IT is three o’clock in the morning in Honolulu as I sit at the computer drinking coffee and reading the news of the world on my laptop. I have crossed five time zones to get here, so my body thinks it is mid-morning. I am destined for the Solomon Islands where I will participate in an ambitious expedition to locate aircraft lost in the jungle and at the bottom of the sea that likely contain remains of their crews.
This hotel is nothing you would expect in Hawaii, in fact, it belongs nowhere in the developed world. Of it I can say: I’ll bet it was something back in the Eighties. Plaster chips off the walls, construction workers trying to keep the place together go about their trade right among the paying customers. My room consists of a queen bed with a well-worn mattress, an apartment size refrigerator, and a bathroom with the expected fixings. I have stayed in better rooms in worse countries. The building looks like it was built during the post-World War Two tourism boom. With few changes, it could easily be a site location for a murder mystery set in the Fifties. We are noisily close to the runway and nestled under an onramp of the highway leading from the airport to downtown Honolulu, the least paradisaic spot in all of Hawaii. Had I woken up here, I might have thought I was in Detroit, or maybe the slums of Puerto Rico, what with the tropical vegetation.
In the room next to mine stay two of the most pitiable people I have ever seen. An older couple with the look of total dejection on their faces, which tells me all I need to know about them. I would say their story is something like this. They raised a family in the traditional way, he worked a job, she brought up the children, all the while they dreamed of a vacation in Hawaii someday. The children are grown and he is recently retired, but they did not save enough money to splurge on this trip, just get here and look around a little. That would be enough for them.
They researched the internet and came across this very affordable hotel near the airport and near Honolulu, only a short taxi ride from the beaches of Waikiki. The online pics looked promising and it was within their budget. I cannot imagine their disappointment when the free shuttle from the airport pulled up to this place. Where are the flowers and coconuts? Where are the chiseled island men and shapely Polynesian women? Where are the hibiscus and poi, the luaus? They waited their whole life to come to paradise and found this hole. That is the look on their faces. My heart hurts for them.
Not me. This is exactly what I wanted. For me, Honolulu is not my destination, only a stopover. I wanted a low-cost bed and shower close to the airport, somewhere I could burrow for a day, clean up, and carry on. I have been to Hawaii many times, enough to know that the world of Magnum PI is here if you know where to find it and are willing to pay, and enough to know that more and more of Hawaii, Oahu at least, is looking like this miserable has-been of a hotel.
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for 20 years. He currently resides on the mainland U.S.
BC Cook
