The last time I wrote, we were disembarking in Seward to
catch a train to Anchorage, the last city stop after the cruise in Alaska. By the way, Seward is pronounced
Sue-Ward. The disembarkation process was
a little haphazard, but we finally made it onto our scenic train trip through
the mountains to Anchorage. The train
was a whopping 5 hours or so, whereas a bus would have been only 3 hours. But the train takes us (slowly) through the
mountain ranges so we can see glaciers, snow-capped mountains, tidal/coastal
lakes and possibly other wildlife. The
allure was the scenery, the wilderness and spotting small log cabins along the
way(all of which had the American flag proudly flying).
However, I must say, after spending most of a day in Glacier
Bay, I was a bit over seeing more glaciers and yet more snow-capped
mountains. Yes, they are a marvel, and
yes they are very pretty. But I had my
fill. So unfortunately, the 5½ hours
proved a little frustrating. I just
wanted to get off. Not to mention the
very loud people sitting around me and crowding all over me to get a photo of
yet another piece of ancient ice hanging in the distance. The only interesting
thing (for me, anyway) was spotting a moose.
I can add to the list of critters I saw on the trip!
Anchorage itself was really quaint. It’s not a very big city. Again, we only had a full day in Anchorage so
we didn’t get up to too much. Anchorage
seemed to be the gateway to wilderness exploration – the Alaskan Alps, Mount
McKinley (the highest peak in the US), trekking, camping etc. Instead we wandered the streets, looked at a
few sights and that was about the extent of it.
Of course, there was much eating to be had – the seafood was so fresh
and so succulent!
But there was a bit of excitement in Anchorage. As it happens, the day that we have in
Anchorage happened to be the day that the US President, Barrack Obama decided
to visit Anchorage. There was a
conference called the Global Leadership in the Arctic, which was one of the
reasons for his visit. And boy was there
a hubbub! Streets closed, loads of
police and convoys of SUV’s with staffers, secret police, press and admin. Plus heaps of spectators and even spontaneous
eruptions of political debates all over Anchorage. We wandered around that day witnessing and
experiencing the excitement, tension and criticism of locals and interstaters
who came to see the President and to attend/picket the conference.
The other thing Mr President did was to guest-star in the
Bear Grylls TV show filmed at Mt McKinley.
The Prez even took a couple of selfies with the Bear, posted on various
social media sites. And you can imagine
what FOX News had to say about that. The
Prez also OK’d the change of name for Mt McKinley back to its original name
(and the name that the Inuit gave it a long time ago and which the locals still
use), Denali. Again, you can imagine the
explosion of opinion on the FOX News on that one!
The historic nature of this visit is that this is the first
time that a sitting US President has been north of the Arctic Circle. And we were there to witness that! OK. I
exaggerate… We didn’t actually see him cross into the Arctic Circle. We didn’t even see him at all… But apparently
while we were having dinner one night, his motorcade zipped passed the
restaurant window we were actually sitting by.
Of course, we didn’t notice it… I
was eating the best seafood chowder at the time, made with Alaskan crab,
Alaskan salmon and Alaskan clams… So yummy and required all my attention! Those mindfulness practice sessions were
certainly paying off!
Speaking of dinner, we did have an actual “celebrity”
sighting. Of sorts! We managed to – wait for it! – spend an
evening HAVING DINNER WITH THE US SECRETARY OF STATE, JOHN KERRY and 20 of his
closest Secret Service friends!! OK. I exaggerate, again. He was a few tables away. He might have smiled at me when he saw me,
but it could’ve been gas. But
EXCITEMENT! I got the photos to prove
it! It was all very exciting to see men
in dark suits talking into their sleeve cuffs intermittently. I really felt like we were in a TV show. Mission Impossible or Bourne Identity or some
such!
So that was our exciting visit of Anchorage. It is a quaint small little town, and it was
FREEZING, despite the fact that it is still officially summer there. The plan was to thaw out by sitting in the
sun on a beach in Hawaii, but the weather had another idea.
We flew into Honolulu on the island of Oahu without too much
effort. It was a 6 hour flight from
Anchorage to Honolulu, which was a little taxing. Luckily we were in First…. Then it was a short taxi ride from the
airport to our hotel in Waikiki.
