The Mitt Romney sign by the driveway of a house just before my bus stop was, in retrospect, a reminder that I was entering a different place, and not just for the obvious reasons.
On my first weekend here, I decided to visit the Polynesian Cultural Center. Described as a “Polynesian-themed theme park or living museum located in Laie, on the northern shore of Oahu”, it consists of eight simulated tropical villages in which “performers demonstrate various arts and crafts from throughout Polynesia”.
Sounds interesting, right?
And indeed it was interesting and quite worthwhile to visit though I would also say that it is overpriced and doesn’t allow the visitor enough time to really appreciate the historical displays - well, certainly not if you decide to attempt to dash from one show to another. Each was 25 mins long with a 5 min dash in between. Although I have never been on one, it brought to mind what life might be like on a cruise; bouncing from one planned entertainment to another lest anything be missed.
The shows were generally good being a mixture of entertainment and education. I first visited the Fiji but I arrived late and couldn’t get a seat inside the small pavilion. The show included participatory singing and beating a stick on the floor and dancing. I did get to see the bare-chested male dancers “warm-up” outside. The Hawaii show educated me as to the true nature of “hula” as distinct from the Tahitian grass-skirt version popularised on TV. The Tahiti show was disappointing; I could see nothing from the back of the room. Tonga was both good and bad. The good was a very enjoyable routine in which three members of the audience were selected to participate in a drumming routine. The chosen three had very different personalities and this made for lots of fun and good humour. The bad sided was the near constant simultaneous translation that was taking place just behind me as a tour guide explained everything to his charges. The same problem marred the Aotearoa show and was perhaps worse as it was indoors. This program also had a semi religious tone to it which was rather spoiled by the incessant chatter.
The final show of the day, though, turned out to be the best: Samoa. This show coincided with the start of the evening Luau to which I had not bought a ticket. So the audience was small and more intimate. But, the MC was a star and a comedian. He spoke Chinese and Korean as well as English, and he engaged in comedic banter in all three languages. It was hilarious to see a dark-skinned Samoan chide the Korean (or, was it Chinese?) members of the audience for not knowing their own languages - and it was evident from the reactions that he knew his stuff. He also gave a brilliant demonstration of how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together; one couldn't help but feel that prospective Survivor applicants should watch him do his stuff. He had a fire going within 2 mins flat - even using damp coconut straw! He also demonstrated how to get milk out of a coconut.
The shows were also a chance for the MCs to remind the visitors - less subtly perhaps - of another mission. The center was opened in 1963 as a way to provide employment and scholarships for students at BYU-Hawaii on whose grounds the Center sits. It may be uncharitable of me to have assumed, therefore, that most of the students I saw were future missionaries in training. Uncharitable or not, I never really escaped that feeling with every friendly greeting offered by every wholesome helpful attendant - and there were many of them.
But, if the guys were all Mormon boys, then a definite highlight was the canoe pageant which took place in the middle of the afternoon. Six canoes, representing the six “major” cultures, on which rode costume-clad young men and women generally doing a traditional dance routine, were rowed past. And, since the traditional male costumes did not involve shirts, it was a heaven-sent opportunity to photograph hot hunks as much and as openly as I wanted. Manna to a gay man could hardly be better.
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