Bourdain Found Paradise and Told Everyone to Stay Away | Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:04]Hawaii is America.

[00:00:07]As American as anything could possibly be.

[00:00:12]Yet it also never shed what was there before and the layers and layers that have come since. It's a wonderful, tricky, conflicted, mutant hell broth in what for lack of a better word you'd have to call paradise.

[00:00:26]Nowhere's paradise.

[00:00:29]Paradise is don't exist.

[00:00:31]Paradise is kind of in your head. Wait, wait a minute. You look at your window here. You look at those hills, those mountains, all that green, that blue sky and gin clear sea.

[00:00:44]It sure looks like paradise to me.

[00:00:46]This guy knows.

[00:00:48]He's been everywhere. He's Paul Theroux, novelist, essayist, and legendary traveler and travel writer. Of all the places he's been, all the places he's seen, he chose Hawaii to live and he's lived here for 25 years. Does it matter that it's America?

[00:01:08]No, that's a big thing that it is America. It has elements of the third world, the nicest elements of the third world, which is funky.

[00:01:16]Uh there's this the self-respect, there's pride, there's things that don't work at all, and then it's Main Street USA, where we are now. I mean, there's PTA meetings here. They get together and watch the Super Bowl and it's the most Main Street USA or as much as you will find.

[00:01:39]Town is a neighborhood spot in Honolulu's Kaimuki district and as Hawaii is the only state in the union that allows day boat fishermen to sell directly to restaurants, the pan roasted mahi-mahi is pretty damn good.

[00:01:52]It's the not a particularly welcoming or friendly part of the world contrary to the sort of the aloha myth.

[00:02:00]>> Well, that's right. That's right. But no island is. Nantucket is. The Isle of Wight is. Name an island.

[00:02:06]They want foreigners in Corsica?

[00:02:09]Sicily? They want foreigners there? No way. No way.

[00:02:13]Did anyone ever come to an island uh with a good intention?

[00:02:18]People People No, never in this part of the world. Best Best case scenario bring syphilis.

[00:02:24]Yeah. Pretty much.

[00:02:25]>> Yeah.

[00:02:26]Yeah. I mean at the very least they have to >> Captain Cook put his sailors ashore in Ni'ihau, which is just a little bit northwest of here. He was the first haole.

[00:02:35]And like Magellan, Hawaii killed its first tourist. And Right. Philippines killed their first tourist. But people who live on islands, who are born on islands, view anyone who comes ashore with suspicion.

[00:02:52]But I go back to the What defines a Hawaiian?

[00:02:55]Maybe we should go back in our imaginations to could have been 2,000 years ago.

[00:03:00]The Tahitians had this forging canoe way before any other culture on the planet was exploring the deep seas.

[00:03:07]Somehow gets here.

[00:03:09]Someplace in the South Pacific.

[00:03:12]Single most isolated archipelago on the planet.

[00:03:16]Fast forward to Captain Cook and his identification of native Hawaiian, you get a glimpse of these are very productive people.

[00:03:23]They're industrious. They're healthy, strong, and they had time for the arts.

[00:03:28]That was a large population, more than half of what we have in Hawaii today.

[00:03:32]Fully sustainable cuz there was no other choice.

[00:03:35]So, over time, the native Hawaiian population goes to 22,000.

[00:03:40]It's the same story. Introduced disease, inability to to deal with it, people die.

[00:03:46]1926, the public school system would outlaw language and the practice of culture in public schools.

[00:03:54]So, the road to extinction's been well paved.

[00:04:00]Between Captain Cook's arrival in 1778 and today, disease wiped out most of the population. Missionaries came, a booming sugar and pineapple plantation industry, an influx of immigrants from Japan, Okinawa, China, and the Philippines.

[00:04:16]There was the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the US takeover of the Hawaiian government. World War II and finally, statehood.

[00:04:33]The geographical realities of being thousands of miles from well, anywhere else has given Hawaii, to some degree, protection from the forces that eradicated so many other South Pacific cultures entirely.

