Day 2: Ala Moana mall, starbucks, move out of hostel

Spam and egg for breakfast! but I forgot to take a picture of it, so just take my word for it... it was delicious. Took this picture on the walk back to our hostel (the beach is a block away from our hostel!).


Same place as above. Gordon enjoying a diet Mountain Dew. The beach and water looks deserted in this picture, but it's actually not. There were a lot of people here and it more crowded as the morning turned into noon. This looks like a great place to swim in the ocean; it's very shallow and there's wave breakers to keep the water calm. A few people were even sunbathing on top of floating mattresses. We'll probably jump into the water tomorrow.


Just a little man-made waterfall near the edge of the sand.


Random view of the beach (close to the same area as the pictures above).


A statue of a probably-famous-Hawaii dude. Dunno, didn't read the inscriptions.


This is the picture of the front of our hostel! Ok, lets describe the hostel a little bit since there has been requests for such description. It's very dirty. There's a lot of people (most of whom are loud). Roommates come and go at all hours of the day. I couldn't shake the fear of having my possessions stolen (but then again, I have a low opinion of the morality of strangers [grew up in LA, that's my excuse]) . The lodging that Gordon and I had was shared with 5 other people (it was an 8 people room). It was a very small 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment unit (with a kitchen along one wall of the bedroom to the front; so it was more like a living room/kitchen/bedroom all in one). I apologize for not having pictures of our place; completely forgot to take them. There's two bunk bed in each bedroom. Gordon and I were the last to join this unit, so all the space to store things (cabinets and closets) were claimed. I basically left my luggage on the floor and slept with everything else on my bed (top bunk). There was a black guy, a white guy, an asian guy, and two white girls. Everyone kept to themselves except the black guy, he was friendly and initiated conversations. I want to re-emphasize that this place is dirty. Don't let this picture fool you (it looks a lot nicer in this picture).


Even though the hostel wasn't up to par with my standards, it did have it's perks. Besides being a block away from the ocean... it was right next to an ABC market (the brand of convient store that's on almost every block of Waikiki, no exaggeration) and trolley stop. This was a drink that I picked up from an ABC market so I could break $10 to get bus fare ($2 one way).


The trolley that we took to the mall (pink line).


Gordon on a trolley to the mall.


A random ABC market along the bus route to the mall.


This canal runs through the island and leads to the docks. It's a pretty cool site to see while driving over it.


The outside of Ala Moana mall (I heard that this is suppose to be the 16th largest mall in the world. I dunno, I think the Glendale Galleria is just as big, so I wasn't impressed. Most of the stores were out of my price range, but I think they were catering to rich FOBs. It also had some strange stores that I don't expect to see in a mall. There was a Longs drug store and a grocery market IN the mall (not attached to... not across the parking lot... but literally in the mall).


Koi fish display in the mall.


A larger view of the Koi fish display.


A fountain with more koi fish.


This is a store/arcade in the mall called Jungle Fun. Gordon spent a good deal of time playing a game here, trying to win a pair of Bose headphones. I think we spent at least a hour (not all at once; we left and came back a few times) on that machine (probably around $20 was invested in that game). I'll try to post some videos of this later on (there's plenty of videos... actually, my camcorder battery died while recording).


These are the rules of that game.


More details about the game.


Disney store... Eeroye followed us to Oahu. Brought his army and everything.


The mall had a Lids store. I ended up buying a new fedora.



I didn't take pictures for the rest of the day, but a lot happened.

After our hours at the mall, we took a trolley back to our hostel, rested for a little, then went to the closest Starbucks so Gordon could get some work done and I could spend some time reading my Orcs book. This was when I realized that my left earplug was broken.

We were suppose to meet Gordon's SB friend (who lives in Oahu... actually he lives across the street from the mall that we went to earlier today) at 5, but he wanted to go to the gym first. So we were suppose to meet him in the food court at the mall.

Took trolley ride back there. Gordon tried that game a few more times. I bought new earplugs from Longs drug. Then we met up with Gordon's friend (Kalii? I think that's how his name is spelled). But instead of eating in the food court, he drove us to Taco Bell and we ate at his place.

It turns out that his parents are out of the country for the week, so he suggested that we crash at his apartment for the week (our hostel gives refund, so we took him up on his offer). He dropped us off at our hostel where we proceeded to pack our belongings and have a very brief/detached good-bye with our hostel-mates.

Now, here we are, cleaned and showered, blogging in a very nice, beach-facing apartment, 36 stories off the island.





I just took some pictures of the view from this apartment. The first one is with everything on auto, the next two has the night-time feature on. But these pictures can't do this view any justice... it's so much nicer in person (the brightness of the lights is actually somewhere inbetween the first two pictures).