The arrival into Honiara was pretty straightforward. It's a small-ish airport but fit for purpose, given the small number of flights each day.
As we left the airport, a band and lots of kids were singing to the arriving passengers to welcome them into the country. The musical welcome is something you get in various Pacific Island airports (I've also seen musicians performing by the baggage claim in Apia and Rarotonga) and I think it's a nice touch.
The options for getting into town from the airport are basically to get a taxi or hire a car. We opted for a taxi and the driver told us the price would be SBD150 (around AU$30). I don't know if this is the normal price... but he was unwilling to negotiate, I was tired, and it seemed reasonable enough, so we accepted.
The taxi driver asked how long we'd be staying in Honiara and gave us his phone number. He said that if we wanted to hire him for any day trips, we should just call him and he'd be at our hotel within 5 minutes. Except on Saturday, as he'd be in church that day and not working.
There was a lot of construction going on around Honiara. The taxi driver commented that pretty much all of the construction was being done by Chinese companies with either Chinese workers, or a Chinese manager overseeing local workers. He seemed to feel quite negatively about the amount of money that country was investing into the Solomon Islands, because in his mind, the locals were not generally benefiting from this and he was worried about what the country might end up owing down the track. Both are common criticisms of the "belt and road" initiative which I've also heard from locals in various African and Central American countries.
The Solomon Islands is not a first-world country, but there was one building between the airport and the "city" centre that stood out like a sore thumb: the National Stadium. This is large, near-new, multi-purpose stadium with 10,000 seats is probably the most modern facility in the whole country. You can probably guess who paid for the construction.
We had booked a room at King Solomon Hotel for our 3-night stay in Honiara. This place was relatively affordable given the limited accommodation options in Honiara. It's located across the road from the Australian High Commission and is on a bit of a hill, which means it has a bit of a view while also being within walking distance of plenty of things.
From the outside, King Solomon Hotel looks like it could be quite a nice resort. But my goodness, this place has seen better days. Both the facilities and the service were really bad.
My recommendation, if you're heading to Honiara, would be to stay at Heritage Park Hotel instead. You'll pay a bit more but at least that hotel seemed to have some standards!
When we arrived at King Solomon Hotel, we walked into the reception building to find 3 staff members behind the desk. They looked startled to see guests walk in, like deer in the headlights, and didn't seem to know what to do. They were not welcoming at all, and just stared at us.
What a great first impression...
I said that we had a booking, and one of the reception staff asked me how many nights we wanted to stay. I said we had booked for 3 nights. This staff member then prepared a "quote" for us for 2 rooms for 3 nights which did not match the price on our reservation. Um, no, we already have a booking, and it's for one room. I even showed them the printout from Booking.com and they still didn't seem to quite understand. The care factor was close to zero.
Since the hotel is on a hill, there's a funicular that is supposed to take you up to your room. A neat feature, in theory. Except that the funicular didn't actually work. One of the staff noticed that we were stuck at the bottom of the funicular with our luggage and told us he would call it down for us. He walked off and never came back, so we ended up just walking up lots of stairs with all our luggage.
Once we got to our assigned room, we discovered that it wasn't the room type we'd booked. Back to reception I go. One of the staff said she would head up to our original room to deliver us a key to a different room. She did not.
The hotel has a swimming pool that looks nice in the photos, but in reality it looked like you would get some sort of disease if you swam in it. The water wasn't clean at all.
Oh, and the advertised gym? That's a construction site.
Once I'd managed to procure a key to the room we'd actually booked, things didn't get much better. The smoke alarm had been removed from the ceiling, the TV didn't work, the safe didn't work, and the kettle was disgusting. There is a room service menu in the room, but no phone to order from it.
This was one of the drinking glasses provided in the room, which had some baked-on stain inside the bottom of it:
On our first two nights at this hotel, it was hard to sleep because of a nightclub at the front of the hotel with very loud, thumping music.
If you want to use Wi-Fi in the room, you have to pay extra for that. Free Wi-Fi is ostensibly available in the reception area, but that doesn't actually work.
At least the view was nice and the air-conditioning worked - a big plus given the tropical heat. And at least water came out of the taps - until the last day, when it didn't.
After the first night, we seriously considered just abandoning this hotel and booking in at the nearby Heritage Park hotel for the other two nights. But we were both on a budget and Heritage Park isn't exactly cheap - so instead we would hang out by the pool at the better hotel during the day, buying drinks from their pool bar and eating at their restaurant a couple of times. And we just used King Solomon hotel to sleep and leave our belongings.
