Hawaii - the Aloha State - welcomes and seduces visitors with its frangipani-scented sea breezes and tropical warmth.

This is where East merges with West in a blur of hula and disco, soap operas and creation myths, junk food and Japanese tea ceremonies, and Shinto shrines and surf clubs. Mark Twain declared Hawaii to be 'the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean', and not even thirty years of mass tourism have managed to prove him wrong.