What I ate in Hawaii

Hawaii was a huge food trip for us. I had been dreaming of spam musubi and kalua pig for a looooong time. It's amazing that I've been on 15-hour flights all over the world, but have never taken the 6-hour flight from the West coast to Hawaii.

When I finally went, my food list was pretty substantial, and my expectations were high:

spam musubi, plate lunch, poke, shaved ice, coconut, fruits, McDonald's, 7-11, Banh mi, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, poi, afternoon tea, puka dog, Zippy's, tiki drinks.

1. Food I wished I had but didn't:  Korean, there is not much in Portland so I have to eat it every chance I get.
2. Food I had but wished I didn't: poi, it was not great
3. What should have been on the list: sushi! It was great in Hawaii, and I only had the cheap stuff. 
4. Biggest surprise: poke, I had no idea how many different kinds there were, and they are all delicious!
5. Most delicious meal:Da Kitchen in Kahului, which was a feast of spam, kalua pig, salmon, rice, and macaroni salad

Some favorite foods:

Awesomely fresh coconut from Honolulu's Chinatown. After drinking the juice, they cut open the coconut and you can use a piece of the shell to scoop out the meat.

Combo meal from a place called Zippy's. I got the fried chicken with a corn and rice. Pretty good for an all-night chain restaurant.

On night in Maui I wanted to have a barbeque. We bought everything at a grocery store and ahd hot dogs, hamburgers, and lemon ice tea.

This fantastic piece of art is the Hawaiian Plate from Da Kitchen in Kahului, Maui. "Pork Lau Lau, Kalua Pork, Chicken Long Rice  and Lomi Salmon."
http://www.da-kitchen.com/

All local produce from a Maui farmer's market. Bananas, lilikoi, papayas, oranges, starfruit, avocado, peaches, and a tomato. Yeah, that was about two day's worth of produce for us. We made three trips there in only one week!

Guava, Mango, and Tamarind (my favorite!) shaved ice from Ululani's Shaved Ice in Maui.

Three different kinds of poke (marinated ahi tuna) from the Foodland supermarket in Maui. Foodland was our go-to place on the island. We must have gone every day and tried about ten different kinds of poke during our stay.

Kalua pig plate lunch from Da Kitchen. Best Kalua pig I have ever had.

Fried Spam Musubi from Da Kitchen. I loved how the spam was wrapped in the middle, instead of on top. It made the musubi much easier to eat. 

McDonald's spam and Portuguese sausage breakfast plate. At this point, I was a little sick of spam, though I loved the Portuguese sausage. read more about McDonald's Hawaii here.

Japanese meal set from a restaurant in Honolulu. This was pretty authentic, but given that there are so many Japanese people in Hawaii, I would imagine competition for Japanese restauratns is fierce. This palce was packed and we waited a long time.

Also at the Japanese restaurant in Honolulu, we ordered poke and agedashi tofu.

Hawaii Instagram Diary

Snapshot from Hawaii

Amidst colorful Hawaiian leis.....

 

Photo Diary: Best of Hawaii

Well, I know my first post on Hawaii was less than glowing, but I did enjoy my time there. Besides, I traveled with my camera-obsessed partner, who took almost 800 pictures in one week. This took some narrowing down.....

Kihei, Maui

So many kinds of Ahi...mmmm

Local fruits at the farmers market

Fried Spam musubi

I don't know these people...

The sunset

Mango, Tamarind, and Guava shaved ice

Local fruits

Gardens near Hana

Ubiquitous palm trees

Honolulu high rises

Honolulu ally

The pink building

Honolulu sky scraper

View from our hotel in Honolulu

Beach somewhere on Oahu

Traditional Japanese meal

There's no place like home...(not even Hawaii)

Wailea, Maui, Hawaii

After a month long hiatus from blogging and, quite frankly, any meaningful writing, I have finally returned to my tiny virtual home. I wish I could say that I've been too busy traveling to exotic locations to find time to write about them, but sadly that isn't the case. 

For a number of reasons, real life has taken up the better part of my time and I just haven't had a chance to sit down a write anything. Furthermore, as of lately, I have been cursed with a huge case of writer's block, and more upsetting, blog identity crisis. Ok, time: I can make more of, writer's block: I can overcome, but blog identity crisis?! Who has ever heard of such a thing?

In truth, as I spent the last couple weeks watching the sun rise and set over the Hawaiian islands, I was stuck by the painful realization that I had not one damn thing to say about it. Sure it was beautiful, and yes, I took plenty of pictures, but words didn't exactly pour out me as they usually do. And as I sweat through the tropical heat on jungle hikes through Maui and city walks through downtown Honolulu, I thought long and hard about what the hell I was going to do with my blog when I got back.

When it comes to Hawaii, it's not like there is  nothing interesting to say. I mean there was spam,  coconuts, the cemeteries...but all the topics seemed like those that fill a vapid space between the small talk and the stranger. I was overcome with an urge to write about something deeper, but every time I tried to write about Hawaii, I ended up writing about myself. 

The thing I thought about the most in Hawaii was home. That's Portland, Oregon. It's not where I was born or raised, but somehow, in a snowstorm I encountered between a trip from Tokyo to Berlin, the city became more of a home than any place I've known. Before I left for Hawaii all my coworkers were saying things like, "Oh, you'll love it there, you won't want to come back!" or "I'm so jealous, I wish I was going to Hawaii. Actually, I wish I could live there!"

Well, let me tell you, as a person who just spent two weeks on Maui and Oahu, I was ready to come back, and I would not want to live there. 

It's not a bad place, and I can see why many people think of it as paradise, but I'm sorry, there's just no place like home. As I thought about this while watching the full moon over Kihei, I was struck by a sense of disappointment that I didn't fulfill to my coworkers' prophecy of not wanting to come home. I was kind of hoping I would find a place so nice that I would want to stay put forever. But after two weeks of sun and sand I practically ran back onto the airplane, ready to return to cloudy mornings, gourmet food, and coffee shops.

But here's the more pressing question: Aren't I supposed to love vacations so much that I don't want to come home? Isn't that why people go on vacation? For being a world traveler, it's strange that every time I go on vacation, I just can't wait to get back. That right. Get back to my chilly city, my sweet sweet love, my 9-5 job, and even my monotonous daily routines. In this aspect, I feel like a failure as a traveler. Part of me believes that to be a successful traveler I should be restless, adverse to routine, and constantly thriving in new environments. But I'm the type of person who wants to be settled, not forever, but for a while. I want to feel like a contributing part of some society, even if it's not my own. So what kind of traveler does that make me? 

Woops, sounds like an identity crisis.

Even though I have found my city (for now at least), I'm still trying to find myself. I'm not really a shallow, small-talk kind of person, and this blog isn't a small-talk kind of blog, but hey, this is a work in progress.

(which is basically code for: get ready for some superficial posts on spam! The deeper stuff, I'll save that for another time....)