Ask Away: Help in Honolulu

A reader is seeking rest in Honolulu. Photo / 123RF

From Hawaii to Hanoi, our online expert, Eli Orzessek, finds the answers you need.

My wife and I are flying through Honolulu with lousy connections and we have about 14 hours in Honolulu from 7am, flying out at 10.30pm. We are having difficulty finding a day-room without paying for two nights when we only need 12 hours of rest time.

Is there any hotel or website that would direct us to a hotel with day rooms?

Ian M. Hoffer

I've done a bit of research on this and found a few websites that can help with discounted day rates - HotelsByDay.com is one and there's also Between9And5.com and BookaDayRoom.com. One hotel that popped up as an option on these sites was Hyatt Place Waikiki Beach - so it could be worth getting in touch with them.

I also searched around and found some discussion on this topic on TripAdvisor. A few places listed as offering day rooms were Royal Grove Hotel, Waikiki Prince Hotel and Pacific Marina Inn. I think the best thing to do would be to contact the hotels directly - they may not advertise day rates, but could probably sort something out if the dates work.

My contact at Booking.com also had a few suggestions for good hotels near the airport - they don't do day rates, but they have some good one-night offers and you shouldn't have to pay for two. They've suggested Waikiki Parc Hotel (starting at $303), VIVE Hotel Waikiki ($323) and Outrigger Reef Waikiki Beach Resort ($312). These guys only recommend highly rated hotels.

Readers respond

I received a lot of great tips for my trip to Vietnam, so I thought I'd share them with everyone. It was a pretty amazing trip, but 10 days didn't feel like long enough - there was so much more to see and do.

Marlene gave some good advice for crossing the roads - believe me, it's a real experience.

"As you know everybody rides a motorscooter over there, so there are literally hundreds on the road. When you cross the road, step out from the footpath and cross directly across the road. DO NOT STOP IN THE MIDDLE, OR ANYWHERE TO LET THE SCOOTER GO PAST YOU. You keep walking, non-stop, and the scooters all avoid you. It is incredible how they do this, but if you stop, you cause confusion."

One of my travel buddies actually got hit by a bike on her last day - luckily she only suffered bruising. It definitely pays not to hesitate.

Viv suggested visiting the Thien Mu Pagoda in Hue - which I did and I highly recommend it as well.

"I'm not a particularly religious person," Viv writes. "But the serenity (and this is not a word I regularly use either!) at this particular site is something I have never experienced before."

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