Dogsledding in Svalbard on a chilly but beautiful day
Photo Highlight: Dogsledding in Svalbard, Norway´s Arctic Island
Spring days in Taipei
Before moving on to the next destination, people always ask where I’m going next. When Taiwan was the answer, I always got a positive respone. People love this island and Taipei city, so I grew more and more excited to go. I had stalked the weather forecast for a while and knew it’d be around 20`C, and that the cherry blossoms were starting to bloom. I didn’t expect it to be so humid , and sometimes windy, so the 20` quickly felt like 10` since the sun rarely shone through. It’s a weird sky in Taipei, gloomier than a London gray, but not as thick as Delhi brown. It didn’t feel foggy or polluted, but the sky was heavy and no pictures turned out well in that kind of lighting.
Gray skies over Tamsui
Still I loved Taipei too. It’s always intimidating traveling in a country whose language you cant speak and alphabet you can’t read, but most people knew enough words in English to help me out when I needed to communicate. It’s a tourist friendly city to visit, with cheap and regular public transport taking you anywhere you’d want by train, bus or free bicycle. There was free wifi nearly everywhere, one which was connected to my passport number. There was a free youth pass for people aged 18-30, which is so much better than the European under 26 rule (says the newly turned 28 year old). There was free hot and cold water stations in most public areas or tourist attractions, and every temple, palace and museum I visited was free except for the Taipei 101 tower top floor.
one of Taipei’s many night markets
The number of markets, and different types, was overwhelming. There were tourist markets, night markets, fish markets, flower markets, and jade markets, all spread out all over the city, and each and every market sold delicious cheap street food and a hundred varieties of teas. You could buy soup, wontons, dimsum, tempura, meat on a stick, sweet buns, fried noodles, Nutella crepes, or a whole squid on a stick for $3. Sometimes the market was hidden down a pedestrian alley, and sometimes it was in the middle of the road, but they were always crowded and easily reachable.
the pretty gardens at Chiang Kai-Shek plaza
If you’ve ever been to Chinatown in Manhattan, imagine an entire city of Chinatowns and you’ve got Taipei. My favourite part of Taipei was all the shiny streets and lights balanced out by huge parks and green spaces. Even the garbage trucks were pleasant, since they drove thru the streets playing Fur Elise on a loudpseaker, which reminds me of the icecream trucks in Canada that play The Entertainer. The highlight of my visit was when the Taipei Symphony Orchestra gave a free concert in Daan Park, where they played only the most famous and beautiful songs on an open-air stage. That was the one day it actually hit 20` so it was warm enough to sit outside, but a little bit of rain cancelled the last few songs and I biked home along the streets which turned into mirrors reflecting all the shiny bright city lights. I got a little too into it when I skidded to late for a stop light and crashed my bike into the curb… the bike survived, but not quite my knee. I also think I got lice from my couchsurfer’s dog, but atleast they’ve both left little scars that tell a good story.
The Chinese and the Pacific
I didn’t expect to meet so many Chinese people on a trip through the Pacific islands, but they were on every island, in a very important way. The Chinese run most of the little corner shops, convenience stores and super markets, and sometimes all of the restaurants too. In the midst of a Mormon revolution and conservative bible belt, they are the ones who will work on Sundays and stay open late, sometimes even 24 hours, selling beer and the largest assortment of canned tuna. They import goods from China by the boat loads, and sometimes these goods are the only goods available to buy on an island. Food, drinks, clothes, car parts, furniture, and kids toys are all Made in China, and they sell like hot cakes every time there’s a new shipment in. Every island I’ve been to had a Chinese restaurant, sometimes it was the only restaurant, and sometimes there was a dozen, all with names like Fortune Star or Lucky Dragon. They served the cheapest and most generous portions of rice or noddle dishes, but the pork never quite tasted like pork and the chicken rarely had more meat than skin on it.
