Place
Hawaii
The least American state, by Harry's reckoning — world-class nature, annexation history nobody advertises, and more homeless people than any other state living on the same coastline.
Hawaii
Harry’s entry point to the United States and the start of a three-week crossing. He calls it the least American state and spends his time there trying to get past the Honolulu waterfront, driving a full circuit of the island he lands on.
Obs: he never names which island. The stops he films — Honolulu, the Dole Plantation, Waimea Bay and Pearl Harbor — are all on one of them, and the page follows him without filling in the name.
His verdict is in the title and he walks it back at the end. The place is not overrated; the price is. His comparison is that the Philippines or Indonesia give you the same scenery for a fraction of the money.
What Harry did
Drove round the island in a rented Jeep — Honolulu and Waikiki, the Dole Plantation, cliff jumping at Waimea Bay, Pearl Harbor, a homeless camp on the west coast, a poke bowl, and a luau to finish.
The cost of it
The reason for the title:
- Hotels run $400–600 a night at the nice end, and every quoted price is then followed by a resort fee, parking and tax. Harry took a two-star at $160 and got the fees anyway.
- Minimum wage is $14.50, rising to $18 by 2026 — but a resident’s point is that food, fuel and rent are rising faster, and there is no cap on rent.
- Coffee, fuel and groceries are all expensive because almost everything ships in; the islands run largely on imported fossil fuels.
Homelessness
Hawaii has more homeless people than any other US state, and 28% of them are native Hawaiian. There are hundreds of tents along the west coast, and Harry spends a substantial part of his day in an established camp of around 250 people that he heard about from a local.
What he found there is worth recording accurately, because it isn’t what he expected:
- It is organised. Individual plots, elected leaders, shared washing facilities, and posted rules — dogs on leashes, no visitors after 9pm. He compares it to Slab City in California.
- People are there by economics rather than by collapse. One man said he lived there by choice rather than under anyone else’s roof; another had been there six or seven months.
- Government help is a shelter place, which residents describe as a temporary fix that doesn’t address mental illness or employability.
- The hardest part, per a resident: not having your own shower.
- Everyone was friendly, which Harry says made it worse rather than better.
The question one resident puts to the camera is the sharpest thing in the video: if a man from this camp applied to your company, would you actually hire him, or would you worry about how it looks? His answer to what viewers can do is simply to be kind, because you don’t know whose story is worse.
History worth knowing
American and European businessmen, with the support of the US government, overthrew the Hawaiian queen in 1893. Annexation followed in 1898 after the Spanish-American War, and territory status in 1900. James Dole — of the pineapple plantation that is now a standard tourist stop — was involved in it, and native Hawaiians largely did not want it.
Harry gives this straight and then caveats himself: an Englishman is in no position to lecture anyone about colonialism.
Pearl Harbor
The USS Arizona memorial. The practical tip: join the standby line and it’s free. It isn’t advertised, and Harry only found out by asking rather than booking a guided tour.
He narrates the 1941 attack, the ships lost and the deaths, and the effect of bringing the United States into the war. His own note is that he isn’t American but feels invested as a Brit, and that the atmosphere is calm and unhurried.
Food and culture
- Poke is from here. Poke means cut-up raw fish, and it starts with Polynesian fishermen and seaweed. Rice arrived with Japanese and Filipino migration from the 1970s; avocado came later with Western influence.
- A luau is a Hawaiian celebration — for a birth, a victory, or no particular reason — that predates tourism by a long way. The one Harry attended is warrior-themed and covers six Polynesian islands rather than Hawaii alone, including the New Zealand haka. Meat is cooked over and under hot rocks for four or five hours.
- The Aloha Spirit — thinking and feeling well of the people around you — is the thing he says the evening genuinely conveyed.
Harry’s tips
- Get out of Honolulu. His whole route is built on the view that the waterfront isn’t the place.
- Take the Pearl Harbor standby line instead of a tour.
- Budget for the fees, not the room rate.
- Come here for the nature, and know you’re paying a premium for it — see judge a place for yourself, which cuts this way as well as the other.