[00:04:45]In fact, they've arguably been holding back the inevitable creep better than just about anyone.

[00:04:55]What Hawaii looks like today depends on which island you're standing on and to some extent, the reputation of the locals.

[00:05:03]The Hawaiian Islands are not a monolith.

[00:05:06]Islands, that's plural and we are talking eight very different islands with very different identities.

[00:05:16]This is Nainoa Thompson.

[00:05:18]And in 1976, along with a number of similarly heroic Hawaiians, he did a very difficult, very important thing.

[00:05:29]Before 1972, it was generally assumed, even insisted upon, that Hawaii had been settled originally by some random savages who maybe drifted over accidentally from South America.

[00:05:42]It certainly couldn't have been ancient Polynesians. They couldn't possibly have been the kind of sophisticated navigators who could guide a sailboat willfully across the Pacific, across thousands of miles of open water. Nobody could see the canoe here.

[00:05:57]Too beaten, knocked out of you, no dreams, no hope, can't see. The Polynesian Voyaging Society, with the help of crew members like Nainoa Thompson, set out to prove that that was exactly what did happen. There were those in the community that loved this canoe, prayed for it. And there was those that feared this canoe cuz they sensed change.

[00:06:20]You have a 62-ft 12-ton voyaging canoe.

[00:06:23]I mean, it was powerful.

[00:06:26]It changed everything.

[00:06:29]The Hokule'a, a double-hulled sailing canoe, a replica of the kind of craft believed to have been used in those times, and using only primitive contemporaneous navigational tools, sailed 5,500 miles to Tahiti and back.

[00:06:44]A trip that helped spark a Hawaiian Renaissance, a rebirth of pride and interest in traditional Hawaiian culture and identity.

[00:06:53]The success was monumental. It changed worldview.

[00:06:57]That our ancestors were powerful, they were extraordinarily intelligent, they were courageous, and they were skilled.

[00:07:04]And so, we come from them.

[00:07:10]Thompson is a legendary Waterman, and he's continued to sail on Hokule'a's missions. Native Hawaiian, his roots in this valley go back 200 years.

[00:07:20]My grandfather was born here.

[00:07:23]So, I grew up milking cows with my grandfather.

[00:07:26]He spent many years learning traditional Polynesian navigation techniques from a master, Mau Piailug of the small Micronesian island of Satawal. This is a man that was chosen by his grandfather.

[00:07:39]At 1 year old, he was put in the tie poles to be trained in learning the wind and the water and at 5 years old, he was sailing with his grandfather. And then he would never say that it was some some sense of abuse, but only love. He says, "Yeah, when the wave make the canoe move, the canoe make me sick. My grandfather throw me in the ocean so I can go inside the wave."

[00:07:59]And when I go inside the wave, I become the wave. And when I become the wave, now I'm navigator at five.

[00:08:06]So when I approached him, he just said to me, "You're too old."

[00:08:11]"You want someone to know everything, send your son to my island." But he said, "I'll teach you enough to find the island you seek.

[00:08:21]But I can't teach you the magic."

[00:08:24]Why do you think it was important to do such a difficult thing as I mean, it's the same story that you're going to see in Well, everywhere.

[00:08:32]>> everywhere, yeah. In terms of indigenous people.

[00:08:35]My father's mother, nearly pure Hawaiian, chooses not to teach her children language or culture or genealogy.

[00:08:44]Where do you come from? Who's your family?

[00:08:47]What's your link? What's what And And that could have been 100 generations.

[00:08:50]What the voyage did was a reconnection back to feeling wholesome about who you are. Because knowing where you come from and who are your ancestors. So Hokule'a, when it got to Tahiti, it was their canoe.

[00:09:02]This wasn't our canoe, it was theirs.

[00:09:03]And so that it started to ignite this flame again symbolic a bumper sticker or a t-shirt so that you emerge, I'm proud to be Hawaiian.

[00:09:13]1987, it becomes the first language.

[00:09:15]It's mandatory in the schools. Hawaiian culture has to be taught in public schools. Private schools will not have attendance if you don't teach Hawaiian.

