In this video, I’m sharing what it was like spending about 20 days (basically three weeks) in Honolulu, Hawaii for HARDI 2023—an accounting conference hosted at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa. I take you along from the travel day (flying out to Hawaii for the first time) to getting settled into the dorm setup and figuring out the meal plan situation. Since this is a PhD travel vlog, I tried to keep it realistic: where I stayed, what daily life looked like, and how conference travel actually feels when you’re still trying to be a functioning student. A big chunk of the trip was also just exploring Oahu outside of the conference schedule. I show a bunch of the food I ate while I was there, plus three hikes I did during the trip. I also spend time walking around Waikiki and other parts of the island, and I caught a free firework show, which was honestly such a fun, low-effort highlight. Toward the end, I share more details about HARDI 2023 itself—what the conference was, what I was there for, and what this kind of academic travel looks like as a third-year accounting PhD student at the University of Waterloo.