Two Islands - Hawaii

Hello friends,

It’s been a while. I laugh as I write down these first few words. It’s been over a year since any update.

If I had to make up an excuse - work was busy and there’s only so much to shoot during a lockdown.

Even with the hikes around the woods and parks, I’ve exhausted everything around me.

Here’s some work I did while traveling.

Now there was supposed to be another post before this one. It was our first series of trip after the pandemic started, New Port > Florida > The Hamptons. The three trips spanned across three months, that being already 8 or so months ago (correction - at the time of publishing it's been a year since those trips.) I’ve been meaning to write, but just couldn’t get anything down on paper. So I realized I needed to write about Hawaii before I forget everything again. Hopefully I’ll get those other three trips later on.

But for now, Two Islands - Hawaii

Let’s Time Travel.

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Took me a while to figure out what song I would share for this post.

Summer II - Jannabi (2021)

Hope it goes well with this post.

So this ended up being a spontaneous trip. Where is the furthest place we could go domestically? Not sure why that was the motivation for this trip, but hey it worked.

Flying masked up isn’t so fun, but it was good skipping cold New York weather for some nice sun. On the plane we said, “Now I remember why we pushed off going back to Hawaii for so long. I forgot how far it was.” 10+ hours were rough, especially when we had not been traveling for a while. But it was worth the wait

Island Number 1 - Oahu

We landed on Oahu and made our way to our hotel in Waikiki. It was dark, warm, but welcoming.

And the time difference was quite awkward - 6 hours behind NY time. It’s not enough to just flip night and day, but not short enough to just ignore and push through. Basically it meant waking up at 5AM and seeing the sunrise every morning. Can't complain ;)

And the island looks even better in the morning.

We started out with the Diamond Head Trail Hike.

Much steeper and strenuous than I had expected, but I left all the hiking planning to my cousin and I followed. But again, worth the long trip.

Afterwards we drove along the upper shore and pulled aside to see a random beach. After all, I had come for the water.

Now if you know me, you know that I can spend all day in the water - and we really did. Day 1 of the beach. Boom cut by the shallow corals. Day 2. Boom kicked shallow corals again. Day 3 - Boom cut on pointy corals again. I never get cut under water. NEVER. I’m looking back at my pictures and I see the number of small bandages on my feet increasing as the trip progresses. But hey, the water was still great and I came back with some cool scars :p

I think this next leg was the highlight of our Oahu. Calm clear waters and soft sand. But first we hiked up to the pill box. Two decommissioned observation platforms that look deceivingly easy to reach. It was great, but again, super far.

We made our way back down to the shore and got to enjoy the water up close. There were people swimming and paddle boarding to those two small islands, but we stayed closer to the shore. Another day well spent by the waters.

Driving across the island kind of reminded me of Taiwan. I’m still not sure what it was - It may have been the city surrounded by mountains? But it was strangely comforting and the entire time I said, “You know what, I could see myself living here.”

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Since we kept getting up before the sun did, we went out to see the rise a couple of times. I think I saw at least 30 sunrises and sunsets in the span of that week. Mathematically impossible you say? Then how do you explain all of these pictures?

And the next part of our trip was, surprise, more water and swimming :)

Hanaouma Bay Nature preserve, oh and good food all around the trip too. I've decided to sit down and finally finish editing a video for this post. Hope you can enjoy it at the end.

Oh and I forgot to mention, Hawaii was really, and I mean really good about vaccinations and masks. They did the best out of all the places we’ve visited during the pandemic. They asked for vaccination cards and IDs everywhere

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Island Number 2 - Maui

We flew over to Maui, a much shorter 40 minute flight this time. Maui was definitely much quieter than Oahu. It felt less like a city, so it was a good way to ease the end of the trip.

We stayed on the south-west part of the island but traveled all around the island. We tried doing the road to Hana, but found it to be longer and curvier than expected. I did make reservations for the black sand beach on the other side of the island, but we’ll just have to come back for that another trip ;)

On the road to Hana, we stopped by the twin falls. It was a nice hike and although swimming was tempting that day, let's save that for another day.

The food was great and the weather held up the entire trip. And I think this was the best part of Maui for me. It wasn't a special beach that we had to go and find, but just the beaches by the hotels.

I’ve never seen a sea turtle so up close before. I kept my social distance but I think the turtle was a bit surprised and how persistent I was with swimming with him :) More of my new friends in the video.

Just a full day of swimming and sitting in the sun. It was nice. And we made it back to the hotel just in time to see the sun setting again for the 100th time that week. We still haven't grown tired of it yet.

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I definitely enjoyed this trip. I think I needed the break and it was nice getting away again. Other than the fact that Hawaii was so far away - it was a very nice trip.

I would like to visit again one day - But you have to give a chance for the memories and pictures to burn in.

It’s been a while and I had forgotten. There’s so much more I am remembering as I am writing and organizing my pictures again. So I’m glad I'm writing to remember.

Hopefully my next work won’t take another two years to complete, but until then - Keep warm everybody.

Joshua Kim

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Summ