Day 8

Honolulu International Airport

There are only 3 restaurants here: California Pizza Kitchen, Chow Mein Express, and Burger KIng. We were pretty hungry and wish we had enough time to grab food outside of the airport, but we were in a hurry to return the rental car and the traffic in Hawaii is unpredictable.

Obviously, all the food here was overpriced and below average as we kind of expected.

BBQ chicken pizza

Lemon chicken, green beans with chicken, and chow mein.

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For those of you who read through every single post,

THANK YOU for sharing this journey with us 🙂 It was a crazy week with a lot of ups and downs. We had to really figure out how to communicate (in the car and in the ocean). We are both stubborn kids (as you can imagine) and there were undoubtedly a lot of mistakes along the way (we probably made six turns to finally pull into Makoto sushi, HAH!), I think we still managed pretty well. And it was a good thing that Billy did all the driving because the highways and Google maps are confusing (you’ve been warned).

Good luck to all those visiting Hawaii! We wish you the best and we hope that you have a WONDERFUL vacation!

Sincerely,

Tiff & Billy

Day 8

Magic Island

JUUUST before we left, we managed to squeeze in one last beach 🙂 Here’s Magic Island, right beside Waikiki!

It’s a lagoon so the water is a bit more calm. I think it’s perfect for floaties + inflatable donuts.

Day 8

Waiola Shaved Ice

Mango shaved ice with mango candy, condensed milk, and mango syrup.

Hawaii Five-O (Lychee, Cotton candy, and lilikoi) with lilikoi syrup

Day 8

Tantalus Drive

This is supposed to be a long scenic drive to the topmost part of Hawaii. But OK, it was actually not that scenic. We drove through mostly residential area (Thanks Google Maps…) And well, as the sole navigating professional, I fell asleep on the ride. It was BRUTAL. Anyways, there was still gorgeous scenery at the top 🙂 I’d say for those who can’t hike Diamond Head but still want to see all of Hawaii, this would be a perfect drive.

Unfortunately, I think most tour buses can’t take this route because it’s quite steep and windy so it could be hazardous for a tour bus.

Day 8

Ono Seafood Takeaway

Each combo comes with a free drink.
Lilikoi is actually another name for passion fruit 🙂 I loved it!

#3 Hawaiian Style Ahi and #7 Spicy ahi

I loved them BOTH! I wish we discovered this restaurant sooner because they were definitely my #1 poke restaurant. They were also kind enough to recommend me some flavours since the employee saw me staring at the menu for so long not knowing what to pick. Apparently these were the most popular two choices.

#5 MIso Ahi and #8 Wasabi Ahi

I found the miso ahi pretty tasty but I wasn’t sure what made it a “miso” flavour as opposed to soy sauce flavour. On the other hand the wasabi ahi was very strong. It was yummy at first but it was too strong for me to handle without mixing it with copious amounts of rice.

Day 8

Manoa Falls

Last day here in Hawaii 😦 We were very sad to leave but we also think we went to pretty much all the places we wanted to. The only thing is I wish we got to buy our snorkeling gear instead of renting it so that we could have gone to multiple places to snorkel (but that’s a story to be discussed on a personal blog).

Our last day was just a bunch of “what should we do” “oh, how about this-” type of activities. We also had to meet Twu at 1:00 pm to give him our souvenir from Vancouver. I’m so glad we got him something, because it turns out he got US something. Everyone, if you decide on staying at Twu’s place, you should buy him something from your own city/country as a thanks 🙂 He is just so kind and generous.

After we briefly packed our belongings, we went out right away to go to a waterfall. This waterfall is one of the tallest waterfalls in Hawaii and it was only a 30-40 min hike to the waterfall.

Does anyone know what kind of seed/fruits are these?

This is where Jurassic Park (the original film) was filmed! It actually looked a lot better in real life.

“Did you hear that?! What is that?”

Treacherous grounds

Thousands of bamboos!

Why does nobody follow the rules in Hawaii??

We’re there!

Mandatory suspension bridge photo 🙂

Day 7

Marukame Udon

So… when we got back to the hotel, we had to quickly rinse off first because there was sand up our butt cracks (not joking). And as soon as we were done, about every single restaurant was closed (also not joking). So after walking around for 1 hour, we decided that we only really had one option left for cheap late night food.

This is the only restaurant we went back to twice (even though the second time sucked), because we were pretty much sick of eating every other food in Hawaii. I couldn’t even finish my noodles this time, albeit I did get a large instead of regular because I was REALLY hungry at 10:00 pm. I just lost my appetite, because hot noodles on a hot night is a terrible combination. ALSO, we barely made it into this restaurant, so we were lucky we didn’t have to settle for KFC/McDonalds 🙂

HINT: If you want a good meal, make sure you get food before 9:00 pm, because almost every restaurant is closed by then.

Niku udon — has the same broth as the Kake udon topped with sweet beef and caramelized onions.

Kake Udon — Our traditional broth with a light fish and seaweed taste.

Day 7

Sunset Beach

Sunshine Girl #1

Sunshine Boy #2

Day 7

Waimea Falls

Sign leading to Waimea Falls

Note: The admission fee is $16.00/adult or $12.00/student. There is only one way to get to the bottom of the waterfall.

The waterfall has a warning sign that says that it may be contaminated with Leptospirosis. IF you have open wounds or cuts or incisons, do NOT go into the water. You might get a bacterial infection or even sepsis if it’s not treated immediately.

Asides from the waterfall, there is also a 50-60 min walk through the botanical garden and bird conservatory. Billy and I found this part kind of boring, so to keep Billy busy, I made it into a game where he wins something if he catches a photo of every bird on the “Bird Identification” pamphlet.

Araceae

Red cardinal

Gingers-Zingiberaceae

Family room and gathering room

Kitchen and dining room

Performance room….?

Tiki Ring Toss

Billy got it in in like 5 tries. He almost LOST IT.

Day 7

Dat Cajun Guy

Another popular food truck in Hawaii that was actually featured on the Cooking Channel.

Louisiana Style BBQ Shrimp

We also tried the oyster po boi which was tasted really fresh. There were 3 deep-fried oysters in a lot of special sauce and 5″ French bread. I thought it was a pretty good deal.

Billy and I both liked Dat Cajun Guy more than Giovanni’s Shrimp, as they were both really popular food truck spots. It seemed like Giovanni’s appealed to the Asian tourists a lot more since the owners were Japanese. Overall, the seafood is excellent and very fresh at both places and the sauce was very unique and flavourful.