[00:09:22]>> Right. Now it's Hawaiian identity is into everything. It's has to be recognized in everything.

[00:09:28]You want to go to Molokai? Yeah.

[00:09:31]That community's powerful.

[00:09:36]When I mention to people, locals in Oahu, in Maui, other Hawaiian residents, that I was going to Molokai, the response was almost always surprise.

[00:09:47]Molokai did not have a reputation for being welcoming. That it was dangerous to go over there. That those Molokai dudes were mean, inward looking, unfriendly, tough as iron, and quick to get pissed off.

[00:10:00]As it turned out, that was not my experience.

[00:10:06]So, we like to brag about what we don't have. We don't have traffic lights.

[00:10:11]We don't have a building over three stories.

[00:10:14]We don't have traffic. Nice. Walter Naki is a skilled fisherman, and today we're headed out for some octopus.

[00:10:22]You know Molokai's stick thing, right?

[00:10:24]It's called the friendly isle. Yeah, but it's famously not the friendly isle.

[00:10:28]It's It's It's supposed to be the most unfriendly isle. I mean, that's what everybody says, right?

[00:10:33]Famously, look at it. Traditionally, we're very, very friendly.

[00:10:38]Now, unfriendly is when you going to try to come and fix it. Right. Make it better. Right. Or try to take something. Right. That's when we become unfriendly.

[00:10:51]The Molokai people have been protective of what their resources.

[00:10:56]So, we have a lot of our natural resources still intact. Still? Yes. But then there's always other people that want to come. Unsurprisingly, fishing rights is an issue around here. Don't come over here sport fishing the wrong place if you know what's good for you.

[00:11:13]So, Tony, this is basically where we going to dive, this area.

[00:11:17]Nice sandy spot.

[00:11:19]Okay, ready? Go ahead. Let it go.

[00:11:24]Okay, we are in here, man.

[00:11:34]What we getting today? the octopus, we're going to culture money is whole.

[00:11:41]So, when you stick the spear in there, it it's going to make him feel he's not safe no more.

[00:11:47]When he comes running out there, you want to stick him with a spear.

[00:11:53]Final step.

[00:11:54]Stun the struggling creature with a sharp blow from a mallet.

[00:11:58]Or if you want to go old school, bite him right in the brain.

[00:12:04]In my case, it took repeated crunching to locate the apparently chicklet-sized organ. It's going to come to you to get out.

[00:12:16]This one died eventually, cuz likely by exhaustion as anything else I suspect.

[00:12:25]You're a hero today.

[00:12:39]While the sailing canoe, the Hokule'a, was a powerful spark for the Hawaiian Renaissance, this was what really set things off. Beginning in 1941 and continuing into the '70s and beyond, the US Navy had been using the beautiful neighboring island of Kaho'olawe as a bombing range.

[00:12:57]You could feel the shock waves as far away as Maui and Molokai. I'm proud of my Hawaiian blood and nobody going to tell me any different.

[00:13:05]People had never been happy about it, but emboldened by the times and by recent events, a group of young activists decided to take a stand.

[00:13:14]In 1976, there were a number of attempted occupations of the island in protest of the bombing.

[00:13:20]None more successful than Walter Ritte's. He and a fellow activist named Richard Sawyer set up on the island and refused to leave. One day we're going to put one queen back over there.

[00:13:30]Managing to evade pursuers for just over a month before finally being arrested and jailed. And her first order is burn down this building and put up one halau which belongs over here. They emerged, of course, heroes. And these protests went on to inspire many others to join the movement.

[00:13:47]>> I'm still alive when that day happen because I want to see our queen back in office. And embodied the independent spirit, the desire for Hawaiian empowerment and sovereignty that today resonates across generations.

[00:14:08]Welcome to what is supposedly the most unwelcoming place in Hawaii.

[00:14:26]E komo mai Anthony, come here brother.

[00:14:29]Come into Kawainui. My name is Hano Hano. Thank you so much.

