Loving the wide open spaces of south Florida.
I knew an Air Force Colonel and his wife who were so excited to be assigned to Hawaii. Their children were grown or in college, so it was just the two of them.
They paid an exorbitant sum of money for a house that turned out to be poorly built and gave them tens of thousands of dollars in maintenance costs the first year. The local government was corrupt, as you say, and native Hawaiians treated them with contempt.
They loved many aspects of living there, but after 15 months his wife had had enough.
She moved back to the States, and told her husband that when his tour was up he was to join her then. He firmly agreed with the decision.
They had big plans to eventually retire there, but scuttled them all. They said that as big as the island was, after a few months they felt "trapped" and wanted to "get off."
I understand that on Oahu “da bruddahs” have made a local sport out of beating up whites who offended them. They cut someone off & when the haole beeps his horn, the bruddah says “want beef?” and starts throwing punches.
Have a friend stationed at Schofield Barracks. She’s black, her husband is white. They get very hostile looks in the no-go zones.
“Wide open spaces” of South Florida? I guess you don’t live in the overdeveloped lib-run multicultural cesspools of the People’s Republic of Broward or El Condado de Miami Dade. Ditto most of the sixth borough of Palm Beach County.