Merrie Monarch is a yearly Hula competition held in Hilo. There are craft fairs during the day, a parade the the dancing in the evening Wednesday-Saturday. A lot of the dances and chants are traditional dances memorized and performed as a way of passing on the story of Hawaiian history and legend. It is very interesting to watch and see all the floral and feather fashion and the different dance moves. It is televised so we attended the craft show but watched the rest on television. We were advised that it is better seen on TV because when you attend the actual event you are so far away it is hard to see. That and the tickets were already sold out so our only chance was to stand in line all day on the free day, Wednesday, it hopes to get decent seats. Hannah told us that next time we should just stand in line because it would have been good to have the experience even if the seats were bad. I’m with her and kind of regret not doing it, but I didn’t have a bad headache on Wednesday so it would have been rough…..hind sight is 20X20.
We tried normal lu’au tyep food, the kids weren’t a big fan of poi, but they did like the salted salmon, kalua pork, and coconut with sweet potatoes. They liked the long transparent, mung bean looking, rice noodles too. We didn’t buy anything but it was very fun to look at the hand made items and people watch.
Owens Endeavors 