking through to see what's around.  There are two good shave-ice places on the north and northwest side of that park (Monsarrat and Shimazu), and local food and fast food options just up Kapiolani road on the west side. 

There is a magical sort of feel to all of Hawaii that you can only really experience if you slow things down and tune into it, and get at least a little space from malls, hotel spaces, traffic, tours, and crowded beaches.  Tourists rushing around to check off a list of things to do might miss it.  

If necessary visitors should schedule in time to walk along a less crowded beach (they're better on the east side of the island, but the edges of Waikiki are close enough), watch a sunset, or to spend an extra half an hour eating a lunch in a park.  Or a waterfall or ridgeline hike is fine, you just need to remember to take a few deep breaths and experience the environment, instead of only the noise in your own head.  

If you have kids getting that break and extra space may seem impossible, but then it's all the more important to guide them to appreciate and love the feel of the environment, instead of just shouting and stomping through it.

Tea as the hottest latest trend in Bangkok

This really is about tea as a local trend, and food trends in general.  A local tea acquaintance, the owner of the Seven Suns cafe, mentioned hosting a booth at a Matcha Mania event in the Paragon mall, arguably one of the two main malls in Bangkok.  I checked it out and it was well received; crowded, even.

lines at Matcha Mania

Matcha booths and shops are everywhere, edging into bubble tea's market share.  I'm not sure how an event theme really could ramp up the "mania" much but it did seem to.  I might have tried a Seven Suns matcha drink there but I did so not that long ago (which I wrote about here) and I wasn't into waiting in line.  I've been considering trying out hojicha soft serve for a very long time--it's around--but didn't finally get to that either.

menu board at the next booth over; it looked ok

that sausage (with a recipe for it here)

I didn't try any tea at all.  I'm not all that into matcha, except in ice cream, and eating a desert item right before dinner made no sense.  I had walked by a nice looking Northern Thai herb-spiced sausage on the way and bought some of that for dinner on the way out, along with sticky rice.

Other tea and food trends

I'm not a "trend" person.  I'm from a small town in North Western Pennsylvania, where time doesn't bother to cause changes in the normal sense.  I like it that I live in a part of Bangkok where the decades passing also doesn't change things much.  I wear plain clothes and drink plain, hot, traditional teas.  I suppose if one looks at the longest term some of those teas aren't traditional, since the story is that shou was invented in the 70s, and I drink a little of them, and I like tea style variations from places like Vietnam and Indonesia that probably didn't exist a decade or two ago.  But the general point is the same.


Related to transitions back in the States I feel like I might somehow completely become a stranger in my own country at some point, but visiting once in awhile helps offset that.  My wife and I moved to Bangkok from Honolulu a decade ago so that's plenty of time frame for changes to happen.  I was just back in PA over the Christmas holidays, and in Washington, DC, and NYC, with a very short stop in State College, where I first went to school (PSU).  All of those places probably lag a little compared to the West coast for transition pace but it was comforting to see it all about the same as I remembered.  Except NYC; I've only been there a few times, so it's not as familiar.

An online contact just mentioned a "cheese tea" trend that apparently became popular in China way back in May, mixing cream cheese into tea as a beverage, topped with a bit of sugar, salt, or some spicing to give it a twist.  I just saw a notice that I can get it here, but I'd be ok with never following up on that.  Oddly that online contact lives in Poland, and she cited a Polish tea vendor's Youtube video about how to make it yourself, I guess all typical of the world getting smaller.

at that mall; not exactly the same thing

As I was wandering that mall looking for that tea event a friend back in the US asked me by message if I'd tried a lighter form of Japanese cheesecake that is popular now, and my initial reaction was "of course not."  Then I remembered that my wife's cousin's wife is a baker, and she gave us a type of cake I wasn't familiar with over the weekend, so apparently I'd already been eating it for breakfast this week (Japanese cotton cheesecake, per her description).  It was nice.  There is more of running theme here than there might seem.

