I am staying on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, about the most luxurious area I could wish for. When my travel agent told me that she had booked a hotel in Waikiki I'd imagined it would be the cheapest thing she could find, probably on some backstreet between a pornographic cinema and a sex shop or something - after all, my budget had to be spread over several months and I've already stayed in some pretty fantastic places. Much to my surprise, I am right on the sea front in the heart of the nightlife and straight across the road from one of the most famous beach views in the world. Not only that, but my room is on the penthouse level where I can sit out on my balcony and enjoy panoramic views of Honolulu from my perch on top of the world. I can only assume that either my travel agent got some very good deals as a result of booking an entire round the world itinerary at once, or I've slept with somebody very important at some point and then forgotten about it. Turn on the television in my room and a computer menu appears offering any of the current cinema hits or video games, and I can shop at any one of hundreds of local stores without ever having to leave my room. Quite why anybody would want to come all the way to Hawaii and sit in their room shopping all day is rather perplexing to me, but to each their own.

Along the street outside, I have the most comprehensive row of restaurants you can imagine - and this is where the idea that the United States is full of junk food falls flat. I can get virtually anything I want to eat from any corner of the world here, but I was more than happy to find that there was a local Denny's across the road. Denny's is a nation-wide chain of sit down restaurants selling hundreds of combinations of western cuisine, and some crazy American mixtures too! The menu reads like a novel and it takes all day to decide what you are going to have - the first time I ever visited the United States Denny's was advertising something like four hundred types of breakfast. I never come to America without visiting at least one Denny's, and in fact there is often no reason to go anywhere else - you usually have to queue up to get in, but then you get sat in a cosy little nook somewhere and the American hospitality is just poured on like the syrup supplied with their breakfast pancakes! On one occasion several years ago, I was sitting eating my lunch at Denny's when a big Texan with a floppy hat at the next table asked the waitress for the Super-Deluxe Burger with all the trimmings and a double portion of ice cream. When she returned with the burger but no ice cream, he wanted to know why and was apparently surprised to find that she had assumed he wanted the ice cream for desert. Being a helpful sort, the waitress skipped off and fetched his desert and the whole restaurant watched with jaws agape as he opened up his burger and forked the entire double portion of strawberry ice cream onto the beef patty. I think this memory is fused into my head forever.

Everything here is open 24 hours a day, so if I should suddenly be struck with an acute case of insomnia one night I can go out at four in the morning and do all my shopping. I can then have a meal, go to a museum and be back just in time for breakfast. America is certainly a different world and it almost seems as though you can get anything you want here, whenever you want it - I really don't understand why some people hate the United States. Obviously I can't possibly know what it's like to live here, but as a tourist I've always found the USA to be one of the most agreeable places to visit. People smile and greet me warmly as soon as they hear my accent, and total strangers at bus-stops apparently can't wait to chat to me about England. I've been told that being British is a sure-fire way to get somebody's interest over here, although I'm still not quite sure I understand how we've gone in a century from fighting each other constantly over everything to being staunch allies. The "being British" thing certainly does seem to be true - yesterday, a stunning redhead in the queue at Burger King heard me ordering and then insisted on making her boyfriend wait outside in the car while she sat with me for half an hour telling me how sexy my accent was and how cute I looked. She did seem to think I was Australian, but still - you just don't complain about a country which does things like this.

Bus drivers in Hawaii give a running commentary as they drive and explain in detail what you're passing for the benefit of tourists - something which must drive locals crazy having to listen to the same thing on the way to work every day. In fact, a series of buses shuttle people between all the major tourist spots, and with a special ticket I was given at yesterday's orientation I was able to hop on and off as I pleased. A bus outside my hotel took me to a local pearl factory where I was given a free tour of the facilities, and afterwards I was dropped off at the Waikiki Handicraft Centre where everything was laid out in a much more formal and westernised way than it had been back in Fiji - the charms, necklaces and wooden carvings on display were all beautifully detailed and no doubt came from all over the Polynesian triangle, but there was nothing I hadn't been able to buy a lot cheaper earlier in the trip. Hawaii suffers from having the culture of Polynesia but the capitalist leanings of the west, so it's entirely possible to find some truly amazing artefacts here but you really are going to have to pay through the nose for them.

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.