Hawaii 2012

This year I was lucky enough to go to HICSS again. My paper was on the use of the iPad in Education, based on some work by one of my BCom(hons) students.

The conference was held at the Grand Wailea on Maui, which is one of the biggest resorts in Hawaii (if not the biggest). The conference was good and I had a bit of time before and after to relax around the pools and the beautiful grounds of the resort.

After the conference I had one day in Waikiki before my flight back in the evening. I spent the day doing the Hole in the Wall tour by Hawaii Food Tours. We went to nearly a dozen different places (although half were in Chinatown) and tried all sorts of delicious food that is particular to Hawaii. My favourite was probably the char siu manapua (basically a delicious baked cha siu bao with a lovely sweet bread) and some terribly divine deep fried doughnut type concoction called a malasada. I also tried poke), basically flavoured raw tuna. It isn’t a ceviche – the fish is still raw, but was quite yummy. The tour guides, Greg and Jess were great. They’re locals and they had recommendations for all kinds of places to eat for all budgets and tastes as well as lots of advice about places to go and things to see. I can see why this it rated on TripAdvisor as one of the top things to do in Hawaii.

With a few hours to kill, I used the advice from Greg and Jess to do a little bit of a bar crawl along Waikiki Beach. The highlight of that was a lovely creamy pina colada at the Moana Surfrider, the oldest hotel in Waikiki, followed by a heavenly Mai Tai from the Mai Tai Bar at the Royal Hawaiian (where the drink was invented).

More pictures are on picasa.