Find me in Waikiki

Well, I did it! Got on that jet plane and flew to Hawaii. I set foot on American soil at about 2 am local time in Honolulu on Wedneday morning, strangely enough many hours before I had actually left Sydney. Like Back to the Future, my space/ time continum was well and truly out of whack but like Marty McFly, nobody was gonna call me chicken.

I found myself slightly stranded at the airport with two other backpackers- Kris from Sweden and Jim (James) from the UK. Surfers, the pair of them and with a whiny middleaged Aussie we all piled into a beaten up limo with their surfboards and we were on our way to Waikiki beach. If you can imagine the distance between Circular Quay to Manly beach, you're pretty close. I was stoked to be taking my first journey in the land of the free in a limo with two dishy European blokes. I felt I had finally arrived in America. It didn't matter that the hubcaps were about to come off and that I never saw either of them again. America is the dream, not the reality.

The hostel at Waikiki was a shabby, run down fortress with strict rules on a lot of things, but a bit short on cleanliness and protecting the women from the morons who ran the moped rental place next door. Thankfully they confined themselves to making offensive comments, that had they not known where I was staying, I would have given them both barrels in return.

Waikiki beach and surrounds were gorgeous. Tales of flesh eating bugs etc were completely unfounded as I discovered that even the seagulls were puny and well-mannered. The place was head to toe full of old American couples on wedding anniversary and Canadian couples on honeymoon. For those of us single folk "love" was on offer in the form of the local model-looking and impossibly thin prostitutes, American blokes in nightclubs who considered that getting lei-ed didn't involve flowers, and Baskin Robbins ice cream. I'll let you guess which kind I got personal with.

The girls in my room were awesome fun; 2 Japanese, 2 Americans, 1 Pom and 3 Aussies. Being such a relaxed environment we all got along excellently. There was a 78 yr old lady from Montreal who make enough racially offensive comments to get her booted out of the hostel without notice, but we were relieved to see the back of her once we knew that she was safely installed elsewhere and off the street.

A few things about Hawaii- Aloha means "spirit" as well as "hello". It is the essence of good neighbour-liness (is that even a word?) and Mahalo was "thankyou". After a few days there we were all used to it and the Hawaiian people were gracious and kind to me in shops as I struggled to count change (all American notes are the same colour and shape- I don't suppose they will change them anytime soon for the learning impaired like me... :-)

Other highlights included the bar crawl organised by the hostel. Which sounds dodgy but was actually a good way of seeing the local nightlife without paying cover charge, in a large group for safety and getting to know the other travellers. Tip for the day- avoid "Mai Thai". It's a lethal 3 rum combination cocktail that packs a mighty punch. I stuck to other drinks but saw evidence of it's effects in the other Aussie travellers. Crouching crazy hidden dancer would be an accurate description.

A note on dancing. I pass American standards for cool apparently. Once the guys got over the concept of about 7 British and Aussie girls including me dancing in a circle just for the fun of it and not with them. The good thing is that there was a lot of latin American music so plenty of time to samba and do salsa shines (freestyle LA individual salsa moves taught in Aust).