Hawaii - day 4

Tuesday, Dec 14: Another breakfast at McDonald's. Then an early flight from Hilo to Honolulu.

Hilo is also an interesting airport (though not quite as much so as Kona). There wasn't a huge line at security, and the process wasn't as rushed as it is at other airports. And then here is the waiting lobby:

The actual gates are small, but you can wait here until they start boarding. I think this is much nicer; more like a train station.

Honolulu is more like the standard airport. From there, we headed first for the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC).

Along the way, we stopped for lunch at a big yellow van called the Shrimp Shack. Apparently they're famous, but they're not that great. Shrimp was pretty good, but not good enough to justify the smallish serving sizes.

We also got some food from a neighboring convenience store. Here's spam, rice, and furikake wrapped in nori, much like like a giant spam nigiri:

It was pretty awesome. We had 3 of them.

The PCC was very touristy. For me, it raised the bar for how touristy something could be. It made me a bit uncomfortable, actually. But I guess if anyone's going to profit off of the commercialization of your cultural symbols, it might as well be Hawaii's top university (BYU - Hawaii). And although it is inevitable that concessions will be made to accuracy for the sake of being tourist-friendly (e.g., lack of mention of the Philippine-American War in their History of the Philippines poster), they can be held more accountable than, say, Disney.

The relationship between the PCC and BYU is pretty interesting, actually. According to our tour guide, about 90% of the PCC's employees are BYU students on a sort of work-study program. There's also a very impressive Mormon Temple next door.

Anyways, we'd gotten the "Ambassador" package. It started with waiting around the entrance area for a tour group to assemble. They had some art on display, and I liked these turtles:

Recently we've been watching the Nickelodeon cartoon series Avatar. One of the characters wields a club that appears rather ineffectual in the TV show. Here, we saw a life-size (but probably ceremonial) version that the one in the show is probably based upon, and it's much more intimidating in real life. (no photo)

After our tour group assembled, we were led to have souvenir photos taken and then to a canal where they would have a dancers performing on boats. The campus was very pretty, but the immaculate landscaping did make it look rather like a theme park.

There were many fish in the canal and gumball machines dispensing fish food. Of course, there is only one possible outcome to that combination:

As we waited for the dance show to begin, we noticed that small children have a natural affinity for chasing birds:

We sat rather far back to stay in the shade, so we didn't get a great view of the dancers. Also, I still wasn't over the theme-park-ness of the whole thing, so I didn't take many pictures. Here's the canal and the spectators:

After that, we were led to a series of presentations put on by representatives of various islands. One common theme was a "repeat after me" approach to teaching new words, which seemed a little silly. The only one I still  remember is "Samoa" (SaahMOa).

One presenter was very entertaining. He told jokes (some of them in Japanese) and demonstrated some cooking techniques. Apparently you can squeeze coconut milk directly from the coconut flesh, which we will have to try next time we have one. He also sent another dude up a palm tree:

In another presentation, I saw a haka for the first time. The war haka is pretty damn intimidating. Before this, I never really understood the meaning behind those war masks with the bulging eyes and tongue stuck out--it seemed so obviously a caricature. But now I've seen that the human face is indeed capable of making that expression, which gives it new meaning.

We also saw a drum performance and took a ride on a raft thing. And then it was time for dinner!

Dinner was a luau with fresh leis for everyone and a pretty good buffet: ahi poke, kalua pig, poi (taro paste; didn't really like it), pipi kaula (dried beef), a chicken thing, and cakes and bread pudding for dessert.

After dinner we saw their show called "Ha: Breath of Life". Various performances tied together with a journey-of-life narrative. I actually fell asleep during the first half because it was too loud; I couldn't tell what was going on. The second half had a lot of people playing with fire. There was one part that involving sitting on fire while wearing flame-retardant grass skirts. It ended with a fire-knife performance.

If you're wondering, fire knives are these giant knives with wicks on either end soaked in something like kerosene:

Why does it have to be a knife, too? It's hard to contemplate how it could get any more dangerous. Here they are spinning the flaming knives around:

After all that, we headed to our hotel (well, it was an extended stay sort of thing: full kitchen ensuite and no housekeeping service) at the Royal Kuhio in Waikiki. It's a really nice location: walking distance to the beach and also easy to get onto the highway.