I always thought I’d chose Russian or Arabic as the next, most-useful language I should learn, but now I’m convinced its Mandarin. The Chinese who live and work these islands always learn the local language, in whatever dialect they speak, and that’s it, so no white-girl English. It’s funny to speak pigeon to a soft-spoken, pale, little shopkeeper, but if you don’t know Mandarin or Samoan or Tongan, then you just had to rely on body language and face gestures.
By the time I reached Micronesia, the Chinese population had grown, since tourists and business men started to grow exponentially. Palau is to mainland China what Mexico is to the rest of North America, a cheap and tropical little play land for the hard working to go and chillax. I happened to be in Palau for Chinese New Year, so there were literally thousands of them, filling every hotel and tour the island had to offer. Right after I went to Saipan, which and has successfully marketed car rentals (mostly Hummers and Mustang convertibles) as a tourist trap for teeny little Chinese and Japanese drivers that have rarely driven anything bigger than a Yaris.
boatloads of Chinese tourists empty out at the Milky Way in Palau’s Rock Islands
After coming to mainland China on my way back home, I decided I like Chinese locals much more than Chinese tourists. The worst experience I had with them was trying to snorkel around the Rock Islands and the famous Jelly fish lake – imagine a hundred black-haired people in leotard unisuits and life jackets flailing around in a sea they don’t know how to swim in, but meanwhile trying to look at all the pretty fishies through their awkwardly fitting snorkel masks, and every once in a while trying to adjust their snorkels while standing up on some super fragile coral or trying their best to pull out some clam shells or pick up some stingerless jellyfish to take home. There’s something about personal space they don’t respect above ground either (I’ve often been walked through by groups of Chinese tourists), but underwater (especially when I don’t have a life jacket) is a bit more dangerous, and I definitely choked on a few mouthfuls of seawater as floating Chinese kids thrashed into me or over me.
The best experience I’ve had with the Chinese was thanks to China Southern Airline. First of all, I was able to book a last-minute one-way ticket from Taipei to London for less than 500 euros, which is 2 flights connecting in Guangzhou, China. Upon checking in, I was informed I had a Premium Economy ticket, which would rival most other airlines first class cabins. I had a big comfy reclining seat with a foot rest and extra leg and arm room, a meal with wine, and free entertainment, just on the short 2 hour hop between Taipei and Gangzhou. I was expecting a shitty 16 hour overnight layover in the airport (which made sense since the ticket was so cheap), but then China Southern offers a complimentary hotel stay for connections over 8 hours. I’m not talking about a flight delay, but simply a layover entitles me to a 45 min shuttle to a beautiful hotel, where I was given a 3 bedroom suite, free breakfast, and a transfer back to the hotel, all for free. I literally couldn’t believe it, and thought it was some sort of scam and I’d have to pay later, but after drinking some Chinese tea while soaking in a bubble bath, I jumped for joy onto my queen sized bed, but realized a little too late that the bed was rock hard.
Its hard to imagine the pacific without the Chinese, but I did try. Maybe it would mean less industrialized islands with more self-sufficiency, not depending on shipments or trade… or maybe their seas wouldn’t be as exploited by the harvest of nearly everything edible (including coral). Or maybe the islands would have long gone under, tired of living with such limited resources and simple diets. Or maybe the Australians, Kiwis and Americans would have just filled the gaps instead… who knows. All I can say for sure is the Pacific economy would be totally different without the Chinese, and I wouldn’t have eaten nearly as well without them during my trip.
Saipan & Guam
When you’re in Guam, everyone tells you to skip Saipan, and when you’re in Saipan, everyone asks why you’d bother going to Guam. I don’t understand why there’s so much hate between them, since they’re really similar, very close to eachother, and share a common Chamorro heritage, but its just as confusing how they’re not the same country when one is an American unincorporated territory and the other one an American commonwealth. They both have a lot of American military, mostly navy guys affectionately called ‘ship guys’ in Saipan. Guam has a fully operational naval base and air force, teeming with weapons, planes, helicopters, ships, submarines and muscly guys.
