It's the first morning for us in Oahu, we went to Shor, restaurant for buffet breakfast at Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort & Spa. The waitress attempted to arrange a table right at the edge of the open floor to view the ocean directly, but two other guests who were in front of us got it. This frustrated my son for several seconds.
The buffet was tasty and the bird apparently loved the foods here too.
Yes, I got this Volkswagen Jetta TSI from Enterprises and enjoyed driving it. I couldn't recall how to open the cover of the gas cap of my VW Santana more than 20 years ago, and didn't know how it worked for this new model either. I couldn't find any control on the dashboard or below it and wasn't able to open the cover directly by myself. I actually would figure it out later by pushing it to open.
Following the GPS instruction, I drove through some of the local routes and got onto Freeway. At one point of time, I switched to the wrong route, which was probably H2, but got back to the right one pretty quickly. After more than 45 minutes, we were approaching North Shore. Then I had taken Gopro off my head, so I used my right hand to take a clip. Anyway, the ocean couldn't be seen in it, though I could view it in my eyes remotely while driving.
My son searched online to locate a beach where turtles were told to be seen occasionally. When we actually had arrived there, I passed it due to the crowded parking lots on the other side of the road where I couldn't find a parking spot. Taking a U-turn a mile ahead, we came back to the beach to park on the ocean side out of the fence of a lucky resident's house.
The tides were high and water was blue. Though we didn't see any turtle or this wasn't even the right beach my son was looking for, the view was breathtaking.
Hanging around for 15 minutes, we drove back on road to turn into the direction to a historic town we had planned to come back to visit when we were seeing it earlier. The town itself was very small but the beach was wider and tides were rougher. I even wished to put my swimpants on to test the tides while taking some clips with my Gopro.
Resetting the GPS, we were on our way to Polynesians Cultural Center. Gas tank was only a quarter filled, so I stopped at a local franchisee branded as Foodland to pump the gas. While buying the drinks in the store, the gal asked me the phone number to tell that I could get 10% at any store of this franchise by giving this registered number in their system. After driving back on road, I just realized that we had arrived at the destination when hearing GPS instruction.
It's still too early, the ticket office wasn't open. My son and I walked around for a while to wait. The saleman at ticketing counter recommended us Ambassador Tour, which sounded very comprehensive. We eventually joined it because we wanted to appreciate as much as we could and did plan to watch the night show from the best available seats at night.
We started our tour with four others who were immigrants from Brazil long ago. They are living in Port Collins, Colorado now. Since we bought the tickets for buffet lunch, tour guides took us to the restaurant first.
While waiting for the tour guides, I talked about the dream team led by Zico back in 80s with those Brazilian-Americans and told them I was influenced by watching their skills on TV when I was a teen. They took a picture for us at the entrance of the restaurant.
The tour guides were all students from local colleges, I didn't pay attention which college they enrolled but did see a BYU campus referred on a road sign right before approaching the center. Of course, University of Hawaii has multiple campus all over the island. The leading guide was an Engineering Major as this tall guy claimed later and his assistant was a girl from Texas majoring Hospitality. Oh, a foreign student from Korea greeted us at the beginning. My son was a little bit irritated by the question of where we came from repeatedly, given so many Chinese tourists from Mainland China visiting Hawaii, we might be considered as two of them. We do speak mandarin between ourselves, but visiting a place with all the names and terms in English, we did want to join a tour guided in English. In addition, our daily activities were typical Americans', so might have more common things to talk with Americans than Chinese. However, we don't deny Chinese being our native language, even for my son, who considers himself truly bilingual. By the way, he learned his grades of the 3 courses yesterday he took in Winter Quarter, averaged at 3.33, all above average in each class.
The tour guides were very knowledgeable and friendly, at one stop, they gave us the local crafted wooden necklace, I will keep it as a very valuable gift from this tour.
I skipped a group event by sitting out of it. Since we wanted to keep full energy for the night show, which would last until 9:30pm, I would like to take a rest. Though I did sleep a lot of hours last night, I still felt a bit sleepy. At a bathroom break, I used both hands to cover my face for several seconds to release the exhaustion, which triggered a gentleman whose family joined the tour with a larger group after our lunch to concern my health. I said to him that I was fine but just tried to kill the sleeping bug due to jet-lag. He mentioned that they came from Louisiana, stopped at Atlanta Airport, then flew here for almost 9 hours, so he could feel my pain.
Before the performance on the river kicked off, I chatted with this gentleman and found out his daughter being a senior at LSU and majoring Animal Science and he graduated from Auburn, which triggered us to talk about two Tigers. It's interesting that he met his wife at Northern Louisiana University before it was rebranded UL-Monroe. I knew UL-Monroe playing in NCAA Division I but had never known this history. I had pleasant conversations with this family through the end of the tour from time to time. The only thing I forgot to ask them was why they didn't carry strong Southern accent.
The performance on the river was authentic Hawaiian and very inspirational, which impressed the tourists sitting by both sides of the river to cheer excitingly.
The next show was more interactive in which tourists from Florida, Canada and Philippine contesting with the host. It brought a lot of fun.
Earlier, we watched the performers' show on the river, later on, we were in the canoe ourselves. I should say this tour being arranged very well.
Almost at the end, we watched performers climbing the tall tree while others played fire sticks on the stage skillfully.
We ended to go back the same big restaurant where we had had our lunch. The dinner became a feast. We were shown the huge BBQ pork, maybe even an entire pig on the stage.
My son ate too much different stuff today, so just had a full plate of foods for the dinner, then walked out to digest. I had more desserts, then got out of the banquet earlier than most of the tourists.
In order to enjoying the night show as much as we could, we headed back to our car to rest for another hour.
The night show was fantastic, especially by watching it from second row where was just several feet away from the performer. The show had the entire Polynesians' history depicted and I learned a lot about their heritages through the night. As far as I could tell, newborn baby was the hope for their future and Fire was a magic for their life. Unfortunately, filming wasn't allowed.
Heading out to the parking lots again, we could see so many tour buses parked there having the tourists picked up to return to their hotels. It's a magical night at the center too.
In the darkness, I still could sense the ocean by the left-hand side while driving back to Waikiki. The scene must be very beautiful under the sunshine. After parking the car in the garage, I went to ABC store to grab a beer, a small bag of Italian sausage and two bowls of instant noodles while my son was going to the room by himself first. I was hungry again.
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