[00:14:32]>> Nice to meet you.

[00:14:33]>> Thank you. Please come inside. Hello.

[00:14:35]Hi. Aloha.

[00:14:36]This is Kawainui fish pond.

[00:14:40]A shared community space with a sacred history.

[00:14:45]Hano Hano is the caretaker of the fish pond. He's a local community leader here on Molokai.

[00:14:51]Also here is the famous Walter Ritte.

[00:14:54]Everybody knows how valuable all of these stuff is because we can see what happened to the rest of the islands. So it's actually an old school fish farm.

[00:15:02]800 years old? 800 years old.

[00:15:04]Modernizing one old idea.

[00:15:07]And an ancient idea is as simple as feeding your community.

[00:15:12]And this, the island you're on, this place could feed over a million people back in the day. You hear the word again and again on Molokai.

[00:15:21]Aina, which means land and translates to that which feeds you. Springs, mountains, rivers.

[00:15:30]These lands, these fish ponds were managed by their ancestors as a sacred trust. Here, where fresh water from the mountains and fast-moving ocean waters met.

[00:15:40]Early, sustainable, clean fish farms.

[00:15:43]Something in modern times we're still struggling to figure out.

[00:15:47]Cuz you heard what people think about us.

[00:15:50]But the true story is that we have a place of abundance and we try to protect it. We try to protect all of these things that we've been able to protect for the last 30 years and it's getting harder and harder. Every single one of these Hawaiians over here get enough evidence that the state of Hawaii, the Department of Land and Natural Resources have done a terrible job.

[00:16:10]We're not even looking for blame. We're actually looking for an agreement that from today Right.

[00:16:16]we all going to be pono.

[00:16:19]We're all going to be righteous. We're all going to be good. Our planet is in such a bad shape that being environmental, being green is trending.

[00:16:28]And that's what the Hawaiians have always been. So Who gets to be Hawaiian? This is the question. Who is Hawaiian?

[00:16:34]>> Hawaiian is a nationality, bro. You could be Hawaiian. Really? Come on.

[00:16:38]Don't [ __ ] me now. You have got to be I have to be born here. This is a Come on.

[00:16:41]This is a different story. I I I can give you the best explanation. Because you cannot be our blood. Our blood is Kanaka. You cannot be Kanaka.

[00:16:49]Hawaiian is our nationality and you can pledge for being that.

[00:16:52]You see this what we standing on? Our aina. It matters so much that if you love this place and you don't want to develop it, destroy it, abuse it We're on the same team. Yeah. If you eyeing this place and its resources as a money-making uh vehicle for yourself we enemies.

[00:17:13]Right? And it doesn't matter what race, religion, what sex you.

[00:17:18]If you love this place and you can malama our aina the way we love it and our ancestors loved it, oh, we can be more than friends, but we can be family. I'm going to aloha you.

[00:17:28]Pure aloha.

[00:17:29]Beautifully put, brother. Wow.

[00:17:31]That's it.

[00:17:32]>> Right on. Right on, brother.

[00:17:35]It's a pretty impressive spread of food for such a supposedly surly group.

[00:17:41]Slow-roasted pig, grilled kala fish, mullet cooked lawalua style.

[00:17:49]And of course, octopus, known as squid luau.

[00:17:54]Fresh poi, you got to have it fresh, believe me, makes all the difference in the world.

[00:18:00]Freshwater snails called, I believe, hihiwai, harvested from streams way up in the mountains.

[00:18:08]Is that bounty? The bounty. The bounty of our ocean and our mountain.

[00:18:13]Is that squid, octopus, the way you Oh, that's octopus. Oh, wow.

[00:18:16]You beat it, sorry. Right there and right there. I I recognize you.

[00:18:42]Anthony, when when somebody steals this, says easy for us to say, you're stealing our stuff.

[00:18:49]Right? But all of this stuff is dependent on a healthy environment and ecosystem. All right, but then let me ask you, just cuz I'm a bit of a dick, I have to ask this question.

