31st July - Hawaii

We had no dinner on the plane coming through last night because we had to pay for the meals and they wouldn't accept cash. I didn't want to ring up a Credit Card charge of only $5 as the fees would be that much!! We weren't impressed.

So this first morning in Hawaii we were starving. I got up fairly early, and popped down to the hotel lobby looking for an internet cafe so I could carry on unlocking the phone that we had done at the airport the night before. I found no internet cafe, but I did find a T-Mobile store (same store that sold us the phone in SFO when we arrived). I told him what I needed to do but they had two internet booths that you pay for, so I fed $5 in and got into my email. Found hte email from Tmobile saying that I couldn't unlock my phone as we hadn't had it for 3 months. Thats NOT what we were told when we got the phone, so I called over the tmobile guy and showed him the email. He asked what type of phone I had so gave it to him. Turns out that even if we unlocked the phone, we still wouldn't be able to use it in NZ becauase it's the wrong frequency. Again we had been told we could so we were not impressed.

After this, Mike's mother took us ddown to this really neat restuarant for breakfast - $7.95 eat all you want. They had amazing food. I honed in on the french toast and pancakes!! Afterwards I felt guilty and had some fresh fruit. The fresh fruit cancels out the calories in the maple syrup right?'

After breakfast, we jumped on a trolley bus to the Ala Moana shopping centre. I was sunburnt from San Francisco so didn't want to get more burnt, plus I still hadnt bought my tshirts I wanted to buy. Headed down to Walmart first, then over to Sears. I spent ages in the shoe section as they were so cheap, but ended up buying nothing as no room in my luggage. Instead I just drooled. Then to the women's section and I bought some jeans, tshirts and a pair of shorts. Thats it - done - no more shopping for me. That had taken two hours. By now it was very hot, so sat and had a drink and headed back to the hotel.

Jumped in our swimsuits and headed over to the beach and had a swim on Waikiki beach and lay in the sun until 5.30pm. Bliss Bliss. I wasn't hungry - still full from breakfast. We had dinner at an Ihop restaurant (cheap), and then wandered around the shops and marketplace. Eveyrthing so cheap but so much the same. Booked a day tour around the island for tomorrow.

Hit the sack early again as I'm still tired.