kaua'i is full of tourist gift shops. some areas of kaua'i are more touristy than others. areas…read morethat are more about nature or maybe culture are sometimes less touristy. i personally abhor touristy resort vacations where you just lie down on a reclining lawn chair and sunbathe by a pool, sipping umbrella cocktails. i hate that kind of stuff. some of my favourite activities during my trip to kaua'i (besides the obvious trip to the kapa'a skateboard park) included hiking the kalalau trail, chatting it up about asian.american / pacific islander history with a docent at the kaua'i museum, and snorkeling at tunnels. the helicopter tour was cool too. during this babymoon trip, my wife and i stayed at the resortquest/aston islander on the beach resort/condo complex. right in front of this complex is the coconut marketplace. while doing research for this trip, i looked up all the businesses in the marketplace, i thought we would be going there a lot because it was close. however, in the end, we barely went there because we could quickly drive to much better places.
now, as i said, kaua'i has many touristy areas. whereas we stayed in kapa'a in the middle of the east coast; i think poipu on the south shore is the most touristy area. i'm personally glad we didn't stay there. i hear the surfing waves are better down on the south shore. as a skateboarder and snowboarder, i _did_ want to do some surfing in hawai'i on this trip; but since my wife was pregnant and couldn't surf (but would have wanted to since she also snowboards and sometimes skates), i refrained from it. thus, the south shore was pretty useless to me. anyway, my point in mentioning poipu is that when i visited a mall (the one with puka dog and na hoku) on the south shore (near poipu in koloa) that was like the coconut marketplace, i realised that the coconut marketplace is much better: the prices are much lower, and the sales people aren't as pushy.
well, the only place i patronised in the coconut marketplace was the garden isle clothing company. they sell those red dirt shirts and accessories that you see many places. i think they are slightly cheaper here. i forget. they sell lots of aloha wear. like other gift shops in the area, they also have lots of doggy accessories, pet clothes, dog leashes, dog collars, etc.; plenty of vacation gifts for your pets. we saw a cute bandanna for our sooni (our korean jindo dog) at this store. we liked the one that said, "my family went to hawai'i, and all i got was this lousy bandanna." it was like $7. at first, we walked out and continued look at other stores. we kept seeing the same "lousy bandanna" selling for $10. well, i personally figure a dog bandanna should sell for about 99 cents at most.
well, as my wife and i were getting ready to eat dinner, she said she wanted some kalua pork. i suggested we go to the nearby l&l, but she complained that we can go to l&l back home in the nor*cal bay area. *sigh* i figured it would still be better here. anyway, she insisted that i go ask the lady at garden isle clothing company where to get good kalua pork. she directed us to ohana diner, which ended up to be a very, very good choice. anyway, before we left that store to get dinner; because i really appreciated her good, honest advice on dinner, i decided to go ahead and buy that bandanna for our sooni. sure, it probably wasn't necessary. sooni would rather be naked. however, it's a nice bandanna. i like how it came with a diagrammed set of instructions on how to tie the bandanna so that it won't choke your dog. cool! you should basically tie a loop on one end around the other end, so that that "other end" can slide out, if the bandanna were to get caught on something. cool!
anyway, while the garden isle clothing company _is_ a tourist gift shop, it _does_ have _better_ prices than other nearby tourist gift shops and much better prices and service than those down on the south shore. (of course, in the end the _cheapest_ souvenirs are found at evil wal*mart or else costco.)
