In today's video, we're going to discuss if right now is a good time to come to Hawaii, so let's go!
What is going on youtube greetings from beautiful lush Waikiki hopefully you can see the beach a
little bit behind me but if not we're going to go check it out in a little bit anyway
the title of today's video is should i come to Hawaii now and i'm going to be honest with you
i'm not gonna answer that question directly today but what i am gonna do is tell you what
the current travel restrictions are here in hawaii and then we're gonna go down to waikiki
we're gonna walk around the downtown area so you can get the overall feel and vibe of what's going
on and see if that's something you'd be interested in joining and then i'm gonna head down to the
beach and i'm gonna tell you why i decided to come to hawaii now but first it's early in the
morning here it's about seven o'clock 7 a.m and i'm craving some coffee haven't had my coffee yet
luckily for me one of my subscribers reached out mary and said hey i see her in waikiki
i've got a buddy that owns a coffee shop down there called big wave dave's surf and coffee
she said he makes the best thai coffee i love thai coffee so that's what we're going
to do we're going to head to big wave dave's surf and coffee and grab a thai coffee and
talk about travel restrictions and requirements for getting to hawaii now so let's go
hey we found it hopefully they actually do have thai coffee here i didn't actually see
it on the menu when i looked um on my uh on my phone app so hopefully they still have that
uh can i get a medium thai latte thai boxes did you want that ice they're hot today
all right got the thai coffee
oh that's yummy yummy yummy you can taste all the condensed milk
if you've never had a thai coffee before they're pretty sweet so if you don't like sweet drinks
you probably won't like a thai coffee but let's find a spot to sit down enjoy the coffee
and talk about the travel requirements and restrictions to come to hawaii right now
all right got the thai coffee this is amazing very thank you for the recommendation
okay so let's talk about the travel restrictions and requirements so the first thing you need to
do in order to take a trip to hawaii is you need to register for an account on travelhawaii.gov
basically you upload your flight details and that creates a trip once that trip is created then
72 hours before you fly you got to go get a covet test it has to be from an approved hawaii kobit
test vendor they have a link there you can click on it you'll see where your test will be accepted
from if you don't get a covet test when you arrive in hawaii you'll have to quarantine for 10 days
it's a self-quarantine but you'll have to do daily reports to the state of hawaii on the status of
your health the next requirement that you have to do is 24 hours before you fly you have to
fill out a health questionnaire basically asking if you've if you've had a fever if you feel sick
once you feel out that questionnaire the state of hawaii will send you a little qr code
and when you go to check into your flight there'll be some people there that'll scan your qr code so
they know you did the health questionnaire and that's it that's all you have to do to get to
hawaii i know some of you are going to ask well what if i have the vaccine so unfortunately right
now the vaccine does nothing for you again this is as of tuesday may 24th i believe so make sure you
check the website to see if there's any updates to this information maybe at some point they'll
accept the vaccine a quick little side note if you want to travel inter-island so go from oahu to the
big island or wahoo to maui or kauai you also have to have a kova test 72 hours before you fly there
and then another one before you fly back they do accept the vaccine instead of a test but
only if your vaccine was received in hawaii unfortunately okay so it's still early in
the morning so i'm gonna wait a few hours and then we're gonna head down to waikiki
and check out the overall vibe to see if it's something you'd enjoy being a part of
obviously that'll be instant to you i'll just snap my fingers and we'll be there
so as you can see the moped rental places are open that's actually the place that i went to
yesterday to rent my moped for about 35 for the day you can rent a moped it's a great
way to see the island i highly recommend doing that especially if you've never been here before
they'll give you a map on the streets you can go on because you can't go on highways on mopeds
you don't need a motorcycle endorsement to ride a moped i'm not sure if you know that
um you just need a driver's license it's a great way to see the island and you'll get to see
the most beautiful beaches in the world you'll be able to get away from waikiki it's pretty awesome
if you've ever been to hawaii before especially waikiki you'll know that this is a fixture in
hawaii this is the abc store so for a while these abc stores weren't open some of them still aren't
open but the ones down here in waikiki are don't worry if you pass one up you don't have to turn
around and go back because there is one literally about every 200 feet there's an abc store
all right we're going to stop here for a second so i want to show you this so you'll see
that the street splits off into two streets here there's actually three streets that run parallel
to waikiki you have kalakawa over there which runs right along the beach you can see the beach from
there the street behind me is called kahio it's also kind of like kalakaua but a little bit less
commercial and then on the outskirts you have a street called alawi boulevard and it runs along a
little canal that also runs parallel with waikiki beach it's a really cool place to run just a
little note from when i used to live here back in the day back in the 90s kohio had the reputation
of being kind of a red light district they kept that stuff off kalakaua it doesn't anymore
it's family friendly so you can take your family down there but i highly recommend checking out
all three of the streets that run parallel to waikiki and also the little side streets that
connect those three streets that's where you'll find all the mom and pop type of restaurants
and things like that it's pretty cool we're going to go down kalikawa the main street
don't be like me and jaywalk
so it's about uh like i mentioned around 11 11 15 here so all of the fancy fancy stores
aren't opening aren't open yet and they are open but if you come here at night
like the chanel the gucci the doche gabbana they're all they all have huge lines to get
in it's kind of crazy that people come to hawaii to buy that kind of stuff but you know to each
their own actually it looks like the bottega veneta is open did i pronounce that correctly
but even in waikiki you still have mom and pop type shops
like this tattoo shop here which is open
you can see just wait for service
like i mentioned abc stores freaking everywhere
so real quick i forgot that i haven't given you my own
history in hawaii so i've spent a total of nine years living on oahu which is the island we're on
