except it's in the friggin' middle of an ocean....thousands of miles from Upstate NY....while Virgina or the Carolinas are a couple of hours away.
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Was sent out at Kaneohe air station to install software about that time. Saw the same poverty away from the tourist areas. Waikiki Beach was a disappointment - very narrow. Looked like Miami West with all the hotels and condos. No likee Windward Side.
Toured the Kahuku sugar mill and thought the Windward side was better as it was not as heavily commercialized. Went to the beach where the notorious surfing "Banzai Pipeline" on the North Shore was, but no monstrous waves - gotta have a storm offshore for that.
Downside: Typical work ethic of the Pacific Islands - everybody but the Hawaiians came to work on time. They shuffled in whenever they felt like it with no penalty. Ate at a Chinese restaurant and some drunken Hawaiian stands at the door and yells that "haoles" (non-native) are like skunks - black and white and stink. The owner was embarrassed and hustled the guy out.
Upside: The mixed race women were the most beautiful I have ever seen. Asian/Caucasan girls were stunners. (I couldn't remember my name half the time.) Budding politicians didn't have much money so they got beautiful high school girls to stand along the road, waving to the drivers and holding up placards with the candidates names. Most trashcans on city streets had "mahalo" on them (Thank You). The Big Joke going around was that some tourists thought it was Hawaiian for "trash can".
A beautiful place in some spots but overblown tourism, native slackness and bad attitude kept me from ever going there on a holiday.