the lovely Hyatt beach in Garapan
I didn’t see or feel much of the military presence, but both my hosts were navy guys. Dale was a rescue swimmer and just finishing up his 4 year contract on Guam, so we celebrated that and my birthday with a bucket of beers on the beach. My other host was a 40-something year old retired navy guy, and now spends his time scuba diving and working at a scuba dive shop.
me and Kevin drinking from our sippy cups on Managaha island
In Saipan I stayed with couchsurfers who worked at the hospital, but they were all from mainland America and still acted like the probably did as freshmen in university. Kevin was always RTR, ‘ready to rage’ – his reference to any sort of drinking or dancing; his roomate was a retired Special ops military guy who took me out to a rotating restaurant (housed in the previous Nauru embassy from back in the golden days) and popped champagne on the beach for me; and his best friend took me on a sunset dinner cruise for my birthday that I had to carry him home from (it was all you can drink screwdrivers and he was finished before sunset). Needless to say we raged together and with half of Saipan, and I acquired alot more party friends along the way. Patty was bat shit crazy, in the best kind of way, and cooked us the most amazing spread of chamorro food. I had lunch dates with her and with another doctor I met who got drunk after one sip of rose. We had brunch with bottomless mamosas at the Hyatt, and toured the islands tourist attraction (most of them being kind of morbid Japanese/American conflict points during WWII).
Patty and her brother join me for yet another beach day
In addition to some sun and sand, I felt like Saipan was the Vegas of the pacific, not just for me but all of mainland asia, since downtown Garapan has more Chinese, Japanese and Korean shops and signage than anything else. It’s a raging resorty destination for alot of sunshine seekers, and pampers well with spas and restaurants for honeymooners to love. I had my 21st birthday in Vegas, and celebrating my 28th birthday in Saipan will be just as memorable. But maybe its time to grow up a little for the next one – Im getting too old for this kind of raging. (*thank you Kevin for a 5 day hangover!)
Palau and the Rock Islands
Palau and Yap are pretty close to each other, considering how spread out the rest of Micronesia is, but Palau is its own little island country. Historically, Palau and Yap are also very connected, but Palau has become a melting pot of Micronesian, Chinese and Philippino people catering to a huge tourism market, while Yap remains a quiet, traditional island with very few visitors.
My favourite snorkel spot in the Rock Islands
Palau is to mainland Asia, what Mexico is to North America, a nearby tropical paradise for the masses to go on vacation. Technically, Palauan and English are the official languages, but I saw and heard more Chinese and Japanese than English, and barely a word in Palauan, during my whole visit. The tourist shops and tourist information are all catered for the Asian market, and I only met other Asian tourists except for one Norwegian anthropologist, and a handful of US Navy divers (the marines come here on vacation from their job posts in Guam or Kwajalein).
There’s only one backpackers on the island, and many locals are still confused about the difference between a brothel and a hostel, so the majority of tourism stays with the big hotels and resorts and packaged tours. But at Ms. Pinetree’s Hostel, her 14 beds were fully booked a month in advance, and all of her guests’ business stayed within the family. Her uncle was the shuttle service to and from the airport, her brother lived in the hostel, and her brother ran private tours to the Rock Islands in his personal little speed boat. She didn’t have a bed for me either, but I slept in my hammock on the balcony and gave her brother some business instead.
a limestone cave
I went on his boat with the Norwegian Anthropologist and her boyfriend to the Rock Islands, the main tourist destination in Palau and a UNESCO world heritage site. It’s a huge lagoon scattered with rock islands of all shapes and sizes, a cluster of tree-covered, mushroom-shaped limestone. Noone lives on these islands anymore, but they were heavily bombed in WWII when the Japanese and American used to hide among them, and before that, the Yapese used to harvest their stone money from these islands. We saw the wings of a bomber plane washed up on one beach, and a sunken ship sheltered in one bay just a meter below the surface.
