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When I go back to Apia from Pago Pago to catch my onward flight next day to Tonga, the place is under water, worst rainy season in years, and there’s a major storm coming in Saturday. Hopefully I’ll make it out before the deluge. Hopefully I can find something to eat in Tonga on a Sunday. My cheap-ass taxi doesn’t show- you get what you pay for- but I make it up by talking my way out of the exit tax at the airport by explaining I’m in transit from American Samoa (but I didn’t tell them I spent five days in Apia before that). Airport security is a joke, kids running around begging for coins, while ex-pat palangis use the forex booths to do their monthly banking, cashing personal checks and walking around with thousands of dollars in cash. I feel like I’m tripping. How do you maintain security in an airport with no exterior walls? Not so very carefully…

We beat the rain out of Samoa and soon we’re flying in bright sunshine, same in Fiji, and same continuing in Tonga. But it’s too late, because I’m coming down with something, my self splitting gently at the seam, whether a continuation of that cough that I finally kicked or something new I don’t know. Even so, it’s nice to have to have some sunshine after constant rain for so long. Supposedly there’s a cyclone moving south after it does its damage in Samoa, but who knows how far or how fast? The owner of my guest house in Tonga makes it sound like the storm of the century, but then he’s full of BS on a lot of issues, typical Brit ex-pat, lived here twenty-two years and doesn’t speak a word of the local dialect (“they’re supposed to be learning English”).

Tanaka- the Japanese girl from Samoa- is on my flight to Tonga also, but she ends up elsewhere in the shuffle at the airport, even though I’ve recommended my guest house to her, so I don’t force the issue on her. Well, next day she shows up at my guest house with a nasty dog bite, and having stayed who knows where. I can only figure that the airport ATM- last point of reference- had no cash, and so someone took pity on her. She’ll be okay. I’m more concerned about my shoes, which are fast falling apart. Duct tape is really not an option, since they won’t let you take that on a plane.

The next day is Sunday, so someone should take pity on us all, out in the boondocks with nothing but crackers to survive on. Everything- I mean EVERYTHING- is closed on Sundays (by law! What is this, Iran?), so my airport driver stops at the local Chinese sh*t-n-git the evening before so I can stock up. How’s that for service? Fortunately I’m half-way prepared, so no big deal, noodles with egg in addition to what I brought from Samoa. What about the traveler for whom it’s not normal to get off the plane with a shopping list? At the guest house there’s no food, no TV or fan in the ‘living room’, no comp coffee or tea, nothing nada zippo zilch, fun fun fun. The guest house owner gets excited about being the master of kava ceremonies, but not much else. So what if the guests are starving. Let ‘em drink kava!

Fortunately the Finnish guy Sammy has already made plans to go to a nearby Mormon church, so we get together for that and end up making it a Sunday morning of church-hopping. Besides that there’s the local folk art par excellence to be surveyed- ready for this? Graveyards! Not only do the defunct get to rest in peace and symmetry, but they get special quilts to keep them warm (hey, it sometimes gets down to 15c-59f in winter)! This more than makes up for a culture and architecture somewhat less traditional than the Samoan. And if the sarong-like lavalavas are absent here, they make it up with a grass mat worn around the waist for ceremonies, i.e. Sunday. We even get to sit in on and observe a traditional wedding ceremony and feast!

Next day I get up early to go to town, since I’ve already spent half my time here and haven’t even seen downtown Nuku’alofa. So what if I’ve got flu-like symptoms? F*ck ‘em… I walk the five clicks to town and the loose collection of villages gradually coalesces into… not much. This make 1995 Vientiane look like Manhattan, no McD, no KFC, no Pizza Hut, so… pretty nice, if a bit boring. Nuku DOES have something that I’ve yet to see in this region so far, though, and that’s a couple of decent bars, where locals and foreigners can both hang out with some decent music and decent prices. Tonga is friendly, more so than Samoa I think, so somewhat intriguing. It might actually be more interesting to live in than to tour.