i came here in 1994 my first military assignment i was 19 years old i stayed here until 98
i went to italy for a couple years and then i came back here so i basically spent my entire twenties
on oahu and why i always mention it as being kind of a home away from home for me people ask me all
the time has it changed a lot so this area i'm walking around right now in waikiki i'll be
completely honest with you it hasn't changed much it's pretty pretty much the same as it was when
i was coming here as a young man but the rest of this place has definitely changed the rest of oahu
is almost unrecognizable to me to be completely honest with you other than obviously when you
actually get to the beach that's the same it hasn't changed much but yeah so it's pretty cool
i was going to wait to come down a side road but i saw something kind of iconic that people who
spent any time in hawaii especially in the military will definitely recognize so
this is moose's this is kind of a legendary hole in the wall pub that a lot of people go to
obviously it's in waikiki it's one of the legendary places here on oahu that's been
here forever the most legendary place used to be a place called the wave waikiki but
unfortunately it closed a while back so i guess mooses is kind of the old guard when it comes to
to bars to go to here in hawaii i was never a big fan of mooses to be honest with you but a lot of
people love the place so you'll see the louis vuitton already has a line that line is like
constant at the louis vuitton that there's always there's a line there even when there's not covered
but now obviously um there's going to be a line there so just know that when
you come down to waikiki if you're planning on going to louis vuitton it'll be pretty packed
so at a lot of intersections they have these like vertical crosses so we're
gonna cross and get on to the waikiki beach side of of uh kalakaua avenue so
so you'll see a lot of people mess up outside
that's not a requirement here you don't have to mask up outside you do have to mask up
inside so just be aware of that when you come here but you will see a lot of people masked up outside
normally when i come to waikiki i would go down to the beach using this access right here
it just goes straight down to the beach but i'm going to take you down a little bit further
continue the little walking tour of waikiki and show you a little bit more of what's going on
this used to be one of my favorite shops there's actually a couple of these in waikiki a couple
quick silver shops this is the small one but back in the day this was a really popular
a popular brand not so much anymore but back in the day this is another one that's new but
i used to go to honolulu cookie company like way back in the day but it was in this old crappy
building i think on macaulay avenue anyone who's familiar with hawaii
but it looks like they're uh they're stepping it up let me try not to get hit here
but yeah so oh let me show you something real quick so this is a menahune water truck
so menehune are these little these little dwarf looking guys
kind of kind of like leprechauns they're kind of like the hawaiian leprechaun
they're like these little magical guys that uh live in the rain forest
and uh there's a lot of really funny things about them i can't remember any of them but if
you know about the minnehuni uh type down into in the comment block uh share the info with us
i can't remember exactly what the story is behind them but i remember it's kind of leprechauny
so here we are beautiful famous waikiki on a tuesday and there's a lot of people here
always take off the slippers that's what they call them in hawaii
before you start walking on the sand so you're not kicking sand up on people
look at all of the freaking surfers out there
that is crazy insane look at all the surfers so we're going to come down here and get get the
toes wet try not to get knocked over by any of the surfers but as you can see waikiki on a tuesday
is freaking jumping
up i just got the shorts wet so i'm gonna take you to more secluded beaches in future videos because
this really isn't my vibe i love waikiki i like coming down here really early in the morning when
there's nobody here which i mean this is obviously super beautiful you got diamond head behind me
but i'm gonna take you to even more beautiful beaches in the future but i wanted you to see
that hawaii is open for business man you can rent surfboards you can charter these boats
to go out and sail around the island you can do all kinds of things right now here in hawaii you
know what it's too busy here for me to sit down and explain to you the reasons i came to hawaii
i'm getting hungry so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna snap my fingers and i'm gonna take
you to one of my favorite little outdoor spots to eat here in waikiki so let's go
can i get the cowbee bimbap medium uh let's go spicy
a green tea okay it was kind of uh it was kind of busy at the restaurant so
figured i'd pull up a little spot underneath the banyan trees here
eat my lunch let me show you what i got here real quick
so that's a kind of a korean barbecue place and they have some really good
cowbee i don't know if you can see that see let me try it in front of you
break out the chopsticks here so i love cowbee steak mmm that's such a hawaiian thing even
though it's korean hawaiians love korean style barbecue see the rice all the hot sauce in there
mmm that is so good i highly recommend tops topped
it's really really good okay let me put this down for a second
that is so good
got my green tea here
also really good all right so let's talk about the reasons
why i came to hawaii so the first reason is despite what you saw at waikiki
most of the normal tourist hot spots are pretty empty so this is like a once in a lifetime chance
to get to go to some pristine beaches do some amazing hikes without the huge crowds so that's
the first reason the second reason is it's much more affordable now than it has been in the past
for instance my condo that i got on airbnb for two months i rented for 1200 a month which i know
sounds like a lot to some of my budget conscious friends but to have a condo actually my condo is
right it's almost in this frame it's a little bit over this way i'm almost right in downtown waikiki
and to have a condo uh on a short lease in that area it would normally be two thousand
twenty two hundred dollars a month so it's about a thousand dollars cheaper than it normally would be
and the third reason uh is hawaii is a great jumping off point to travel internationally
especially if you're going to asia i mentioned before that in july i'm headed to thailand
i'm taking a japanese air flight to japan and then from japan to thailand so those are the reasons
that i think that it is a great time to come to hawaii right now thanks for watching do you
mind if i film you for a vlog i'm doing okay my youtube channel is called 30 in a wake up you'll
see it 3-0 and a wake-up you'll see it you'll see yourself on there probably thursday hello