silica mud bath
Like me, hundreds of tourists come to the Rock islands not only to see these strange formations of land, but to dive and snorkel the underwater world. I’ve never seen so many bright and varied corals and fish in perfectly clear water, colourful clams the size of a couch, and one lake filled with thousands of sting-less orange jelly fish. The Milky Way is a silica-mud bottom lagoon where the seawater turns from turquoise clear to milky blue, and it was a joy to dive down to the bottom and scoop up some mud, plaster it all over, dry off in the tropical sun, and then dive back in to the bath-warm water to scrub it all away and emerge with babysoft skin. It was probably more expensive than the Blue Lagoon back home, since you have to pay a $100US park fee to go to the Rock Islands (including Jellyfish lake), and another $100+ for the day tour. But I guess it was worth it, one of those once-in-a-lifetime places that people will continue to pay whatever it costs, which unfortunately keeps driving the price up.
Yap, Micronesia
The country Micronesia is a group of 4 main islands, Kosrae, Chuuk/Truk, Pohnpei, and Yap, and are still sometimes referred to as the Caroline islands. They are not atolls, but actual islands, the Jurrasic park kind of islands, tall and big and lush, spread out long and far between Palau and the Marshall islands. The only way to get to these islands is with United Airlines, who has a complete monopoly on Micronesia, and only connects them with cumbersome little island hopper flights. So, if you want to go from Majuro, Marshall Islands, to Palau, like I did, I had to stop at every Micronesian airport, except Yap (which came after Palau). The only thing I knew about Yap before going was that they used to (and still today) use stone money from Palau to settle disputes and mark wealth. The bigger the stone, and the more men whose lives were lost at sea bringing it back to Yap, the more its worth.
a traditional Yapese house and some stone money around it
Yap was a pleasant surprise, maybe my favourite Micronesian island, but the one I spent least time on. Because of the United flight schedule of only one flight a week in each direction, I could stay 3 or 10 days, and being this close to the end of a 6 month trip means I dont have much choice other than rushing through 3 days. I magically found a couchsurfer, the first one since Samoa 6 islands ago, at the very last minute, and this guy Graham was one of only 9 profiles, and randomly studied in Isafjordur, Iceland, for his masters degree three years ago. What an awesome coincidence, except that we probably spent more time talking about Iceland than Yap, but I still got so much more out of Yap in 3 days because of him.
slaughtering lunch
He lived in Tomil village, with a local family and all their Philippino workers (the owner ran a construction business), so it was like living in a village within a village. I arrived in the middle of the night my first day, and we sat up drinking rum and eating smoked fish with our fingers until I succumbed to a food coma in the little blue treehouse that was my ‘couch.’ The next morning I woke up to the sound of pig squeals, which continued for a few minutes until the Philippino’s finally had her tied down well enough to slit her throat. She was then roasted in a sealed oven of burning coals and served for lunch, including pigs head bits soaked in pig blood – which happens to taste much better than it sounds.
the beach house in Maap
The food kept up to this standard throughout my stay, with boiled crayfish dinners and midnight snacks of fish soup. I only ate at 2 restaurants – Oasis, which felt kind of like an Irish pub meets pirate tavern, where I had a super American-styled burger and fries, and once at Village View Hotel up north in Maap, where the okonomiyaki was better than I’d had in Japan (its like a pizza with en egg/potato pancakey crust instead of dough).
the women prepare for their sitting dance
Graham took me to Maap because him and his friends share a beach house there. It was a tiny shack on stilts, with electricity run over on an extension chord from the neighbours. There was no toilet but a shower, but of course the sea served both purposes just fine. I only wish I could have stayed there for 3 more days, since it felt like the type of place you would automatically fall into meditation just from being there, totally alone and relaxed without a care in the world.
practicing for Yap day
But luckily I also spent some time in Graham’s village, where upcoming Yap day (March 1st) sent every man, woman and child into preparation for dances, costume making, or more pig slaughters. We went around the villages to watch some of the dance practices, and the women’s sitting dance was so touching. It was a line of nearly 30 topless women, ranging from 2-60 years old, wearing beautiful bark skirts, green leaves and colourful headresses. They sang these sweet and somber songs while sitting cross legged and dancing with their arms and heads, and watching them gave me goosebumps. The men’s dance was a little more commanding (and had twice the number of men), erotic even (their skirt is tied and hung to resemble a big ball and penis), as they thrust their hips around and yelled staccato words at the tops of their lungs. The mixed dance was the most technical one, when men and women of different heights, ages and skill danced together with bamboo sticks, synchronizing their dancing and singing with hitting their sticks together. Graham participated in the men’s dance, the only white guy, but they cover their bodies in tumeric-infused coconut oil so everyone just looked really yellow and greasy from far away.