If this is less of a city than Samoa’s Apia, one can only imagine what it’s like on Tuvalu, an entire nation of 10,000 souls! If that seemed daunting at the outset, I think by now I’d find it interesting. I still lack Tuvalu and the countries of Micronesia- not to mention the Philippines- so future itineraries in the South Pacific are looming… or I may just wait for the sea levels to rise from global warming. Some countries have already made contingency plans. The quick stop at Kiritimati will be a little taste of that future trip.

And what’s the verdict for this two month trip? Polynesia is cheaper than Melanesia. Even the grocery stores are reasonable- when you can find them- prices more or less the same as the US, which is good. Anybody who thinks the US is expensive has never been around very much. I suspect the current priciness of Australia- and Papua NG and Solomons- has much to do with Oz’s current strong exchange rate, likely the result of Chinese investments more than anything else, that and high interest rates, though I’d be hard pressed to say which is cause and which is effect. Not so long ago AUD traded at far less than the USD, down around $ .75 where NZD is today, or less. Now Oz and US and Canada are all almost equal, convenient for arithmetic, but a fall from grace for US. That’s okay; it’s lonely at the top anyway.

Melanesia might be friendlier than Polynesia, but the general lawlessness of Papua New Guinea, and the increased friendliness of Tonga vis-a-vis Samoa may cancel previous judgments out. None of the cities are especially pretty, but supposedly the nicest one- Frenchified Port Vila in Vanuatu- I didn’t even stop in. So if less is more for Pacific cities, then Nuku’alofa maybe ranks higher that way. All in all Fiji is not a bad mix of the region’s various aspects (and the easiest immigration policy: four months, don’t work- simple), and the cheap Indian cuisine is very welcome.

All of which brings me back to the question of pre-Melanesian people inhabiting the area, specifically Papua New Guinea, the subject which got me into a fight with a British ex-pat lawyer in Honiara, S.I. The existence of a myriad of non-Austronesian ‘Papuan’ languages makes the question moot, if still confusing. And Melanesians have a distinctly African appearance, while that of Polynesians is distinctly Asian (and believe me, I’ve looked at a few Asians). While the historians gloss over many details, there must have been a major migratory thrust from the mainland of Asia (fleeing Hans migrating south?) through Taiwan that splintered in the Philippines into two main groups, one of which went toward Borneo and became Indonesian while the other went toward New Guinea.

There these eastern ‘Austronesians’ must have mixed with native Papuans to a greater or lesser degree and became Melanesians while others remained on the fringes unmixed and eventually become Polynesians. The fact that Polynesian languages have cognates with Malay that are absent in Melanesia must be accounted for somehow. Some words cross over between Melanesian and Polynesian, but those are more cultural- e.g. mana’, kava, tapu (‘taboo’, which can mean ‘sacred’ y/o ‘forbidden’ BTW)- not so much core vocabulary. Language may not be an exact science, but it doesn’t lie… wait a minute…

So the 25th of January starts rather stormily, howling winds and rains lashing through the night in Nuku’alofa. By dawn it’s all died down, though, so we get away on time. My driver stops in town to pick up one other passenger, then lopes his way to the airport with one hand on the cell and one on the steering-wheel, always fun to watch the shifting of hands and gears (Polynesians are the world’s SLOWEST cab-drivers BTW). The Air Pacific plane even arrives on time and I have Wi-Fi in the airport cafe, so life is good. All’s smooth on the flight to Fiji, but they make me go through immigration, so I inquire about a day trip to Suva. They don’t recommend it. That’s just as well, because it starts pouring down rain soon thereafter. So I kill half a day reading an L. Ron Hubbard book, something I picked up in Pago Pago, and have never done before. It’s disjointed, chaotic, and non-linear… not bad! At this point I just want to get out from under the cyclone threat and back to the US, though the fifteen hour wait is trying…

