An expert cheap guy's private dispatches from Hawaii: Cheap trips, expensive places, Part 1.

It’s a hallmark strategy of budget travel to visit cheap places to stretch your money further, and that’s good advice. There are enough cheap, beautiful, interesting places in the world to spend your whole life exploring. But there are also a lot of places in the world that aren’t cheap, but are awesome. You'd be forgiven for wanting to visit those too, but making a small budget work in pricey places is higher level travel skill. In 2018 -19 we’ve spent about 4 months of the year doing just that - traveling in Europe, Alaska, Canada, New Caledonia and New Zealand. We haven’t had a big budget, and I want to talk through some of how we’ve made it work, so this is the first in a series of posts on cheap travel in expensive places. (We already wrote up a few posts on the topic in New Zealand and New Caledonia if you want to check them out!)

Before I start posting our own experiences though, we have a couple of friends who are expert at this stuff doing a round the world honeymoon trip on a budget. They're starting in Hawaii, and out of the blue the started sending budget travel advice about Hawaii via text. We asked if we can share, so that's what you'll find here. On the ground advice from an expert. Hawaii is among the last places you’d think of when you think of budget travel destinations. It's a beautiful group of islands that are a long way from anywhere, and a major tourist destination for Americans and Japanese vacationers. It's resorts and beautiful golf courses and helicopter tours and fancy restaurants.

But it's also lots of other things, and if you avoid the main money traps, it can be a better option than you’d think. If you're traveling on a budget, you're not going to be staying in resorts, most likely, but if you want a taste of the real place, and the way real people live, you don't have to break the bank. Real people don’t live in resorts, after all. 

Six2’s practical tips.

I wrote a book on this stuff, but I have a friend who goes by Six2 (not his real name, obviously, but let's keep the mystery) who's the real deal. He's  a budget travel goldmine, and the kind of guy who plans trips for years, builds spreadsheets, and stays up all hours of the night researching the best options. He's been living and travelling on like 10 hours a week of employment for years, and has been to dozens of countries and all fifty states, along with hiking about 2 1/3 of the 3 major American long trails. He's the kind of person you want to know if you can - an old school budget travel nerd who has reams of information stored away in his head and I'm guessing his Google Drive. He's not some hip fake travel influencer writing throwaway articles. He travels for the love of the game and has an engineer’s mind so does it in the most organized way possible.

He recently got married, and left on a months-long round the world honeymoon, and randomly started sending us dispatches from their first stop in Hawaii, unsolicited. For a couple of days last week, Angel and I were receiving a barrage of texts with his dashed off thoughts, which were of course excellent budget travel advice, sent for no reason other than this is what he's interested in (maybe we did goad him along a bit...). The information was too good to keep to ourselves, so we asked to share the wealth with you. He said sure, why not, and here we are. 

I've organized the texts he sent by locale and general topic, but I'm keeping them in their original dashed-off form. I could have cleaned things up, but I wanted you to have something of the pure, exhilarating and amusing experience of getting random texts from an expert with their offhand thoughts on the subject they're fluent in. So, the rest of what you'll find in this article are his unvarnished observations.

​He and his wife spent time on Oahu and Big Island, and the first thing he said about the experience was: 

It’s possible to do Hawaii relatively cheaply, but it’s a lot of effort.