First stop in the North Pacific: the Marshall Islands
Majuro atoll, in the forefront and faintly in the background
There are a lot of different words to refer to this part of the world, like Oceania, Australasia, or simply the Pacific, but there are three distinct parts to the Pacific islands: Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia. They don’t refer only to geographical separations, but also cultural and genetic differences between the islanders. Melanesia includes the countries furthest west and closest to Australia: Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji. Polynesia can be described as all the islands within the triangle between Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. Micronesia are all the North Pacific islands, including the country called The Federated States of Micronesia.
Majuro airport
My first stop in the North Pacific was the Marshall Islands. From then on, it was only Micronesian islands and the US dollar, despite there being different countries along the way. All of these islands were once peaceful, self-sufficient communities originating mainly from Asia, but during WWI and WWII, Japan, Germany and the USA ravaged the islands and their people as they fought for these strategic territories that they themselves had never even settled. The Marshall Islands probably got the worst of it, since they were not only bombed and invaded during the war, but heavily bombed with nuclear bomb tests after that. More than 60 nuclear bombs were dropped on Bikini atoll in the 10 years following WWII, islands where the local population had been removed and later returned to their super-polluted, nuclear contaminated, radioactive islands. The Marshallese still suffer from exposure 60 years later and haven’t been able to return to their homes.
And to make matters worse, the US hasn’t learned much from their mistakes, since they are now bombing the hell out of Kwajalein atoll, called a Ballistic missile defense test site. Although its not nuclear bombs, its still killing huge parts of the coral reef and marine ecosystems, and again they’ve displaced the local community from nearly the whole island, isolating them to just one atoll called Ebeye where the population density is worse than Manhattan. Neither locals nor tourists can visit any other part of Kwajalein unless you’re part of the US Military on task there, or one of their family members or an invited guest.
a hammock kinda day
Aaaanyway, enough ranting… I loved Majuro atoll, the friendly, happy, bomb-free, locally inhabited part of the Marshall Islands. It’s a huge, broken up, u-shaped connection of atolls and islands, little spits of sand and coral sticking out of the sea, and traditional canoes sail alongside the fishing boats and private yachts in the space between them. I went to Eneko for a night, reachable from the capital city in about 15 minutes by speedboat. There me and a friend had the island to ourselves for $45 a night, including our private beach, some kayaks, a coral reef to snorkel, our wooden hut, an outdoor kitchen, the hammock and one nearly washed-away picnic table. Another night we camped at Laura beach, which isn’t a camp site but we hung a hammock and used the benches, but a drunken dumb and deaf guy came tearing through our camp a couple of times in the middle of the night, so it wasn’t quite as relaxing as Eneko.
our beach hut at Eneko
If you make it to Majuro, there’s only one proper backpackers called Flametree Backpackers (and very affordable at $20US/night for a semi-private room). All your tourist things can be taken care of from the nearby Marshall Islands Resort, the Visitor’s authority tourist office in town, or the REE (Hotel Robert Reimers/ Robert Reimers Enterprises) docks. There are fully-stocked American style stores everywhere, it was cleaner and cheaper than many of the other islands, so Majuro comes highly recommended in my books.
