Day Classes in Honolulu/Oahu?

July 13, 2006 1:56 AM

Day classes in/around Honolulu/Oahu or other immersive activities for the loner? (and yes, I realize this is remarkably close to rkent's below question, tho see also the MI...)

Unlike rkent's slant, I'm running very nearly the opposite. This is my third week in Hawaii this year (one week in Jan and this past week) and I'm about beach/ocean/natured out. Also, having circumnavigated now two islands and their attendant mountains, that's pretty well rutted as well.

To further complicate things, while I enjoy museums and the like, I don't much enjoy them solo and I'll be a conference widower Sun-Tue of this coming week. I'm also "fussy to shop for" as I'm not much of a joiner or randomly sociable.

In doing my due-dilligence through Axe, I found a handful of references to classes one might be able to take, day-class stylee. Specifically uke classes and local cooking caught my eye but I'm unable to whack anything other than macrobiotic/gourmet cooking. Classes sounded up my alley, especially those of a uniquely local nature as they were totally immersive and rather solo-oriented, both exactly what I was looking for but I'm game for other suggestions. I'll also be checking in on rkent's thread (which I didn't want to derail) to see what pops up there and to drop any fresh knowledge I pick up on the streets.

posted by Ogre Lawless to travel & transportation (2 comments total)

Also, like Kompressor, I do not dance so hula lessons be out. So too yoga disinterests me.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:18 AM on July 13, 2006

Well, okay. I didn't end up actually taking any classes but I did find a number of immersive activities to blow some solo time:

1) Climbed Diamond Head -- since the missus had to be up early for her show, this worked out nicely. Get there early.

2) Went and checked out the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet which is probably one of the biggest and nicest vendor-dominated flea markets I've ever been to. Lots of tourist-oriented schwag and entrance is a paltry $0.50 -- it'll cost you more to get there! Bought my wife a nice Chinese dress (cheap!), some Aloha-themed scrubs and the world's least expensive puka shell necklacess for later crafts. Word on the street is that there are a couple of reasonable ukulele vendors there, though not having a physical address I could use to track down and beat them up later made me shy away from them. Bonus: they make the staduim facilities open to attendants so food, bathrooms and ATMs are readily available.

3) Took a tour at Hawaii's Plantation Villiage, a neat outing with excellent folks running it. I found out that the "wai" prefix in Hawaiian place names typically indicates the presence of water (being in Waipahu, there were natural springs)

4) Went up to Punchbowl, 'cause cemetaries are kind of solo-even-with-others kinds of places. Bonus: killer view of Honolulu.

5) Drove Tantalus. A fantastic drive, though better done with company as the so-called "locals only" road closure would have been more bearable had my wife not called as I just reached it :( Upside: I could have never found my way down using "the force" to guide me through a million strange streets with distraction.

6) Bought a only moderately overpriced ukulele at Aloha Ukulele in the Hilton Hawaiian Villiage after being sticker shocked nearly to death for what they were asking at the Ala Moana Center and spent a fair amount of time teaching myself chords. This after blowing off the idea on a far-more reasonably priced model in Hilo and then regretting it after seeing an instructur noodling on it on her spare time at the Polynesian Cultural Center. Moral: trust your initial instinct, no matter how many other instruments you have stacking up at the house not being played as often as you'd like. Three weeks after buying it I'm still playing on it an hour or so a day...

As an aside, I came across a class link here which pointed me (by way of hackery) to a kind of interesting community-focused calendar of class-type stuff here, in case anyone actually -is- looking for stuff.

Also, while it would have required some pre-research and reservation making, turns out there are a fair number of places one can take uke building classes, as attested to by P.J. Murray(?)
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:50 PM on August 8, 2006