oh such an amazing island i extended my stay from four days to eight days to 15 days and i was there
in march 2021 i loved it and i wanted to share with you a conversation that i had with one of
my friends the other day she asked me christine would you recommend i go to oahu right now and to
be totally honest i said yes you absolutely should it's such a great destination even right now but
there are a couple things that you should know and so in this week's video i'm giving you those
things you should know as well as some helpful tips so that you can be a smarter traveler while
you're there and if you're new here i'm christine with where in the world of ciel and i make travel
videos every week to help you get updated travel so if you like to travel consider subscribing
let's dive in to give you some context on this first one i used to live in san francisco for
many many years as well as new york city and so living and being in a place where homelessness is
a problem is not something that's new to me but i was caught off guard with the homelessness problem
in oahu and the reason why i want to share this one first with you is when people would come and
visit me for example in san francisco i used to own a condo there they would say oh my gosh i had
no idea how bad the homelessness problem was and i was like yeah it's it's really common here and
that's what i want to share with you about oahu is that there is a large homelessness problem
there and i encourage you to do the same thing i just google searched and read some articles around
is homelessness a problem in hawaii and it was interesting to see some of the stats that came up
i'll link some of the government and news articles below if you want to learn more but my tip for you
here and my tip from my friend who's traveling to oahu is twofold the first is just about everywhere
you park your car at hikes at viewpoints etc there are always signs around locking your
car because break-ins are a problem i was solo traveling for a lot of my trip and so that made
me feel a little nervous given i was on the trails alone and that my car was unattended but it's one
of those things where i was always choosing to do these hikes or these activities during the
most busy part of the day so that i would never be completely alone the second thing is just to
be aware that it's a problem and i i didn't test out to see if it was a problem an example would
be there were some really beautiful murals at a school it was a saturday so i wanted to go
take some pictures of them but the homeless camp and a lot of the tents were set up right outside
and so i just didn't really want to risk parking the car and walking around the school in that area
in general and here's another one i'm in chinatown and i'd love to get my takeout order and eat it
somewhere around here but to be honest there's so many police there's also so many homeless so many
homeless people here that it's not that i feel unsafe per se because it's daytime but it's just
not the best to be honest this is difficult for me to talk about but again my goal here
is just to help you to be a smarter traveler i definitely recommend oahu right now and i have
tons of videos about helping you to travel there on my channel all right let's dive into the next
one this next one is about coveted restrictions when it comes to dining one of the things i
wish i would have known beforehand is to not just choose a restaurant and always have a reservation
but to have a backup place where you might get take out and have it be close to the beach and
have a picnic blanket with you so here's an example this has happened to me a few times
where i've gotten take out and i just want to sit down somewhere and eat it and a lot of places
even like public spaces are blocked so that you can't sit there at the international marketplace
like all of the seating there is blocked off and so i am yet driving and just parking my
car somewhere random and i'm gonna eat in the car again so hot how are you gonna get in there
this might seem like a silly problem but it was one that kept happening again and again because i
would often times pick up takeout from places and i would walk for very long periods of time around
waikiki with it because so many of the normal spaces you can sit down at are closed off so just
be ready for that get ready to head to the park get ready to head to the beach and bring your take
out there and always make sure if you're going to a restaurant you've got to have reservations
oh you know what you don't need reservations for the shrimp trucks on the north shore so delicious
make sure you check out that video link in the description below and if you have other helpful
tips drop them in the comments below so that we can all help each other this next one was
a challenge with getting around and i'll give you three examples here one of my favorite ways to get
around when i'm traveling to a new place is just to use uber and one of the things i like to do pro
tip is pull up the uber app and actually look real time how much would it cost if you were to take a
ride from one place to another and so that's one way i get a gauge for what it looks like but one
of the things i realized as i arrived in oahu is that the number of uber drivers that are available
is pretty low and so the original price that i expected to pay for my uber ride to waikiki ended
up being way more when the time actually came to take the uber so that's one i didn't really expect
i ended up using other ways to get around but i'll give you one more example when i was in waikiki it
was raining that day bad and i didn't want to walk to the coffee shop and so i just wanted to
look at the price and you can see this distance is very very small and this is the price it costs
to take an uber just from the hotel to the coffee shop so just be aware of that if you were planning
on using uber as your main way of getting around and actually my recommended way of getting around
this works really well if you're just cruising around waikiki is to use beaky bikes it's the
bikeshare program i absolutely loved it it's basically four bucks a ride but do it this way
where you buy the plan for 25 and it gives you 300 minutes to use ongoing so whether your first ride
is 10 minutes your second ride is 30 minutes etc i loved using biki bike as my main way of
getting around and that works really well but only if you're saying within waikiki i did ride
the diamond head that was kind of a long uphill ride and it also only works if it's not pouring
rain outside so the natural next question to ask if it's not a bike and it's not uber then how are
you going to get around and that's renting a car and i have a couple tips for you here
that hopefully will save you some money my first tip for you is to look for a car rental that's
not at the airport so this was the original car rental that i was looking at with a pickup
at the airport i found that off airport car rental places were significantly less so this is the car
rental i ended up going with you can see i saved a ton of money here the second tip i have for you
is around parking and especially in waikiki that can be a challenge which by the way i have a whole
video on my recommendations on waikiki in the description below so make sure you check it out
but one thing that i didn't know until i was there is there actually a lot of areas around
waikiki with free parking so before you pay those high rates at your hotels make sure you just peek
around and read the signs because a lot of areas are free this last one i got for you it's the
best i'm really fortunate in that i grew up in san diego and traveled to hawaii a lot as a child and
my sister got to college out there so i've spent a lot of time on the island and i don't know how
i forgot but i forgot that bugs in particular cockroaches are kind of a problem it's a funny
story in hindsight but at the time it was not that funny but my first car rental that i had in oahu
had cockroaches in it and it's not uncommon for that to happen and every time i'd open the door
they would scurry around and i just i'd open the door let them settle and then i would get
in the car oh so gross i was constantly vacuuming that rental car before i just returned it and got
another one but one thing to be aware of whether they are in your hotel or whether they are in
your car rental cockroaches are just they're just they're just there and they're waiting for you and
you know ants ants as well really really common in my first airbnb while i was there tons and tons of
ants i would put any food that i was finished with that was trash back into the fridge and then throw
it out directly into the garbage can afterwards but just just know about the cockroaches and
be ready for the ants can i tell you one magical thing that happened in oahu i was flying my drone
it's a beautiful sunset a whale is jumping in the background and there's a baby turtle running into
the sea and i was like this place is magical so i cannot wait for my oahu return if you had some fun
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to see you in the next adventure i'm here every week and i'll catch you on the flip side ciao