our half-standing picnic table
*For more information on the hydrogen bomb test and the US’ impact on Bikin island and the Marshallese people, read this article: www.theguardian.com/bikini-atoll-nuclear-test
Nauru, the wierdest country I’ve ever visited
Can you imagine a chunk of rock sticking out of the Pacific Ocean, only 20 square km in size, 300 km away from the nearest island, with 10,000 people living on it? Then imagine that this little island and all its Micronesian/Polynesian peoples changed hands from Germany until WWI, to the UK until WWII, then the Japanese invaded, and finally Nauru became a recognized, independent state in the 60’s. Now this is when it gets crazy – then Nauru became one of the richest countries in the world during the 70’s, with millionaires flying on the country’s regional airline all over the world and buying Lamborghinis for their president (who was too fat to fit in it, rumor says). By the late 80’s, the source of their billions, phosphate mines, began to dwindle, and they started to shut down. Many of them were built by the Australians, who just left them as they were, and they’re still there – tall, rusted buildings and half standing cantilever arms stranded on a dock-less beach. By the 90’s, unemployment was everywhere and a new generation of Nauruans were born into poverty.
This structure may fall down at any time!
After making the Australians a few million too, they now depend on Aus Aid to function. They The Chinese run all their small businesses and Japan helps them build roads. One of the most significant financial inputs to their economy comes from the Australian run detention center holding refugees seeking asylum in Australia. It was opened from 2001-2007, and reopened in 2012 and now holds nearly 1000 people from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka. Australia pays 8 figures to Nauru for the center, and even more money for each refugee’s transport when and if they leave this middle-of-nowhere island. While they’re still there, they get amnesty from the local law, and police won’t even help a Nauruan if a conflict arises with a refugee since each one is worth so much money.
The President’s destroyed and vandalized mansion
The President’s beautiful mountain-top house was torched in a 2001 riot by local people who had lived through the country’s downward spiral. Alot of the blame fell on the government, who managed public funds through international investment projects gone bad. They basically gambled away their millions, lost all their airplanes except one (still functioning Our Airline was nationalized and the government has gone into debt to keep it afloat), and one of the grandest hotels ever built in this part of the Pacific has become a spooky concrete structure resembling something like an imcomplete construction project from the 80’s. It probably has 50+ rooms, but ours was the only one occupied for our one night stay, and the owner keeps her prices just $10 cheaper than Menen Resort, the only other hotel on the island at $150/night for a dirty room in a dying building. The prices of things, in Australian dollars, is ludicrous, since only political or NGO related people travel here, and what you get for what you pay for isn’t even worth a tenth of the price.
deserted industrial areas – a common sight in Nauru
When I got off the plane, I had the feeling Nauru would be a unique place in the Pacific, but it was a weird and eerie kind of unique. I’m certainly glad I went, just to try and understand a bit how such a tiny country and its history could truly be real… but I don’t know if I’d go again. It’s a sad little place, and I just kept wishing I could time travel and visit it back in the 80’s when the place was booming and all the hotels were filled with foreigners that could have enjoyed Nauru with me.
Tarawa Atoll, Kiribati
One of Kiribati’s many atolls
The difference between an island and an atoll is basically just a lot of land and soil. While an island can be just as wide as it is long, be covered in green grass, and rise up out of the sea into huge mountain ranges, an atoll is only a narrow bit of raised coral rock, dotted along in strips of land surrounding a big blue lagoon. Just try to imagine a sunken volcano in the sea, with only the ridge around the crater sticking out, with a few resilient palm trees and banana fruits growing strong. The highest point on Tarawa is 3m above sea level, a small rise in the road that you’re over in a second, and the 2.5m high bridge connecting two of the atolls. There were huge stretches of land where it was only as wide as the road, since a series of roads and bridges connect the pieces of land slowly drifting apart from rising sea levels.
There are only 4 atoll nations in the world, countries which live on slivers of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and its amazing what they do with so little land, and how many people they can fit on it. There are around 700 people per square kilometer in Tarawa… plus their pigs and chickens. They had to get rid of goats because they ate all the seedlings of the little vegetation that does grow, and horses or cows never had a chance without grass. The pigs stay tied up by their back foot under people’s houses, and the roosters are free to roam around and cockadoddledoo as they please. The stray dogs and homeless cats squeeze somewhere inbetween the boundaries, and somehow everyone fits, including the regular influx of seamen coming in from fishing boats and cargo vessels.
