Walking and noshing, noshing and walking — we do love multitasking. So we slap on the sunscreen, gather our dollar bills, and go to Chinatown to find delectable, cheap eats.

Here's the plan: Can't care less about the best apple bananas, not going after the cheapest pho. No sit-down restaurants, not that we're dissing them. We want variety, a tidbit of this, a taste of that. Sweet, salty, creamy, crispy, Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipino, whatever. We are hungry, we are thirsty and we are game!

We're in for some legwork. For you, we will prowl the big and little streets, winnow out the barren stretches, and come up with a walkable route jam-packed with scarfable snackage. If you follow us, bring cash in small bills, bring a friend, bring tote bags — you'll eat too much, and you'll take home plenty.

On a Saturday, we find a parking stall in the municipal garage on Nimitz Highway at River Street. Someone has left 28 minutes on our meter. Awesome omen. It gets even better when the security guard tells us Chinatown also happens on Sundays, too, not like before.

To start: Need belly fillers. We carve a path down River Street onto King Street and find An Dong Market, where Vietnamese take-out lines the inside shelves. Slick, cool-looking mochi cakes called banh are filled with minced pork and shrimp; only $3, we can't resist. Then we spy minced shrimp wrapped around peeled stalks of sugar cane: OK, hold everything.

You do not see this except in restaurants. Take it home and grill until just browned. Slice it off the cane, wrap in lettuce with mint and sliced cucumber or eat as is with shoyu. A better dipping sauce? Mash a clove of garlic, add a few teaspoons of fish sauce, a couple tablespoons of water, some chili or Sriracha, a good squeeze of lime juice, and sugar to taste.

This stretch of King Street has three Vietnamese places selling much the same things by the same cooks. We also like Lien's Market at the outside corner of Oahu Market next to Penny's Ice Dessert, just because Mrs. Lien's been here 20 years and will talk story. We buy her com ruou ($2), tiny balls of sweet fermented rice in its own alcoholic juice, like the rice-grainy dregs of amazake.

If you see round purple mangosteen selling at the must-be-godly price of $11.99 a pound, break the bank and get one. It is the best fruit in the world (except for mangos). Pick one that's heavy and not mottled. At the bottom, you'll see the outline of a flower. Count the petals: That's how many segments you'll find inside. If you don't want purple thumbnails, ask them to open it.

Best discovery: a short alley hidden down Kekaulike past the fish stalls of Oahu Market, across the street from the Sea Us for Seafood sign. Here's My Truc Café, a literal hole in the wall. (On Saturdays, a table across the window-sized hole sells vast quantities of fried pork rinds and crunchy pig's ears.) Why My Truc? No. 1, you can get fresh, icy, blended Vietnamese fruit smoothies like soursop, which you're going to need about this point.

Also, My Truc sells street food. If you love lup cheong but have guilt pangs, try the bo bia, soft rice wraps stuffed with fresh lettuce, scrambled egg and sliced lup cheong, two big ones for $3.50. So fine with cold beer. And the curry ($6.50) is pure Vietnamese: sweet, thin, coconutty and gingery, with chunks of sweet potato and chicken, best eaten with My Truc's baguettes.

Now cross the street into King Market, on the diamondhead-makai corner of Kekaulike and King. At the back toward Waikiki is Hometown Noodle Factory, which sells fresh tofu and soy milk. Don't ask what day the tofu was made, ask what time. It's always still warm. Try the tofu pudding with sweet ginger syrup ($1.75).

Continue down King and turn up Maunakea Street. The one-block stretch to Hotel Street on the diamondhead side is a riot: wooden comb shop, herbal shop, Lin's Leis, Sing Cheong Yuan bakery with its amazing sesame macadamia nut and sesame walnut candies, Nam Fong roast meats, Bo Wah Trading Co. with its giant clay pots and spider strainers, and the unsigned Chinatown Express, which sells all kinds of sweet-flour baked goods like char siu manapua, chicken salad roll and a Spam musubi bun with nori on top: Take your pick.

We head down Hotel Street back toward 'Ewa, stopping at Ruby Bakery & Coffee Shop for the $1 Hong Kong buns, which we love for the coconut custard filling with a hint of salt, and her fresh joong ($4), mochi rice mixed with star anise-tinged meats and beans and steamed inside leaves.

Just past is Sun Chong Grocery, a gem of a Chinese crack seed and trinket shop. Tables overflowing with li hing this, sweet-sour that, plus crispy-salty garlic chips, dried fruit and the all-new li hing raspberry, all made by the owner's auntie on Maui.

We end our walkabout at Ying Leong Look Funn Factory on Kekaulike Mall. Where else can you buy a roll of fresh handmade look funn as long as your forearm, steamed with shrimp or char siu, for $1.10? So we add that to our bag along with the perky choi sum that always seems to be sold in a cardboard box at the corner, and the roast pork the intense man at Nam Fong hacked up for us.

It's our dinner. We trade tips on sauces with other people waiting for look funn. And then we head home. We need a nap.