Welcome to Springbreak Central Honolulu!

To be a bit snobbish: The flight to Hawaii with American Airlines was one of the most miserable of my life. Lousy films, no food within 5 hours, hardly anything to drink, no newspapers, musty seats. Never mind. I’m in Hawaii now. I take the shuttle to the Waikiki Beachside Hostel in the south of Honolulu. springbreak Central is 200 metres from the beach. Around 200 world travellers turn the hostel into a madhouse of excess.

The hostel offers caged accommodation with weekly cleaning for $25 a day. Morning feeding is included, each chicken provides its own grain in the evening. Eight chickens share their own kitchen, bathroom and, importantly, TV. There is free WiFi and 3 1.5 metre plasma screens in the lobby. My roommates are from England, very British. Lobster red and drunk as a skunk by eight o’clock.

I go into town with someone who’s less red (because he’s British and of Indian descent). a 10-minute walk away is a kind of food market. International food stalls, extremely varied, delicious, cheap. I’m going to try every single one. On the way back we pass around 120 alcoholic beverage shops. Everyone does good business, including the last one with me. At the hostel, we prepare for the evening. As much as possible as quickly as possible.

In the middle of Springbreak Central, I’ll soon have to decide whether I want to be a headmaster or a pupil, resistant or unruly. I do some more work and fall into bed at three o’clock LA time. My mates come home around seven o’clock LA time. Discussions about which bed to go to with the girls. Luckily, a corpse lies over me. Later, he mutates into the snoring undead. The noises are worrying despite the earplugs.

I work a lot on the first day and only spend a few hours walking around Honolulu and on the beach. In the morning, a hypnotised Japanese man squats in front of the TV in the lobby. Just now I realise: he’s still sitting there. Watching, no, staring at the fabulous life of… on MTV. I refrain from going over and flicking La Cucaracha in front of his eyes.

Emma, a researcher from England has turned up. I met her nine weeks ago at Niagara Falls. Small world. Luckily we both didn’t remember our names.