Tarawa Atoll
People had been asking me if I was going to Christmas Island, which I thoughw as weird since its in the Indian Ocean half way between Africa and Australia, but then I learned that ‘ti’ is pronounced ‘s’ in the Kiribati language, making Kiribati’s name ‘Kiribas,’ and Kritimati (the other large island in the island group) ‘Kirismas.’ Even though they’re both part of the same country, they’re hundreds of miles apart, since Kiribati is speckled around the equator from 170`W to 150`E. The date line technically passes through them at 180`, but they’ve all shifted in favour of the west side, making the easternmost islanders the first in the world to see a new day every morning. They renamed this island ‘Millenium’ island (formerly Caroline island) in 2000, but some deserted beach in Antarctica technically saw the millennium first.
Since there’s not much topsoil or any grass, it’s a stony, dusty place. There’s a strange grayness to the colour of the land, as if someone poured an unmixed bag of concrete over Tarawa, making this greyish dust float all over the place when its dry, and turning all the streets into a sticky gray mud and potholes into greywater pools when it rains (and it rained, a whole lot, while I was there). There were atleast one or two dedicated workers in each shop to wipe dust off the products for sale, an endless job that meant starting all over again as soon as you finished, because by that time, more gray dust and mud had crept back in with the wind or tromping feet.
you have to wade through a channel between islets at low tide to get to this bungalow
I stayed at a lovely place called George’s, where all the female and fa’afafine men who worked there knew my name and the restaurant made delicious, cheap, food. George’s was also a bar where live bands performed to celebrate the weekend and Valentine’s day, and I met a lot of men from all over the world working on various ships docked in the Betio harbor. I met a Venezuelan helicopter pilot who nearly took me on a helicopter tour of Tarawa (dang…), a 24/7 drunk observer from Tuvalu, and a chief engineer from an American ship who sank the little speed boat his crew uses to go from the fishing boat to shore.
There are more shipwrecks than boats afloat, or so it seemed, with rusted boats from WWII to the speed boat that sank yesterday scattered about the shallow lagoon. The deranged chief engineer didn’t even have a radio to tell the captain he’d sank their speedboat, and he had no way to get back out to the main vessel, so he sat around the bar at our hotel drinking and retelling the story until someone with a marine radio could help him.
getting away from the gray streets
I get used to hearing weird stories like his, and other equally strange but wonderful stories like the helicopter pilot who saw a blue whale give birth while scouting for fish. My taxi driver mixed west and east with north and south and told me about how the sun set on the south side of the island. I suspended judgment for a moment to try and see how he could be right, but we’re literally on the equator so there’s no mistaking that. I’ve started to collect my own strange stories too, and my favourite from Tarawa is about the two cockroaches that my air conditioner threw at me. A live one got hurled at my leg when I first turned it on, and during my first night sleeping, a second one got caught up, killed, then launched onto my bed. Just another day in the life in the Pacific.
Themes of the South Pacific
It’s interesting to travel here, since your day is governed by the sunrise and the sunset, waking with the rest of the village according to the suns wishes, and your diet is limited to the market’s availability. For a while it’s an overabundance of fresh papaya and watermelon, then its pineapples and eggplants. Trying to find avocados when its cucumber and tomato season is tough, but I’ve been lucky twice. Your activities are controlled by the weather, since the rain makes you stop wherever you are and worry only about finding shelter, and the shining sun makes you hide under shade until the temperature drops below 38 degrees and you can once again bare to start walking. An umbrella is a very versatile item, since it works as protection against the rain and the sun, so it’s not weird to always have an open umbrella above your head. The tides govern when you can get in or out of the water safely, or when it’s good to snorkel, or when there’s actually sand on the beach to lay on, or waves past the break to surf on.