There is an emphasis on things being trendy in Bangkok.  I suppose it varies by where you go, and Paragon mall is a main place for that sort of thing.  That name seems to mean "exemplar" as much in the sense of exemplifying trends than relating to being an ideal mall.  I suppose it's nice though, to the extent that any is different from the others.


One local magazine covers updating preference shifts as well as any, BK Magazine, as in this post about 7 terrific Bangkok tea houses that are very serious about their cha.  Cha is Thai for tea too, for what that's worth.  The first three they mention are worth a look, which includes Seven Suns.  The two others I'm approving of are the old Chinatown cafe (Double Dogs), and the last a good place to spend $20 for small pot of tea, Peace Oriental.  I visited there once a couple of years ago, and it was ok, but I don't plan to ever go there again.


It's drifting off theme a bit but I'm in a FB foodies group here, even though I'm definitely not a foodie.  I cook; I guess that could count as partial credit.  They discuss restaurants more than novel food items, split between considering higher end places and debating who has the best burgers, pizza, Mexican, etc.  All the Mexican food I've tried here was somewhere between mediocre and awful but it would help to be a foodie, to visit restaurants a few times a week and explore further than I do.

The mall visit got me thinking more about trends, and that cheesecake.  Some looking around turned up ricotta cheese pancakes, and a Japanese tart version of cheesecake, and a place selling a hojicha flavored version of shaved ice.  Shaved ice is popular now, not the version from Hawaii, the fruit syrup flavored range, but the variation from Taiwan instead, more focused on fruit integration and use of condensed milk and other sauces.

It's not the same thing at all but I finally saw an I-Hop here, Thailand's first.  That's right, an International House of Pancakes (which I don't think was really all that international in the past).  It's strange to be mentioning low end breakfast places in the middle of discussing tea, desert trend themes, and foodie culture but it does connect.

not exactly nailing the updated diner theme

The common ground relates to the source of trends not always being so trendy where they are from.  A traditional Chinese tea shop or cafe would be a run of the mill thing in China, but in North-Western PA it would seem very exotic.  Who knows when they'll ever get a Thai restaurant back there but here it's grocery store complex food court fare.  Mexican and Italian food restaurants that go out of business due to lack of interest back in the States could potentially match the best related foods versions Bangkok has to offer.


Pancakes are sort of the same here; a bit exotic.  I was a little shocked and horrified that they didn't have bacon, sausage, or hash browns on that I-Hop menu, and I'm still a little rattled about it.  I was a vegetarian for about 17 years so I can take or leave meat more than most but it's still disrespectful to the theme of American breakfast.  It's downright un-American.  Somehow waffles are common here but french toast and pancakes not so much; I'm not sure how that worked out.  Sausage is common here but  Jimmy Dean-style breakfast links would be as out of place as dim sum or pho back in the Midwest (or som-tum, Thai papaya salad; you get the idea).

If this was going to circle back to tea it probably should have already.  Those recommended cafes work as a transition; the two new ones and one older version sum up what's going on in Bangkok.  TWG is on the list, and Twinings cafe might as well be, and Whittard I just walked by in Paragon.  High end commercial, traditional versions of tea aren't really of interest to me.  The one Japanese tea shop sounded nice, and that was about it.  People probably bought more matcha drinks at those booths in that mall event over the last ten days than traditional pots of tea at all of those other places combined over the same time frame, or maybe a factor of ten more.

I'm behind in trying different flavored ices

It seems odd to conclude that only matcha is even close to being the hottest latest trend in tea in Bangkok.  It'll be funny if "cheese tea" really takes off.



Good oolong or pu'er teas just don't seem to fit the mold of what catches on (or mould, for British people).  As with in the US better tea may just gradually ramp up for years until it finally really catches on, and if that seems to happen suddenly the reasons why will probably only make sense in retrospect.