Well it’s been a couple weeks, but I’m finally getting around to finishing all my Hawaii entries. (3 down, 3 to go). I have to take advantage of this 4-day weekend to finish these up or else I’ll probably put it off for another month. =P

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So starting off fresh with Day 4 – our day of snorkeling. It took a long time to get the hang of the equipment and avoid scrapes off the razor sharp coral, but snorkeling was a lot of fun! Hanauma Bay is breathtakingly gorgeous, probably one of the nicest places to go snorkeling.

That morning we packed all our gear and took the bus towards Hanauma. For a popular tourist spot, there was only one bus going there every hour, so the bus was packed by the time we got out of Waikiki. After a 45 minute ride, everyone unloaded and we finally arrived in Hanauma. Our first order of business was getting in line for tickets, then we had to wait our turn in the theatre to watch a 10 minute educational video on how to preserve the bay. I kept laughing during the video cause there were speech bubbles coming out of the coral saying “Don’t step on us!”. Then it broke into song towards the end. LOL.

Finally we headed down to the beach. We went to the equipment rental and got our snorkeling gear, then picked a spot to set down our beach mats. Jumping into the water, it took some time to get the hang of how to use the equipment properly. I”m not very comfortable in the water, so I was flopping along in my lifebelt trying to coordinate my limbs. (Drinking lots of salt water makes you learn faster.) When I finally got comfortable enough to direct my attention away from my foggy googles to the ocean floor, the view below was just amazing! I’ve never been in such close contact with marine life before. It was such a sight! There were so many multicoloured fish right by my feet. We didn’t even have to go out far to see the fish.

The only downside of snorkeling was trying to find a spot to stand to not damage the coral. Not only that, but the coral was really sharp! Even when I was floating along, my knees would scrape the coral in shallow water. It was painful!

Anyway, we spent most of the morning on the beach snorkeling. The waves were getting higher throughout the day, so we didn’t stay too long. By lunchtime we headed back up to the entrance and got lunch before walking towards the bus stop. We ended up waiting almost an hour for the bus! (Buses in Hawaii are not very reliable on slower routes.) Good thing we were on vacation!

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Getting back to Waikiki, we were trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. We already missed lunchtime dim sum in Chinatown, but we thought we’d try to go for dinner later at night. However, according to all the guidebooks, Chinatown is not the safest place to be at night. But since it was only 4-5 in the afternoon, we figured we could still get an early dinner and hightail out of there.

Well –

the moment we got to Chinatown, we realized just how right all the guidebooks were. Honolulu Chinatown is extremely sketchy! The streets were empty aside from a handful of shifty looking people. The majority of the stores were already closed! (Do they go on lockdown to prepare for the night?) We cautiously took a stroll towards the cultural center where it was completely deserted. After maybe 10 minutes of looking around, we decided we had enough and took the first bus back to Waikiki!

I’m going to mark this as the worst Chinatown I’ve ever visited. Yokohama, Montreal, Seattle and London were so much nicer in comparison!

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Anyway, it wasn’t a complete loss going to Chinatown. At least we saw it. However, our dinner plans were now foiled, so we had to find another place to eat. Returning back to Waikiki, we consulted our ultra handy Kau Kau book and picked a restaurant on Kuhio Street called Seaside Bar & Grill. I love how restaurants make separate set menus for Japanese tourists! Hehehe. I feel like I get my money’s worth with set menus. =P

Dinner wasn’t fancy, but it was really yummy. I had the battered shrimp with the grilled Mahi Mahi. If you love fish, then you need to get your fill in Hawaii! It’s delicious.

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The night was still young by the time we finished dinner (since we scurried out of Chinatown so quickly), so we needed to find something to do. Flipping through the pages of Kau Kau, we found a listing for a karaoke place a few blocks down called GS Studios, so we decided to go. I’ve come to realize that aside from Japan, Hawaii must have the second most awesome karaoke system ever! They had so many Japanese songs! For $10 per person for two hours, it was a pretty good deal too. It almost made me glad that Chinatown didn’t work out! =P

Anyway, karaoke pretty much wrapped up Day 4. Onto our ‘historic’ tour of Hawaii in the next entry!