Hilo Farmers Market The Big Island GeneralThe big island was a mixed bag, Hilo area has a lot more cheap optionsWe spent some time around Kona and found it overpriced (with the exception of Costco) and touristy.  Still, not a bad place to grab a rental car and head elsewhere.
We think Hilo is a good budget destination.  It's on the cloudier, wetter side of the island and so it doesn't get as much tourism, but the economy has been in a long term decline here since the closing of the sugar plantations (think: a mini Tacoma, WA), but getting fewer tourists means a lot of people are more friendly.  The farmers market in town here has great deals on fresh fruit as do fruit stands around the east side of the island (especially good is the pay-what-you-want honor box unattended fruit stands in rural areas).​ LodgingAirbnb still seems common and mostly legal on the Big Island (I'm not a lawyer).  We stayed in couple Airbnbs and saved a lot over O'ahu prices, but spent more overall including a rental car.We stayed at the Hamakua House, hosted in screened huts with hammocks, a bargain price.  https://www.hamakuahouse.com/At the moment, a hammock in a shared hut is $25 for one, or a private hut for $47 for 1-2 people.  They also have rooms in the main house for a bit more.That was the best bargain we found in lodging.  If you don't like sleeping in a hammock, bring a sleeping pad for the floor.  The hosts here are a friendly couple and the place is kept pretty clean with a shared kitchen so you can save on meals. TransportationFor the Big Island, it's hard to get around without a car.  The bus service is really limited. We rented a car for the whole time, flying through Kona.  Other flights go to Hilo, which is a better budget town than Kona, which mostly caters to touristsA serious cheap-o might get away with the bus and hitchhiking, but it would require dedication and it would limit what you could see.  Unlike O'ahu, there's a lot of mountain stuff to see and do. Backpacking on Mauna Loa offers some possibilities for multiday trips that would save on lodging, but you still have to account for transport, like renting a car and leaving it at a trailhead.  In general, advance booking is essential to get the best prices here.Turo offers an alternative for car share rentals and on the Big Island offers some cars that can go up Mauna Kea (if the road is open) or into Waipio Valley (we had a regular car and hiked into the valley).If you were a bold and lucky hitchhiker, you might be able to do the Hilo area for more like $60/day for two, but it would take a lot of walking to see much.  It would probably be cheaper overall to take a Lyft or something and just head into the Backcountry on the big island from Hilo, unfortunately most of the cheap flights serve Kona(Note: Buses serve Kona to Hilo - $3 for a 3 hour trip. https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Kailua-Kona/Hilo). 
ActivitiesJust outside town (Hilo) is Carlsmith Beach Park with nice swimming and not much in the way of waves in the summer.  The water here was a bit cooler than other places, nice for hot days.
FoodThere's so many tropical fruits to try here that don't really exist on the mainland.  Don't be shy about asking fruit vendors how to choose the right fruit or how to eat it, one vendor let us try a bunch of fruit for freeIn Hilo, Ratana's Green Papaya Salad, a Hawaii style Thai place offered a lot of well priced, fresh, and healthy food, starting at $7-$9  191 Kilauea Ave, Hilo, HI 96720Across the street, Lucy's Taqueria is a bit more expensive at $9-$11+ but offers big, filling portions.But the farmers market and a couple restaurants are cheap around there Park, downtown Honolulu Oahu Lodging:I could see with cheap lodging how, being careful even you could spend $100/day for two people easilyBut, Airbnb is pretty much going away outside of resort areas here on O'ahu, so it will get more expensive to visitThey're starting to enforce the law against Airbnbs
Transportation:Some more dirtbag specifics: the good news about O'ahu is that the bus (called TheBus) goes pretty much everywhere on the island, at $2.75 one way or $5.50 all day (no transfers, currently cash only)You can navigate with TheBus using Google transit maps.  One warning: bags larger than carry on size are not allowed on the bus, so if you plan to use the bus from the airport, pack light.Biki, the new local bike share works like urban systems on the mainland, with a lot of stations to pick up or dock a bike in the dense part of the city.  Use a credit card and pay $4 for one trip up to 30 minutes, or $25 for up to 300 minutes worth of trips under 30 minutes (if you keep a bike over 30 minutes, pay $4 for each additional 30 minute block).  Watch out for drivers as a lot of folks aren't used to sharing the road with bikes, and be aware that the bike share doesn't include helmets.  Google maps shows bike paths and bike lanes, but be warned that some shared on road routes can be quite busy.If folks visiting do decide to rent a car, you may find better rates in downtown Honolulu than at the airport or in Waikiki, where taxes are higher.  We paid $42 to rent a small car for a day to get around to the north side of the island, admittedly something could have easily done for less on the bus.Lyft and Uber do serve the airport area but be warned that traffic sucks here and getting around by ride share isn't cheap.  We paid $21 to go from outside the airport to KaimukiThe biggest perk of getting here for cheap travel may be onward flights -- outside of the busiest seasons, discount airlines fly from Honolulu to places like Japan and Australia at great rates with advance purchase.  We searched for airfare on Kayak and paid $168 per person to fly to Osaka (KIX) from Honolulu on AirAsia in late August. Food:Finding cheap eats was one of our dirtbag obsessions here.  We found filling cheap meals from the Times Supermarket for as little as $5 from the deli case, and the nearby 7-11 actually had the kinds of offerings you might find in Asia.  A standout for us for cheap eats was the St. Louis Drive In restaurant on Waialae Ave near Kaimuki. Fresh seafood dishes here are some of the cheapest we found anywhere in Hawaii with good quality, around $9 for a plate dinner.They're even cheaper if you just want a quick bite to go, for example the Kimchee BBQ burger is $3.25.3145 Waialae Ave, Honolulu, HI 96816 open 5 am to 11 pm Mon-Sat, 8-8 SunNotable also is fresh fruit at stands around the islands and here in Honolulu at the markets in Chinatown, try around the somewhat gritty Oahu Market 145 N King St, Honolulu, HI 96817For an experience and good reasonably priced Japanese food, check out the Shirokiya Japan Village at the giant Ala Moana mall, with tons and tons of food and other vendors.  https://www.shirokiya.com/Shop around here and you could get a decent meal for $7-$9Also downtown find Marukame Udon where you can get a basic Udon Curry for under $6.  1104 Fort Street Mall, Honolulu, HI 96813 - https://marugameudon.com/Wait!  One last thing, Malasadas, Portuguese donuts are at a few Leonard's Bakeries around the area, $1.35 plus tax for a hot fresh eggy donut!  Activities:Lastly on O'ahu we found there's a surprising number of hiking trails, and several bus lines run up into the neighborhoods above the city where trails head up into the mountains.One more O'ahu thing I forgot, you can do the well known & busy  Diamond Head hike without a car. Buses 3, 9, 23, and 24 stop just outside the park, and walk in entry is $1 per person.Likewise, bus or bike is a good way to get around to the beaches, all of which we visited were free and pretty amazing, but be aware that they fall into two categories - surfing beaches where the breaking waves will toss you around and more calm beaches like the crowded tourist ones near Waikiki.  Waves vary with the seasons so ask a local where to go, we liked the beaches along Ala Moana Park.That's our best things-we-wish-we'd-known for O'ahu​I think a semi-determined cheap person here (O'ahu) could come on a flight arriving early, pack light, and take the bus for $2.75 to another part of the island. If one were mostly interested in swimming, that would probably be just fine. That would save on lodging. I hope you found Six2's dispatches as amusing and helpful as I did. Some other general things to know about Hawaii: camping is cheap to free in many places. Freecampsites.net doesn’t show much, but hipcamp has a good number of private options, and check in with each individual island's State Park options, because there are a bunch! This article has more great camping advice. The weather’s always warm there. Why not? Beach bums are a thing. Other good news is that, unlike most of the US, Hostels are a thing in Hawaii, and can be a good budget option - especially for a solo traveler. 

If you want a whole lot more wisdom gleaned from experts like Six2, check out my book The Dirtbag's Guide to Life. It's full of good ideas from people who've been living the dream.