Weird things I’ve learned is to always keep my bag shut in my room at night. If not, you’ll find a couple cockroaches who’ve moved in and you won’t find them til a few days later, a little groggy from lack of oxygen and food, but still alive and creepily crawling further into your backpack when you try to chuck them out. Buses don’t often have windows on them, so it’s also important to keep your mouth shut whiles it’s driving… the bugs and bees do not taste good flying in at 50km per hour. Another important lesson is that you can never have too much bug spray, and you certainly can never be wearing too much bug spray, because those damned mosquitos will still get you, even if you think you’re in a mozzy-proof net. They’re like cockroaches, they just never die… or they multiply faster than you can kill them, I’m not sure. And they come with horrible threats of diseases I hadn’t even heard of – like chikungunya – or the regular malaria, dengue and yellow fevers you’re equally weary of. But, I do know that if mosquitos were to die a horrible painful death in the burning depths of hell forever, I would not feel bad, or sad, or any remorse, since their total extinction wouldn’t make me mourn one bit.
There are a few common themes in the South Pacific that stay even when you change islands or countries. Fire dancing and other types of traditional dance are always present, in their own local flare. Some are done in grass skirts, some in sarongs (whose names can change from pareos to lava-lavas), some are scary (like the Maori haka – google it if you’ve never seen an All Blacks rugby game), most are beautiful, some are danced to percussion and body slapping, and others to the sound of ukuleles and beautiful Polynesian songs. All the South Pacific countries have memorable graves, each burial practice done slightly differently, but they’re usually very present, in the front yards of peoples homes, along the side of the road, or in mass graveyards decorated with colourful plastic flowers. They range from mounds of sand with a simple tombstone, to full-on housed shelters where the relatives of the deceased like to play or rest.
Tattoos are important, and visible mostly on men, but women will also often have them on their upper leg or a band around an arm or ankle. Maori’s have them on their face, and Samoans get a solid tattoo from their knees up to their midwaist which takes 6 hours a day for 2 weeks to complete the traditional way. Apparently everything is tattooed except the genitals… that’s got to be painful.
The food has, for the most part, been consistently bad. They don’t use much spice or flavor except for fried oil, and the staple is canned tuna, corned beef, instant noodles and different forms of potatoey-starches. Ive never seen so many different types and flavours of instant noodles – everything from Korean Kimchi to Maggi noddles and Indonesian packages I couldn’t read. The food was refreshingly amazing in Fiji, and some fully-catered hotels in Samoa had yummy curries and rice, which was a welcomed change to noodles or starch.
Women, men and children all wear flowers in their hair, live ones, plastic ones, white ones, pink ones, and most a variation of a frangipani or hibiscus flower. It’s funny to see it on the men, since it doesn’t take anything away from their masculinity, even if its paired with a pink sarong or flowery skirt, since that’s just become a normal, manly sight for me in the pacific. Every island has a different name for cross-dressing men (my favourite is the very feminine word fa’afafine in Tahitian), the flamboyant gay guys who are not gay guys but women who take female roles and like men. They’re a source of pride for any family who never has a daughter, since they fulfill the daughterly void, and even though homosexuality is illegal in many countries and the church would never approve, they bypass this sin since they’re simply fully-functional women (stuck in men’s bodies… but that’s not their fault).
Kava, which is a cloudy-brownish narcotic drink made from a root plant, has also been a reoccurring theme. Every island has its own kava – a special recipe, different names or pronunciation, a special time or place to drink it, and various ways the kava ceremony should proceed. When I had it in Fiji, it was from a small wooden bowl that we all shared by passing around and drinking until the cup was empty. It would be refilled and repassed til we’d all had enough, or our tongues became to tickly to hold up to the bowl, and I didn’t feel drunk or drugged but a lot of people acted like they did.
After five months in the South Pacific, it’s all starting to feel very familiar, and most things are comfortable except the heat and mosquitos. I actually met someone in Samoa whose name (in Samoan) was South Pacific Ocean, and first I laughed, but then I thought about it and realized that the meaning behind it is a beautiful thing to be named after. If it didn’t have such a terrible ring to it in English, I’d probably consider naming a child after the South Pacific too.
nomadic cosmopolitan 