Today’s post is a collection of questions I have been asked or heard asked in and about the state of Hawaii. And I promise I have not made any of them up.
The inspiration came from a manager from the Four Seasons Lanai, who told me that when he talked to a guest about spear-fishing, was asked
“Can you swim all the way under the island?”
Another true questions, either asked of me personally or vouched for by hotel or boat staff:
“Is there water on the other side of the island?”
And to hotel employees regularly,
“Do you live on the island?”
Along with,
“Where do you get electricity?”
Asked to me as a travel agent,
“Can you use U.S. money in Hawaii?”
And its corollary,
“Do you need a passport to go to Hawaii?”
“Can you drop off a rental car on a different island?” (The person in question thought it was like the Florida Keys with bridges.)
From Laura Townsend Elion,
Years ago I lived in Hawaii and had friends visiting from the mainland. They raved over the landscape on the way from the airport and we gossiped over the real estate prices of some of the oceanfront homes. One friend turned to me and asked, “How many beads did they trade this island for?” (She was confusing it with the story about the Indians and Manhattan).
Asked on a catamaran off Maui,
“What altitude are we at now?”
And of an island in the distance,
“Is that Catalina?”
And my all time favorite:
“How do they keep the islands from floating apart?”
(The person in question here was commenting on the “nice” formation of the islands, with Hawaii as the most southeast, Kauai on the west. The hotel employee who told me the story said he still wishes he had told her they were all anchored to the ocean floor with really big anchors.)
Although if any Tripso readers have heard questions to match or top these, please as always feel free to add them in comments.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Not in the just-ended season, but several years ago when The Amazing Race passed through Hawai’i, one of the contestants asked, “Hawai’i! Which side of the road do they drive on there?”
and you wonder why Europeans think Americans are stupid . . .
One of my favorites, especially during whale season: “Where do y’all put the whales at night?” Like we were Sea World or something.
my husband works at a hotel here on the big island, and recently he has heard, “does the ocean go all the way around the island?” and of the local bird life that begins to sing early in the morning “can you turn the birds down?”, and my personal favorite, “is english your primary language here?”
I worked in Passenger Advertising & Marketing at TWA in 1986 when we re-opened service to Hawaii. On one flight from St. Louis to Honolulu, I overheard the question about whether the dollar was accepted. That passenger’s companion asked a flight attendant whether Hawaii had the same type of electrical outlets “like we have in the States,” and whether Hawaii used Fahrenheit, Celsius, “or something else” to measure temperature. Another passenger asked a different crew member whether Hawaii was an independent country. Yet another passenger asked if the runways at Honolulu International were paved with concrete or made from seashells. Mind you, we were flying aboard a Boeing 747.
Questions I was asked while in Hawaii – Do the islands stay in one place or (do they float around) / ( are moved around by the government periodically) ?
As why the islands do not float away from each other: how many realize that the islands are the top of mountains?
Of course, this makes the mountain tops in Hawai’i the tallest in the world–thousands of feet higher than any others; of course, with most of that under water, they are not counted.
On a dive boat in Maui: “Is it a one tank, or two tank dive to go all the way under Maui?”
Looking at Molokai, which is quite visible from Maui: “Is that Japan?”
Do they really have Interstate Highways in Hawaii?
On vacation in Maui I heard, “Do you celebrate Thanksgiving here?”
I got a lot of similar questions from college educated friends and family when i was preparing to move to Guam.
“So what language do they speak there”?
“English, it’s America.”
“What do they call their money”?
“Dollars, it’s America.”
“Will we be able to call you”?
“YES, IT’S AMERICA.”
In 1980, before our first real estate purchase on Kauai’i, my brother asked the Realtor if there was any difficulty in Americans purchasing land in Hawai’i, and could we use American dollars.
The agent and I groaned in unison.
When my wife and I moved to the Big Island, my insurance agent’s secretary in California informed me very firmly that I could not transfer my insurance out of the United States.
I’ve been to Hawaii and it’s beautiful. ANd it’s not the only place that elicits strange and uninformed questions. New mexico is another state that people actually forget, or don’t realize, that it is part of the USA. As a matter of fact, a humorous book was published about 15 years ago called “One of our 50 is missing” and contained all kinds of funny anectdotes about how people from New Mexico are asked things like “Do I need a passport to go there?”, or, “So you’re from New Mexico? When did you come to this country?”.
Finally, I was going to San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1994. A curbside baggage handler actually said we had to go to the international terminal! This was at LAX and we had to correct him, letting him know that Puerto Rico is a US territory.
My sister’s friend was getting ready to go to Hawaii, but she was fretting about having to bring an entire suitcase of Diet Coke because she had been told that Hawaii only sold fruity drink.
There was the couple who went to a travel agent and said they wanted to go to Europe but they didn’t want to fly.
“Well, there is no scheduled transatlantic service anymore, but maybe I can get you onto a cruise on that route.”
“Oh, no, we don’t want to go by ship.”
“Well, how do you expect to get there?”
“We plan to drive.”
@The man who notices things
At what point in this article does Ms. Hough indicate that Americans – or only Americans – were the ones asking these questions? Or are you just ASSUMING?
@ Michael: What’s wrong with that question? Hawaii does have interstate highways, as do Alaska and Puerto Rico. It’s not just a stupid question to be quickly dismissed, but there is a (tiny) bit of trivia behind it.
How about internet merchants that do not sell / ship merchandise to addresses in Guam or Hawaii because “…it’s not in the U. S.”! I’ve had this experience with sears.com, target.com, walmart.com, to name just a few.
Real questions. Thanks for the share. Hawaii is a nice place to go…So lets enjoy going there.