[00:19:00]Bring it on. I have to ask. All right, so we have like 12 more beers and I pull out some nice Spam musubi.

[00:19:09]I'm going to eat them.

[00:19:10]Right?

[00:19:11]Look at me, I'm going to eat them.

[00:19:13]But that's that that doesn't mean it's right and that doesn't mean that's what I'm going to feed my children.

[00:19:18]Our culture made everything we did the best of the best.

[00:19:22]Hawaiians are the only ones that that turned taro into poi.

[00:19:26]You know what I mean? We did everything to the best of the best. So if you even introduce Spam to us, we're going to do them the best. You introduce Christianity to us, we're going to do them the best.

[00:19:36]But whatever you introduce to us, WE'RE GOING TO DO THEM the best.

[00:19:38]Our Christianity's better than I love it.

[00:19:41]So you really disappointed me. You have no way lived up to your reputation as mean, unwelcoming, inward-looking, hostile. Come on, admit it. It's a calculated strategy. It is.

[00:19:53]And I'll leave with the message, if you're watching this show, I hope your heart is swelling with admiration, but bottom line, don't come here. Yeah.

[00:20:02]Yeah.

[00:20:31]The ocean is all around for thousands of miles. A humbling feeling knowing at all times that the ground upon which you live and walk and breathe is but in So in Hawaii, the water man is an important distinction. It expresses the shared consensus that you were able to handle yourself in the ocean, no matter what it throws at you. It implies that you were capable of almost mythical things. The ability to live in the water, handle its many moods above or below the surface.

[00:21:09]Meet Uncle Ross Waterman. A canoe surfing legend and generally accepted ambassador of the aloha spirit. He's offered to share with me a truly ancient Hawaiian space found only on the face of a crashing wave.

[00:21:44]Surfing, a life connected to the ocean and spending time with family and friends on the beach are some of the cornerstones of Hawaiian life.

[00:21:54]Oh, this is Alani's chef. This is Jason.

[00:21:56]Jason, how are you, man? And Tony, that's Keola. Hey, how are you?

[00:21:59]>> All right.

[00:22:00]>> You good? Yes, sir. Alani. How do you do? How are you?

[00:22:04]Keanu.

[00:22:06]What's going on? Hi. Megan.

[00:22:08]Hello. Those are my two daughters. This is my wife, Alicia. Well, hello. Hi.

[00:22:13]Brendan, come say hi.

[00:22:15]Hey, Brendan. How are you? And uh Milton, this is Milton.

[00:22:18]>> Milton, good to meet you.

[00:22:19]So, how would does everybody know each other here?

[00:22:22]We live on an island. Everybody knows everybody.

[00:22:24]>> Okay, that's why did I even ask? That's just the way you roll.

[00:22:28]I think I met Uncle Ross through the water. I mean, just surfing at Lanikai Poka, and then we became like family.

[00:22:34]>> Daughter. Yeah, he's like my And he's like my dad.

[00:22:37]My ohana.

[00:22:38]Each and every weekend Uncle Ross can be found here with his ohana. A Hawaiian word that describes an extended circle of family and close friends. Man, nice.

[00:22:48]We've got lucky today. It's a beautiful day.

[00:22:50]>> Beautiful day, yeah. Even when it's storming, it's nice on the beach.

[00:22:53]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:55]And we'll stay here until that thing goes down.

[00:22:57]It's the horizon.

[00:23:00]When that sun hits the horizon, it's that's time to go home.

[00:23:04]Maui is an island as beautiful as it gets. And sure, it's got its share of portion-controlled cruise line entertainments doled out in digestible bites and complimentary mai tais.

[00:23:16]But you'll also find the sort of beloved indigenous institution like Tasty Crust, as local a place as you're likely to find.

