Honolulu

It's the first thing that popped into my mind when I booked my flight to Hawaii. Usually I like to start in a small town and work my way up to the big city. But because I had done that in Australia it wasn't that much of a transition going from Sydney to Honolulu. What I did find depressing was the disparity between high-end tourism on the one hand a a lot of homelessness on the other. I was back in the US but it didn't feel like home.

Hawaii has mixed feelings about the mainland US in general and tourism in particular. It has succeeded only in making them feel like foreigners in their own country subject to the rule of the dollar while struggling to maintain their identity. The Royal Family was never interested in becoming part of the US and would have preferred to be part of the British Commonwealth, surrendering only at gunpoint. Many native Hawaiians feel the same today and it doesn't take long for the tension to come to the surface.

Officially there aren't any borders to Honolulu. Many locals however make a clear distinction between Waikiki and downtown. It's a sprawling city that takes in a large area from Pearl Harbor in the north to Waikiki in the south and inland up whatever hillsides will support a house.

My more immediate issue was that anything I wanted was always a long bus ride away. Groceries were a big production and the local ABC convenience stores were pretty unpredictable. Some were souvenir stores. Others were liquor stores. Still others were trying to figure out what would sell on that block (and there seemed to be one on every block).

Some of the glitzy retail was fun. There was some effort to put on some free shows to help share Hawaiian culture but overall it was pretty pricy and not geared to independent travelers.

On the way home, I had a long enough layover between flights to take another spin through Waikiki. This time it came across as way too much after getting used to the quieter gentler towns of Hilo, Kona and Wailuku.

Travler's Tip- if you only have a week, fly direct to Maui.