Mum, it is like Mauritius – said Szymon when we left the airport building on Hawaii’s Oahu island. The air smells the same, palms, plumeria trees and banyans. Same temperature and finally the same, amazing colour of the ocean. But where are the Hawaiians?

We left Osaka on Monday evening and arrived same Monday but noon. We crossed the line of date change and therefore magically travelled back in time. Our Monday lasted 36 hours. Strange, isn’t it? Jetlag is all well and we cannot sleep for next few nights.
Mum, it is like Mauritius – said Szymon when we left the airport building on Hawaii’s Oahu island. The air smells the same, palms, plumeria trees and banyans. Same temperature and finally the same, amazing colour of the ocean. Where are the Hawaiians?

We left Osaka on Monday evening and arrived same Monday but noon. We crossed the line of date change and therefore magically travelled back in time. Our Monday lasted 36 hours. Strange, isn’t it? Jetlag is all well and we cannot sleep for next few nights.

In Honolulu we met mostly people of Asian origin – Japanese and Koreans. Is it another Japanese island? The boulevard along the Waikiki beach shines with shops and is crowded every time we are there (and this is supposed to be off-season). In grocery store – euphoria – they have everything. No more rice and bananas! Then the size of packages made us sober quickly – this is America, everything is big. People too. Then I started to read ingredients and it made my hair rise. How could they eat such shit and pay for it so much money?! We moved from one side of the scale in Asia where a meal for 4 people is 6-8 dollars to the other end where water can cost more than that. The cheapest way to visit Hawaii is to rent an apartment with kitchen and cook yourself and so do we. After 6 months in hostels, homestays, monasteries and other strange places where we ate mostly outside (either because there was no kitchen or it was cheaper) – the sons are in euphoria again. One of them grabs pots and starts cooking, vacuuming while the other grabs the iron and starts ironing. They made laundry too! Perhaps this is a good business concept. Do you want your kid to start loving house chores – send it with us to Asia!

Oahu is not only postcard-like sea, seagrass miniskirts, surfers and aloha. It is also steel-gray sky and low hanging clouds making the views even more impressive. It is beautiful mountains, craters, trees and waterfalls. It is also Pearl Harbor and another (after Hiroshima) lesson of World War II. It is almost empty Bishop Museum with great exhibit on Hawaii and the whole Polynesia. It is also huge, 40-stories tall buildings on Waikiki beach and the biggest numbers of homeless people I have seen in our whole trip. They say other islands are different so let’s check it out.