I have never been to Hawaii before so I was really looking
forward to it. We were staying in
Waikiki, which apparently everyone who visits Hawaii stay at. Waikiki is on the island of Oahu which is
also where the capital Honolulu is. For
those like me who didn’t know, Waikiki is a purpose-built man-made “island”
created solely for tourism purposes.
There are a line of hotels along this inlet, with very expensive retail
shopping outlets all over. It was a lot like
being on Orchard Road in Singapore. There
are even teams of Asian tourists with selfie-sticks perched high above their
heads, posing and madly snapping away.
The other common thing was volume of Aussie tourists. You couldn’t walk a few steps without hearing
the broad and nasally Aussie accent ringing out. Unfortunately, it was the worst type of
Aussie tourists that we encountered in Waikiki.
All again, reminding me more and more of being in Asia.
Waikiki seems to be heavily targeted to the Japanese, so
lots of things are signed in Japanese. There
were copious amounts of Japanese oriented tour busses. There were also an excessive number of
Japanese restaurants and little izakayas that I was almost wondering if I was
actually in Japan! It made we question
as to what precipitated this. Why was
Hawaii so popular with the Japanese that Waikiki has almost become Little
Japan? Was it a conscious tourism target
by the Hawaiian government or was the Japanizing of Waikiki a result of a
reaction to the growing influx of Japanese tourists? Chicken or the egg? Either way, it is now a self-fulfilling
prophecy – the more it caters to the Japanese, the more the Japanese will
come. Interesting to know why, I wonder
given the history of Pearl Harbour so close by….
Overall, the sad thing for me is that it didn’t feel like I
was in Hawaii. I really felt like I was somewhere
in Asia. Looking about, all I could see are
the homogenous trappings of “successful” Asian cities like Singapore, Hong Kong
and Shanghai. Much like those cities, a
lot of what differentiate them for other cities, its local identity and local
authentic customs/shops/flavour has been replaced with global high-end retail stores
and familiar Western hotel chains, homogenising these cities. As a matter of fact, there is more construction
underway, which will no doubt wipe out the remaining traces of old Hawaii in
Waikiki, replacing it with ever more high-end hotel chains or retail stores. It reminds me of women from all walks of life
and from different geographical regions that strangely look like sisters
because they have had the same type of cosmetic surgery done to them. All of these cities are starting to look and
feel the same.
The shops, the humidity and the copious amount of
(primarily) Asian and other tourists made it very difficult for me to enjoy
Waikiki. Not to mention the tourist
prices for things. The saving grace was
going to be day trips out to other parts of the island, to Honolulu itself and
maybe to another island. Alas, the
weather made that impossible.
The three hurricanes around the Hawaiian islands are called Kilo,
Ignacio and Jimena. They are Category 4
hurricanes and have warped the weather patterns across these islands. They are aptly named “tropical depressions”
as it totally washed out our plans to spend the 5 days on beaches. We were lucky, though. There were several breaks in the weather
which allowed us some beach time and some shopping/wandering around time, but
the unpredictability of the weather meant we didn’t leave the Waikiki
area. But it was good to finally get
some colour on me. My winter coat was making
me look positively gaunt!
The rest of the time, we managed to indulge in more eating
(bugger the tourist prices – I’ll deal with my credit card bill later!) and more
mai-tais. The one thing that I loved was eating poke (pronounced po-kay). It is a traditional Hawaiian dished of raw
fish and different types of seafood, marinaded with spices and oils. Like the Spanish cerviche. It was really good – especially the octopus
ones. I managed a couple of those and will
most likely attempt to replicate them when I get home. Any takers/guinea pigs for my culinary
experiments?
So that’s it. You’ll
be relieved to know that this is now the end of the trip and of these long
postcards! We leave for Sydney tomorrow
and back to reality (the worst will be my credit card bill, I am sure!). Thanks for reading/skimming through my
account of this latest trip. I hope you
have enjoyed reading them as much as I have enjoyed reliving them to type them
up!
See you/speak to you/email you soon!
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