I had a free day yesterday, so I decided to find the Shopping Center and have a browse for some Hawaiian memorabilia at a reasonable price. American shopping centres are unlike anything you've ever seen before - they're nearly always huge complexes outside town miles from anywhere, meaning that if you haven't got a car then you're going to have a problem. Of course, if you haven't got a car in America then people generally seem to think there's something wrong with you anyway - so it's not really an issue over here. We're already starting to see a change in direction towards the same sort of thing in Britain, and smaller local stores are being pushed out by larger cheaper megamarts, which in my opinion are just sucking all the charm out of small villages.

But enough with the moaning for a moment.

"Excuse me," I asked politely of the girl at reception after breakfast, "Could you tell me the way to the Ala Moana Shopping Center?"

"Certainly Sir," she replied, "You need to take a number 19 or a number 20 bus."

I explained to her that I wanted to enjoy the beautiful Hawaiian sunshine and would be walking to the shopping centre on this occasion, at which she looked at me as though I was clinically insane and put on her sternest face: "You can't, Sir." She told me."

I looked down at my feet in alarm in case they had somehow become detached from my legs on the way down in the lift and I had somehow shuffled into reception on bloody stumps without noticing. "Yes, I can," I insisted, "I would just like to walk to the Shopping Centre. Is that really too much to ask?"

The receptionist sighed in resignation: "What I mean, Sir, is that it is a really long way to walk"

"How far, exactly?"

She puffed out her cheeks and stretched her arms out in a shrug which made me want to grab hold of her and give her a thorough shake: "Oh, an awfully long way."

Finally, I persuaded this delightfully helpful young lady to let me take a look at a map of Waikiki, at which point I discovered that the Ala Moana shopping centre was no more than a mile away, a distance I could comfortably walk in no time at all. I swear Americans have absolutely no concept of distance, on account of the fact that they drive next door to borrow a pint of milk. In a recent survey, it was found that the average tolerance of an American for walking is four hundred yards. That's not even to the end of my street.

The Ala Moana shopping center - pronounced Allah-Mo-arna - looked suspiciously like a large multi-storey car park from the outside. I assume this is to do with the American habit of driving everywhere, but from the outside there was absolutely no way to tell it was a shopping mall at all - I had to climb the dirty concrete stairs of the car park through three levels before I found the entrance to the Centre in the middle of the roof. I guess that if everybody arrives by car then there's very little point in having a nice façade with windows to browse through or any sort of entrance at ground level as in Europe. I spent a slow morning browsing the shops, having conversations with locals about how I was actually English and not Australian thank you very much, and sipping piping hot coffee from cups with ridiculous legal notices printed on them about being careful because the contents might be hot. I mean, seriously - America must be the only country in the world where you could actually get away with suing a coffee shop because the coffee they sold you was hot.

Because everything is open twenty-four hours a day I was able to get up at six this morning, have breakfast at Denny's, take my photographs in to be developed, buy some snacks for the day and still not be in any particular hurry to get to the arranged pickup point for my eight o'clock tour of Oahu. This has been part of the attraction of Polynesia in general - the laid back attitude. There never seems to be any rush to do anything - in Fiji this manifested itself as Fiji Time, the feeling that things would just get done when they did. Here, nothing ever closes so there's a completely different reason not to rush about.

The tour lasted all day and made a full one hundred and twenty mile circuit of Oahu, calling at the most spectacular beaches along the way. Sunset Beach in particular, on the Kamehamaha Highway, made me seriously wonder why everybody chooses Waikiki for their holiday destination when there are far better beaches elsewhere on the island. Sunset is over two miles in length, the sand is powder soft and the water as crystal clear as some of the places I've been in Thailand. Even during the winter, according to my guide book, the beach is considered one of the best for surfing as it has been known to produce waves in excess of twenty-five feet - but then, perhaps Waikiki beach was also perfect once before everybody discovered it. On second thoughts, the idea of Sunset Beach covered in crisp packets doesn't really appeal to me - so forget everything I just said. THERE IS NO SUNSET BEACH.

One of the more unusual places we visited on our circuit of Oahu was the "Byodo In" temple in the so-called valley of the temples. I can honestly say that the valley is one of the most unlikely things you will come across on Hawaii, being a large area of rolling hills and green parkland on the eastern side of Oahu where the mists roll in over the landscape and the dominance of the Byodo In makes it very easy to imagine that you've somehow been transported to Japan. The temple really is one of the most incredible sights I've ever seen, and looks right at home at the base of the two thousand foot high Koʻolau mountains - it was built in the 1960s to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first immigrant workers arriving in Hawaii from Japan, and is surrounded by memorial gardens where the local Buddhist community can choose to have their ashes scattered when they depart this life for the next. There are also memorial gardens for members of other religions, so you don't even have to be Buddhist to be interred in the valley of the temples.

