Anyone been to or J1'd Hawai??

phantom77

Any advice please,want to go to the states but do something different,ie not san diego,any help appreciated

Pythia

My housemate was there all summer. She had trouble finding a job and place to live and ended up staying in a hostel for about a month but I don't much more about it than that. She absolutely loved it though. She also said it's quite expensive. They have an 'island tax'.

Faith

I wanted to go there too, but I was told that Hawaii is the poorest state in the US. There's a high unemployment rate, so it'd be very difficult to get jobs there. I'd say it'd be beautiful though!

daveg

I was there on honeymoon earlier this year. Really nice place.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055017708&referrerid=&highlight=hawaii
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=252790&referrerid=&highlight=hawaii

Absolut

Be prepared to pay pretty much double what everybody else is going to pay for a J1 to mainland US, plus it's more difficult to get a job and accommodation. And att he end of the summer it's much more expensive to go travelling after working since it's so expensive to get flights.

J1 flights alone will cost about €1000, internal US flights from Hawaii to mainland will cost at least 600-700 return, if you're lucky.

soloparadox

I "J1'd" Hawaii last year. Jobs are reletively easy to get, i only know of one Irish person who did not get employed over there, a lot of people including myself worked in two different jobs over the course of the summer (not necesseraly concurrently). A waiting job, if you can get one, offers the best pay, most other jobs aside from labouring offer minimum wage with a small ammount of tips, which is enough to get by on. The cost of living is fairly cheap, especially with employee discounts for food, drink is a joke; 12 dollars for 1.75 litre's of vodka and i think milwaki's best ice beer runs for about a dollar a can if not less, saying this acommodation can get pricey. Trying to get a house is VERY hard especialy since the vast majority of renter's will only offer 6 month leases and have wised up to Irish students, my advice is go over early and hound the newspapers classifieds for rentals, thats how most people get their houses. If you have contacts who went last year get onto their landlords and try and arrange it that way.

Stayed in Maui for 3 months and never heard of an "island tax", kamaaina or residents discounts can be availed of by the Irish since they are not considered tourists. Also Hawaii is not the poorest state in the US, in fact its not even close, its about middle of the road. The reason unemployment is so high is because they have the highest social welfare benefits, which leads to an abundance of minimum wage jobs available.

shakeydude

My friends worked on the Big Island a few years ago and got a job with a company called Metzler. They worked like demons in construction and got the coolest house for dirt cheap. I spent a summer in Boston and know the kips that people stay in but my friends really lucked out