Hawaii - Pearl Harbor

I was pretty excited when dear hubby said that we were going to Hawaii. To me, I've always had this picture of Hawaii in mind : An exotic place where the sea has different shades of blue, coconut trees swaying lazily in the sun and people lounging about in the heat without a care in the world.

We went together with a group of 33 people. Transited at Incheon, Seoul, Korea, for 3 hours. Our very first impression of Korea was that things were pretty expensive. Hubby bought shaving blades, a bottle of water and lip balm costing RM62.

It was a total 18 hours traveling time inclusive of transit. By the time we arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii, we were feeling a little restless and tired. To add to our exhaustion, we arrived at the airport at 1am. The immigration officers were surprisingly pleasant and friendly. One of the them commented that it was "humid" out there. We, as Malaysian, do know what humidity is all about. We were welcomed with a lei each by our Hawaiian tour guide, Henry.

Earlier when we were in Incheon Airport, we were told by our tour leader that we were upgraded to stay at The Royal Hawaiian (we were supposed to stay at The Sheraton), which is a luxury hotel.

We checked in at 2.30am. We didn't feel sleepy at all because Hawaii is 18 hours behind us. Nevertheless, we forced ourselves to sleep (it was about 3.30am by the time we unpacked) in the cool comfort of the king sized bed.

First day was quite relaxed. We went to Pearl Harbour, waited for about 1.5 hours before we got onto a ferry to take us across to the site where a shrine was built in honour of those who died during the bombing.

As we gazed out in the waters, there were still signs of oil from the remains of the ship. According to our tour guide, Henry, to this day, the oil never stopped leaking into the water from the day Pearl Harbour was bombed.

After Pearl Harbour, we did a little shopping near the hotel. There was an Apple Store nearby and almost everyone went into the place specifically to get an iPad, which at that time, wasn't sold in Malaysia. I was seriously contemplating on getting one myself but somehow the features didn't meet my expectations.

We rested for a short while before heading to Hard Rock Cafe for dinner.