So complete is the illusion of being in the countryside of Japan that the Byodo In was actually used as the location for the country estate of Sun's father in the first season of Lost. The name of the temple translates as either "the temple of the Phoenix" or "the temple of equality", depending on who you speak to, but one of the main problems with translation of Japanese into English is that it is clearly a far more complex procedure than simply replacing one word with another - in my research, for example, the online Japanese-English dictionaries I tried could offer no translation for Byodo, Byodo-In or Byodo.

The main building is dominated by two metallic Phoenixes which peer down from the rooftop - in fact, the temple itself is supposed to represent a Phoenix with it's wings spread and held aloft by stone pillars. Byodo In is a replica of a temple of the same name in Uji, near Kyoto - although it has a long way to go until it is as well established as its namesake, the Japanese original being over nine hundred years old. Inside, the centrepiece is the "Lotus Buddha", the largest wooden Buddha carved in the last nine hundred years. Standing at over eighteen feet in height, it is painted gold and topped off with a layer of gold leaf just to complete the illusion that it is solid gold - and believe me, it's hard to tell, even up close, that you aren't looking at some superb example of ancient excess by someone with access to the royal mint. Anyone who somehow manages to get through the doors of Byodo In without already having been struck dumb with awe, couldn't possibly fail to be blown away by the scale and detail of the Buddha. Of course, it's nowhere near on the scale of the Big Buddha in Hong Kong which I have written about in A Hole In The Hat, but then that wasn't hand carved.

The temple is surrounded by a circular lake on which swans - both black and white - and ducks happily swim around waiting for someone to feed them. The grounds are peaceful in the extreme, the nearest traffic being on a quiet road some distance away, and to get to the temple you have to cross the lake on a fantastic arched Japanese bridge which looks like something right out of Shogun. Half way across, our guide stopped us to point out a number of kingfishers which were hovering around over the water - to our delight, we were then provided with pieces of bread which, when held out over the side of the bridge, resulted in the birds flying to us and hovering over our outstretched palms. I only wish the exposure on my camera had been short enough to capture the moment - the wings were beating far too fast for me to get anything but a blur - but the experience put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. It's not very often that you get to stand among rolling green hills, next to a beautiful Japanese temple on a bridge over a lake full of black swans, and have a kingfisher eat out of your hand. And to think that, when I had decided to make a stop in Hawaii on my way to the mainland US, I had assumed that it would be an island covered in nothing but nightclubs and surfing beaches.

To one side of the temple is the bell house, which I think for many of us was one of the highlights of the visit. The bell house houses a five foot tall sacred bell called the Bonsho, which is made of a mixture of brass and tin and weighs in at three tonnes. The Bonsho is an authentic Japanese creation, having been shipped in from Osaka after permission was formally obtained from the Japanese government to cast it. The bell has a very distinctive sound, and although obviously not exactly the same as the original in Uji, it is believed that hearing the sound of the bell ringing will cleanse the mind of evil. Certainly, wherever you go in the valley of the temples, the silence is occasionally punctuated by a loud BONG as some tourist or other takes it upon himself to ring it - but there is something about the tone which seems to calm. But then, I don't live next door and I might have a different opinion if I had to be woken up at three every morning by someone ringing the bell on their way to pray at the temple. The bell is not rung in the traditional way - it has no clapper. Instead, a wooden log hangs from two leather straps so that it can swing freely, and visitors are invited to simply pull it back and let it swing into the bell, causing it to ring. Traditionally, visitors are supposed to ring the bell three times before entering the temple to meditate - although, of course, for every person who comes here with truly spiritual intent to ring the bell in preparation for a period of meditation, there are several dozen more who have no interest in anything other than ringing the bell as many times as possible and posing for a photo with their head inside it.

It's a shame that our time was limited at the temple, but that's what you get when you turn up at these places as part of a tour group. If I was to visit again, I would make my own way and spend the whole afternoon taking a proper look around and enjoying the serenity of the valley. The gardens around Byodo In just invite you to relax, meditate, sit in peace withthe ringing of the bell in the background and the temple dominating the foot of the mountains and let the rest of the world go on without you for a minute. This is hard to achieve when you have a coach driver rounding people up into groups, herding them through doors and telling you to get a move on should you dare to stop and look at anything for more than five seconds. I have always wanted to visit Japan, so perhaps I'll go and see the real thing instead. Unfortunately, however incredible this replica of Byodo In may be, it just can't compare to the original. All you have to do is look at a photo of the temple in Uji on the internet to see that the Hawaiian copy just doesn't have the same ancient feel.

The woodwork on the original looks worn and weathered, its paint chipped away and flaking in places - but that is what gives the place its charm and lets you know that you are looking at something from history. The Byodo In temple in the valley of the temples in Hawaii has only been around since the 1960s and looks correspondingly shiny and new - and the wheelchair ramps don't exactly speak of ancient times - but that doesn't really matter unless you are specifically looking for historical buildings. After all, traditional Japanese architecture really hasn't changed much over the years - so if you just ignore the fact that this is a copy of a much older temple near Kyoto, it can simply be admired as an outstanding example of what a modern Japanese temple looks like.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.