Hawaii- Oahu

We caravanned with the Beckham’s to the North Shore to visit the Laie temple and the Polynesian Cultural Center. We walked the grounds, snapped some photos, and watched a video in the visitor’s center about the history of the church in the Laie area. Then we walked the grounds of BYU Hawaii and got some Kalua pork and macaroni salad at a L&L Hawaiian barbecue. We continued on to the Polynesian Cultural Center and had a wonderful time visiting the “islands” of Aotearoa (New Zealand), Samoa, Hawaii, Tonga, and Tahiti. We played with poi balls, got Maori “tattoos”, and Chelsea played a stick tossing game in New Zealand. We had a fun time in Samoa as we watched them climb a palm tree, make coconut milk, and eventually made fire after several failed attempts. We listened to the ukulele, a nose flute, drums, and guitars in Hawaii as a very talented musician played while a hula dance was performed. After that, all of us had a quick hula lesson out under a large tree and we took a ukulele lesson from some LDS volunteers. Then it was over to Tonga for the most hilarious show of the day when a white guy from Idaho, a black guy from Dalla,s and a chinese man attempted to play their drums and yell out Tongan war cries. After Tonga, we went to Tahiti for some hip swaying and knee popping action. Their dancing is NOT like the other island dancing, that’s for sure. We had a nice buffet dinner while the Beckham’s went to a luau. Then we enjoyed the most wonderful Polynesian cultural show I have ever seen, “Ha: Breath of Life”. It was incredible. We had excellent seats in the open air theater. The sound, lighting, energy, music, dancing (also fire dancing!), were top notch and I doubt I’ll see anything quite like it again. We drove back into Honolulu, and through a series of events ended up staying the night in a different hotel from the previous two nights. We had planned on camping (sleeping in our car) at a state camping site on the north shore, but this did not work out as planned (much to the joy of my parents) so we got another “3 star” hotel for the night, which turned out to be an awful experience. You can't always trust the rating system on deal websites. The day was wonderful, but the hotel was a nightmare.