Hawaii Student

If you are renting an apartment by yourself there is a big chance that the Internet access will not be included. There are 2 big providers in Hawaii: Hawaiian Telcom and Oceanic Time Warner Cable. Avoid any other providers (especially CLEAR).

There is not much to say here. The Internet connection is slow and expensive compared to developed European cities. Feels like I’m always complaining..

So let’s go to the pricing. If 7 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed is enough for you then I would recommend Hawaiian Telcom package for $ 39.99 / month. There is no activation fee, no minimum period, and modem is for free as-well. The easiest way is to go to Hawaiian Telcom store (I went to the one on Kapiolani) and get your modem. After that it’ll take them around 3-4 days to get you going. All apartments have phone jacks (they will check your location on their computer  before they give you modem). So my simple suggestion is go with Hawaiian Telcom, it worked great for me now for over a year. Modems have wireless router built-in so you don’t need to buy separate router. Continue reading →

If you plan to live in Hawaii for a longer period of time (more than a semester) or if you just want to own Hawaiian bank card then you need to pick your bank. The 3 most popular options in Hawaii are:

1. Bank of Hawaii (BOH)
2. First Hawaiian Bank (FHB)
3. and American Savings Bank (ASB)

Both BOH and FHM have many ATMs in Hawaii. ASB definitely loses when it comes to ATMs.

After some bad words about FHM from locals I decided to go with BOH. Opening an account is free, but you need to make an initial deposit of $ 100 to your account. You will receive BOH Visa debit card and bunch of checks (my first experience with checks,  we don’t use them for over 10 years in my country). Since it’s Visa card you can use it online too (e.g., Amazon.com). Checks can be useful for paying rent, and sometimes they actually require them as payment method (e.g., in my old building I had to pay with check for bike room, building manager didn’t want to take cash).

There are no monthly fees. In my opinion it’s really good choice for students and I see a lot of students having a BOH account.  Continue reading →

There are many options when it comes to cell phone providers in Hawaii. This post will probably be very subjective since I didn’t really test all of them but I can give you few hints. Long story short is their packages are expensive, they offer slower connection speeds compared to Europe, worse coverage, etc. But here we are

In U.S. they have very weird way of charging for some of the services. You don’t only pay outgoing calls/texts, but also incoming. So if someone calls/texts you, you have to pay a fee too. For this reason sometimes it is the best to go with so called unlimited plans. Unlimited plans provide: unlimited calls, unlimited texts, and sometimes unlimited data.

If you want to get, let’s say iPhone, subscription on AT&T or Verizon they require you to have a Social Security Number, which we, foreign students, at least at first don’t have. So the only option is to go with pre-paid phones if you’re not american or international student working in U.S (students who work get SSN).  Continue reading →

The biggest concern to incoming students is where will you be living while in Hawaii. Hawaii can be very expensive. Many students don’t want to bother too much and they take the easiest path – living in student housing. There are many student housing opportunities, but usually they are a big ripoff. Paying $ 700 a month for shared studio (very small apartment) is not something a would call a fair deal. And in a lot of cases they don’t allow you to have alcohol in your room. I’m from Eastern Europe and I don’t understand the concept of having alcohol-free apartment

So how to get an apartment? It is always good if you’re searching for an apartment with a friend or two. Bigger apartments can be cheaper when you split the cost. And bigger apartments usually offer much more useful things (e.g., washer, dryer, huge living room, big kitchen). There is one more difference between United States and Slovenian room count. In U.S. when they say 2 bedroom apartment this means 2 bedrooms + living room (in case of Slovenia this would be 1 bedroom + living room). And they count floors differently too. Ground is floor 1. Floor 1 is actually 2. So they’re basically cheating to have more floors.

Ok, ok. You’re probably getting upset at this moment, “Just give me the damn links!” So the first, and 95% of students use this, is to go to Craigslist (a very popular website in U.S. – never used it before I came here).  You would usually go under Housing > Apts/Housing. Since 90% of HPU students (I’m totally making those percentages up) live in Waikiki, and that is the place to be if you’re cool student, you would put “waikiki” in search field, select how many bedrooms you desire, put price range in, mark “has image” (you always want to see images) and click “search”. Whoaaaa, a looooot of apartments! Yeah, this is a very non-optimized way of searching for apartments. So is there a better way? Of course it is. I just wanted you to go briefly through what all the other students go through. There is actually a holy grail in apartment search.  Continue reading →

There are many shops that you should avoid when shopping for food and drinks: ABC Stores, 7/11, Food Pantry.. those are expensive. Better options are Wal-Mart and Don Quijote. For example 1.75 l (half gallon) Smirnoff vodka can sometimes in Don Quijote get as cheap as a little over $18. Waaaaay cheaper than Europe. Don Quijote is more specialized in Asian food, but you can get pretty much everything.

For few months we did most of the shopping in Don Quijote, but then, early this year, we found something so much better. That is Sam’s Club. It’s located above Wal-Mart on Keeamoku street. This is not a “normal” store, it’s based on membership. Annual membership for 2 people costs $ 40. We got $ 10 gift card, which at the end results into $ 15 per person and we saved that money with our first purchase. Sam’s Club has (I think) best deals for food (meat, vegetables, fruits..) and drinks. 1.75 l (half gallon) Malibu Rum for $ 20, 1.75 l Smirnoff for $ 18, some cheap 1.75 l vodka for $ 12, etc. Continue reading →

As students in Hawaii, even though we’re not U.S. citizens, we’re still able to get Hawaii State Identification Card. There are at least 2 reasons why you would want that as an international student:

1. This is official document. You don’t need passport anymore when you go out drinking (and have to prove you’re 21.. yeah 21.. that’s U.S.) or when you’re flying inside of United States (e.g., when I flied to Maui and Big Island I took only my State ID with me, no passport).
2. You get discounts for having Hawaii State ID. Those discounts are usually referred as Kamaaina Discounts and you will see them all around Hawaii. For example, you pay 50% less (6 $) to get to Honolulu ZOO, you don’t have to pay entrance fee for Hanauma Bay (you save 7.50 $).

So where can you get one? Continue reading →