Hawaii - Arrival and Recovery

Sept 6

This is so crazy to say, but I lived two September 6ths! I woke up for my flight and slowly got ready as my flight was in the early afternoon. I was ready to get the travel day over so I could see my mom and head onto the last leg of my summer trip, Hawaii!

If you didn't know this about me, I have hopes and dreams to move to Hawaii one day. When I am by the ocean, my heart moves in a way I cannot explain. It brings me insurmountable joy and contentment. And to think, I was able to pull off my dream SE Asia backpacking trip, am I too confident to think that I can also have the courage to make the move out here? We will see.

That's what I was most excited for when visiting Hawaii, to scope it out as a potential place for me to live. And to enjoy the beautiful beaches and incredible landscape with my mom. But first thing first, I had to get through this long travel before my arrival.

I flew from Manila up to Seoul, South Korea, where I had a four hour layover. I spent the majority of my time walking around the entirety of the ICN airport for vegan food, and the only option I had was a Jamba Juice smoothie. I got some protein powder in it so hopefully that helped? I wish I could've had a better meal, but a good thing to note for future travel plans. I spent the remaining time in the Starbucks bookstore and it was such a great vibe to get some writing done.

I was SO excited when I hopped on Hawaiian airlines for my plane ride to Oahu. They gave me a Hawaiian airlines eye mask, there was no one sitting next to me, and I took it upon myself to put every effort into falling asleep on this flight. As I write this in retrospect, this day I listened to 18 hours of music. As I was alone and always have music in, plus I have learned how to sleep to my music on the flights and it is the way to go.

In no time, I arrived in Honolulu and I waited in anticipation for my moms flight to land so we could meet up and get our trip started! I was thinking they would have a cafe that I could wait for her in, but all they had was an outdoor Starbucks, so I got a drink and sat on the concrete bench they had for two hours before I got up to find her.

It was such a sweet reunion when we found each other in the HNL baggage claim. That was the longest I had gone in my life without seeing my mom! It's wild when you think of it in terms like that, but my adventure was worth the minor home sickness I felt various times in my trip. But, being with her now and back in America felt as though I was home. Just on a little holiday to rest after my nonstop backpacking trip.

We picked up our rental for the week- a hybrid Prius, zipped over to the nearby Costco, and stocked up on groceries and water for the week. It was a fun stop and truly was the first step of my American reintegration. I flooded my mom with stories, pulling out the new random stories that I was reminded of when the American way was much different to my asian experience.

We then drove up to our place in the city Huuala. It was along the north shore, on the southern side of it, in a beautiful condo with an ocean view. This is where my mom and I splurged, to get a place in which you could wake up and walk just a few steps to see the beaming blue ocean. It was perfect.

We cooked some dinner, caught up a bit more, and then called it a night after our long travel days. We knew there was so much in store the next coming week so we rested well in anticipation of it.

Sept 7

Our first full day in Hawaii! We both agreed that we would chill today to recover from the jet lag for both of us. My time change was literally 18 hours and I repeated the sixth literally which felt so wild because that was one of the first time I crossed the international date line. 

We started our morning watching the sunrise because we went to bed early and with the time change we both were down to get up early, it was nice to watch the ocean from our place and soak in the fact we are staying at a place with an ocean view in Hawaii. It was a nice morning sitting there but there were some things we needed to get up and do so off we went. 

There was a small local grocery store that we passed coming into the city so this morning we stopped there to get the little things we couldn’t pick up at Costco. We got pancake mix, almond milk, butter, etc. Our groceries were much cheaper than I was expecting, really not that far off par of Minnesota prices and that was a nice check for me and gave me confidence at the thought of moving to Hawaii that I wouldn’t go totally broke from those basic purchases. 

Next to the grocery store was a coffee shop, Coffee Cove, even though we just bought a bag of coffee grounds and filters, it was a treat for our first day in Hawaii. The place was across the street from the ocean and just waiting in line was lovely with the view. The ocean still is so novel and amazing to me and I will never take for a granted a moment it is in front of my eyes. 

Mom and I drank our coffees at the cute outdoor tables there, finishing them off as we chatted and caught up. We were there for quite a while, literally talking the whole time and enjoying our coffee whilst in Hawaii, a fact I was still trying to digest. 

We went back to our condo and spent the rest of the morning there. We packed up an afternoon bag and went to the beach just out front the condominium. It was a lovely and quiet beach, so perfect for what we needed: to recover. Our condo had chairs for us to use and we found some shade, and that was where we spent the late morning and early afternoon. We talked some more, read a bit, I went swimming, and it was so refreshing.

For lunch, I went back up to the condo and heated up some food to eat, and while I was doing that, I made mom some noodles and it was ready to go by the time I was about to go back down to the beach so I just brought them to her for her to enjoy a bit of a picnic. It was such a vibe by the water. I kid you not when I say I could spend the rest of my life by the water, and that is how I know I have to live out my dream of moving here. I just love it so much. It’s interesting that this trip for me was really some market research to see if I would like the island enough to move here. And answers I found. More to come about that later.

We stayed on the beach until mom got the urge to go shopping, I mentioned that one thing you need is a dress to go out to dinner at night and she was missing just that. So we went up to shower off the sand and get ready to go shopping.

We went to the shopping center next to the polynesian center, it was just a ten minute drive away from our condo and it was a nice little mall attached to the center. We walked around, picked up a dress for mom, a cute little cardigan, and a postcard. We went to a couple other stores but as you could guess I got tired of shopping quite quickly and wanted to continue with our plans. 

I took a rec from my friend to check out Sunset Beach and go to Sunrise Shack for a smoothie bowl. Mom and I split a mango smoothie bowl, taking it across the street to Sunset Beach to sit right on the sand and enjoy the bowl there. We stayed to watch the sunset, going kind of unprepared because we didn’t have a blanket and when we got up we were absolutely coated in sand. But it was a lovely beach and a great place to watch the sunset. 

That was all we ended up doing for the day and night, we were gassed still from the jet lag, eating a more proper dinner at home and then going to bed early. Mom earlier than me because I was enjoying the nice comforts of a couch and catching up with some friends. The first full day was truly the recovery we needed and it was so nice to have the time to do that.