We're on Oahu

It was a long flight, but after about 10 hours we made it to Hawaii on Thursday afternoon. The flight was uneventful.

On Thursday evening, we went with Milton & Carol, Taylor, Marc, Paige, Jacob, and Madison for dinner at Irifune. It’s a good local spot that you can read about here and here.

Friday morning we got up early since we weren’t quite adjusted to the time change. We went to the market near Grandma Tong’s place that has the best manapua spot around. It’s a favorite of mine and since we got up early, they were still warm when we got there. Here is a picture of one of the buns. Manapua is a Chinese barbequed pork (char siu) that is stuffed inside a slightly sweet dough and then either steamed or baked. The pork at this place is minced so it’s very easy to eat. After breakfast, we visited with Grandma Tong. She’s getting a new, bamboo floor put in her living room so much of the furniture was moved in preparation for the work.

After our visit, we walked around the Ala Moana shopping center and then went to the beach park near there.


On Saturday we walked around Waikiki, looking at the various shops and the International Market place. I got a good picture of Dianne near one of the statues. We also saw the statue of queen Lili’uokalani that had several leis placed on it. You can read about her here and here.

After taking a quick peek at the west end of the Waikiki beach, we went to the US Army Museum at Fort DeRussy Park. It’s a small, but nice museum that is inside the Battery Randolph that was used to guard the coast. They had two, 14 inch guns as the main artillery for the battery. They said when those guns were fired, some of the windows in Waikiki cracked and many of the surrounding buildings rattled. You can learn more about the museum here and here. I took a couple pictures of a WWII era US and Japanese tanks outside the museum. The museum has a lot of history about the attack on Pearl Harbor and the 100^th battalion composed of Americans of Japanese Ancestry. There is a lot of info about the battalion on the web including the sites here and here.

Saturday evening we went to Kurt and Tracy’s wedding that was held at the Halekulani hotel. It is a very nice hotel on the west end of Waikiki that has a garden courtyard in between two main towers of rooms. The wedding was held in the courtyard. After the ceremony, a reception was held in the ballroom. The food was wonderful and there was a nice program for the reception. One of the highlights of the reception for me was the Chinese Lion dance. Since both Kurt and Tracy are half Chinese, they included this dance as part of the reception. I was not aware of the tradition and there is a nice explanation here. There were two lions with the traditional drum, gong, and cymbal. It was a nice performance that will assure lots of good luck for them.