Went to Pearl Harbor first as from the book I read, it says that the free tickets would run out by 11 or 12 noon. It is free entrance but we had to line up to get the tickets to enter. There was a video presentation about how the attack of Pearl Harbor and then, we would take a ship to the USS Arizona Memorial.
We were allocated a time to view the video presentation and so, before that, we went to the museum to read up more about the war and see the war ship models.
This is a picture of the USS Arizona ship that was sunk by the Jap planes at Pearl Harbor. So, they built a memorial on top of the sunken ship for visitors to pay respect to the lives lost which they say the bodies are still in the water..
We could view the memorial from where we were...
We could also see this USS Bowfin Submarine...
After looking at the museum, I went to the gift shop as I still had time before the video show and I spotted someone familiar who is from Singapore. Saw Admiral Teo Chee Hean, my ex-boss. He was with his family and someone whom I guessed was his bodyguard as he does not walk close to him but stay away from him yet keepng an eye on him.
I went up and greeted him, introduced myself and shook hands with him. He told me he was here holiday with his family and asked me if I was here on holiday. Well, I asked to take a picture with him but he declined. Well, of course I was sad and disappointed...but CT kept telling me that it was normal since he was a public figure.
Anyway, after the video show, we went up the ship to go to the memorial place...nice view as I sat behind the ship.
It was very windy when we got off the ship to the Memorial..
This is a closeup of the Memorial.
In the Memorial, we view the names of soldiers whose lives were lost...
We could also see the ship underneath the Memorial 
and see oil still coming out from the gun turret...
We could only stay in the memorial when the ship comes back to drop another group of people. When we went back to the land, I spotted a war veteran who survived the war in Pearl Harbor. He is a volunteer here chatting with people and signing autographs..
From the article aboved, it was stated that during the attack, he was carrying ammunition for the ship's 3 inch 50mm guns on the fantail. He was severely wounded when a Japanese bomb exploded near his battle station. Everett was so badly wounded that he was almost given up for dead.
After months of recuperation, he continued serving in the navy and has been honored with seven distinguished medals including the Purple Heart.
Amazing guy...
After our trip to Pearl Harbor, we went back to the hotel, bathed and checked out as it was 12 noon already. We placed our bags in the car and went sightseeing.
Made our way to chinatown for tim sum lunch. I was so happy that coincidentally, we went Chinatown and downtown on Sunday as it was free parking along the roads. Cool...
The food was nice. I had my favourite dim sum food- char siew bao, pork ribs, chicken feet, carrot cake, egg tart and we ordered seafood crispy noodles. Very full.
In Chinatown, we went to see the open market, selling fresh produce and stuff. Very nice and made me start to miss the kind of variety as the Asian mart in Mobile is quite small and not many choices.
We walked a lot, seeing the different parts of Chinatown and went downtown to see the palaces as well....So lots of walking and burning up what we ate.
Lots of interesting trees in Hawaii...here is one of them.
Saw the Christmas Decorations in downtown as well..
Then, we went to Aloha Tower and Marketplace to see the harbour. We went up to the 10th storey of the Aloha Tower to see a view of downtown from on top..yup, it was free definitely..
After that, we went to the car and drove to Ala Moana Beach Park, parked the car and walked along the beach to see the sunset.
Another interesting tree in the park...
We then walked opposite to Ala Moana Shopping Center which was a huge shopping centre with few hundred shops..very nice place.
After sightseeing and window shopping, we parked our car back at our hotel and walked out to Waikiki row of shops again to have dinner. We ate in "Jack in a Box" which was a fast food restaurant which CT used to eat when he was in US for work. He missed eating that and we do not have that in Mobile..so I promised him that we would def eat that when we are here as he was very excited.
I had a spicy chicken burger with fries and dr pepper drink, while CT had a normal beef burger..which he ordered wrongly. Haha.. It was not too bad. Quite huge hamburgers but kind of got used to the US size already.
After dinner, we went window shopping and bought some Macademia Choc for his colleagues back in Mobile.
By the time we went back to the hotel, it was about 9pm. Collected our car and headed to the airport.
I will def miss Hawaii and the wonderful scenery...and cool beaches/waters.
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