[00:23:26]Daniel Akaka Ito will explain. This is a menu situation or I can order for you if you trust me. I think we're going to hook you up with a the local flavor, so Okay, I trust you. Raised on the Big Island, he's a journalist, the first native Hawaiian editor of a major surf publication, and founder of the local Contrast Magazine. Local culture is very much so trying to point a finger at anybody coming in and go like, "Hey, you're a haole. You don't belong." And therein kind of lies a little conflict you have being a modern-day Hawaiian. And I could still think that's something that we forget about these days is how educated and how accepting our kupuna, our ancestors, were. It was always built on inclusivity. Aloha.

[00:24:10]>> Mhm. Aloha is giving without expecting anything in return. You got this Hawaiian culture that was a product of the Polynesians that populated the islands. Then you got this local culture that's a product of the plantation lifestyle. So, the the Portuguese.

[00:24:31]If indeed all history can be explained by what's on your plate, this is a prime example.

[00:24:37]Behold, [ __ ] the plate lunch.

[00:24:41]The most identifiable and essential feature of the plate lunch is this: a big scoop or two of white rice and potato mac salad. There is nothing more Hawaiian.

[00:24:53]Served alongside a protein like chicken katsu or this hamburger steak, a burger-like patty drowned in dark, sinister, sticky, shiny gravy.

[00:25:03]Or furikake ahi, seared ahi with nori and sesame seed. Oh my gosh, that looks beautiful.

[00:25:10]>> that's going to work.

[00:25:13]All right, let's just I sit this right on top of the rice?

[00:25:15]>> Yeah. Yeah. You want to get some mac salad too on there, too.

[00:25:19]Got to get that sinister gravy on. Oh dude, look what we're eating.

[00:25:24]Okay, they may not be Hawaiian, but they are now.

[00:25:28]They're fundamentally local. I mean, this food, this most delicious, let's be honest, delicious.

[00:25:36]This is not healthy eating.

[00:25:38]And we're kind of paying the price for it right now in the health of the state, which is terrible.

[00:25:45]As I take a bite of hamburger and brown gravy.

[00:25:48]>> like I said, it's just so good.

[00:25:51]If you really want to do Hawaii right, you got to give back. And that's a power that Hawaii and the aina still has is if you show aloha and you give without asking, the aina is going to recognize it and it's going to shower its blessings upon you.

[00:26:09]So, you think traditional Hawaiian culture and lifestyle has a chance against the modern world?

[00:26:17]I think so. The beautiful part about my ancestors is they realized there was a limited number of resources where they lived, so they observed nature to the best possible they could to figure out what were the cycles and how do we preserve this resource. Hawaiian culture can teach the whole world something that it needs to know is we all live on a island and we are all part of the same community. Let's all show aloha to the aina and let's show aloha to everybody else as well.

[00:26:55]>> To be Hawaiian to me needs to be some kind of sense of connection to place.

[00:27:00]And some sense of responsibility for it.

[00:27:04]It should be being honest to place and being honest to what you love and be honest to what you value is a road that's constantly trying to be more and more informed.

[00:27:14]I don't even know sometimes how to be fully honest cuz I don't know enough.

[00:27:20]What I love about the oceans, that's my path.

[00:27:23]That I go on the oceans to seek that sense of truth.

[00:27:42]They said I could see whales like close up.

[00:27:46]And I had reasons for optimism. All week I've been staring out to sea watching humpback whales leaping out of the ocean spouting and frolicking.

[00:27:56]So are things compared to other parts of the world our conservation efforts as far as marine mammals in general but whales in particular are going well? Is this so?

[00:28:06]That's the one thing on the planet that is. They're talking about taking humpbacks off the endangered species list but it's good to hear that they've recovered but then it may make it easy to add to the whaling list again.

[00:28:19]It's mating season in Hawaii for the nearly 10,000 humpback whales that migrate down from southeast Alaska each year. Dr. Joe Mobley of the University of Hawaii has dedicated his career to studying these whales.

[00:28:33]Yeah, I guess the song is supposed to be like the most complex display in the animal kingdom.

[00:28:38]When you're close to a singer you can actually feel it through your whole body.

[00:28:42]It's like 185 dB, really loud.

[00:28:46]Wow.

[00:28:54]They don't mind us at all, do they?

[00:30:40]Oh.