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They may have come to the land of surf and sun — and yet the thousands of reporters covering APEC in Honolulu this week will spend much of their time in a giant windowless room at the Hawaii Convention Center.

The irony is not lost on the journalists.

“Sometimes this is just like a casino,” said Xing Gao, a Los Angeles-based journalist with the Xinmin Evening News in Shanghai. “There’s no clock, no window, so you can’t see the time.”

The press room, on the convention center’s ground floor, seats more than 600 reporters in rows of tables lit by dim yellow lights. Four projector screens display conference information and a live stream of CNN. There’s a press briefing area in the back of the room that can fit reporters, photographers and TV cameras.

There are plenty of meetings going on elsewhere in the building and at nearby hotels, but journalists wanting to cover them must wait in the press room before being escorted to the appropriate room or venue.

Sometimes the escorts cut time short. Tuyen Le of Vietnamese TV station VITV said that happened while he was filming a meeting of financial ministers.

“They said we have five minutes to film,” Le said. “Instead, we had 30 seconds.”

Cleide Klock, a freelance radio reporter with German news outlet Deutsche Welle, moved to Hawaii a month ago — and has been enjoying scenic island views ever since.

But not while covering APEC.

“You are in Hawaii — where’s the ocean here?” she said, gesturing around the room.

Tom Driscoll, a tech specialist for the Associated Press from New Orleans, said Hawaii’s no different from any other place when it comes to covering major events.

“Let’s put it this way. If you were somebody who worked in an office, and you moved your office to Hawaii, that’s what it’s like,” he said.

His work with AP has taken him to the Democratic and Republican national conventions, the Super Bowl and Barack Obama’s 2008 election-night rally in Chicago.

Spending 12- to 14-hour days in dark rooms is par for the course when covering big events.

“This is what I do,” he said. “I’m not alone on that.”

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