As the calendar turns to the 26th we’re soon boarding the plane, but when we take off we’re almost immediately back to the 25th, courtesy of the International Date Line. From there it’s cop some zzz’s as cop can, little consolation that the flight I just watched take off from Fiji to LA will be arriving almost simultaneous with my arrival in Honolulu. That’s all so I can stop in Kiritimati (pronounced something like ‘Christmas’, no relation) Atoll, in the island country of Kiribati (pronounced something like ‘Gilberts’, no relation), not to be confused with the Christmas Island that refugees wash up on in their quest for Australia. My flight from Fiji to Honolulu makes a ‘technical’ stop there… so that counts, number 139 of 192 UN member countries under my belt. If that sounds tricky on my part, it’s more than that. Transit passengers don’t even get off the plane, but the view is priceless, one of the world’s most remote border posts, complete with VIP lounge! Some people DO get off, though, locals and surfers mostly. Beachcombers and castaways came before the conquistadores and missionaries in this region, remember. I log it in to memory.

Honolulu is a breeze, just a quick chat with la migra. “I see you made it out before the storm.” I heard about it. “It’s supposed to hit Tonga today.” That’s where I just was. “Welcome to Hawaii.” Then it’s another three hour wait, albeit with free WiFi, and then another five hour flight on to LA. By the time we finally pull up to the ramp at LAX it’s pushing 10:30pm, still the 25th. It’s too late to risk the Metro line, so I catch the Super Shuttle and get a quick tour of the rising new downtown LA before heading up to the hollies. I fumble with the keys… and finger-nail clippers and bottle opener, no stethoscope… it turns. I’m in, Trinity.
“Honey, I’m home….”
It’s been a long day.

California time is only two hours difference from Apia, Samoa being on daylight savings time, same day even. So the sun rises around 7am and sets 8-ish. I heard people in Fiji say it’s a nine-hour flight from there to LA, but I won’t be so lucky. Mine’s that just to Honolulu, what with a ‘technical stop’ on Christmas Atoll, but at least I’ve got a five-hour nonstop to LA from there, so hoping for no jet-lag. Jet-lag is an east-west phenomenon; north-south is little affected, though polar flights may be the exception, possibly the worst… I’m bored. After some five days in Apia, Samoa, I’m somewhere between stir-crazy and stark-raving. I’ve listened to almost all the music on my laptop, stuff I’ve received over the last two years from record industry publicists, much of which I only listened to once to begin with, the ones I actually reviewed no more than five times max.

It’s no surprise I’m bored, since I knew these eight days in Samoa were there looming large the whole time with no compelling destination. I half-way assumed I’d get over to Savai’i at some point, but with all the rain it’s hard to get excited about simply schlepping it all over to another town for some undefined purpose. So the idea of hopping over to Pago Pago in American Samoa comes as a godsend. I can’t believe I didn’t even consider it before… but I didn’t, not at all. The only other option is to upgrade hotels here in Apia for a change of pace, but that’s pretty lame. Of course I’m only here eight days to begin with because the frequent flights to Fiji tend to fill up, for what reason I’m not sure, since the flight FROM Fiji certainly wasn’t full. If this side-trip to America works out, that’d be way cool. Too bad I don’t need any bucks USD.

If I sound lame complaining about being bored in Paradise, let it be said definitively that when I decided years ago to visit every country in the world, I never imagined it as a frolic in the park. It’s not. It’s a tour of duty, discipline being the operative concept. It is for any serious travel writer BTW, and I don’t count those who merely act out the typical tourist itineraries for you. The only difference between me and Paul Theroux out here- apart from his massive success- is that he traveled with a kayak, which quite impresses me FWIW, not his physical prowess necessarily, but the willingness to endure the hassle of traveling with a 2-ton gorilla. This is where the backpacker in me stands up to be heard. The first commandment in my Bible is ‘travel light’. That’s gospel, the only exception being when the extra weight is part of the trip’s theme… a la Theroux. Other than that he’s just traveling around shooting the sh*t with people, just like me, chewing the fat and then chewing the cud, waxing philosophical. You spend half a day doing something, and the rest of the day writing about it; that’s the gig. I’m sure I’ll run into an ex-PM from New Zealand any day now.

Next let it be said that image and reality are not the same thing. This is not the Caribbean, object of my last previous adventure only a half year ago, so still fresh on my mind. The hardest thing to realize- and the most distinctive difference in comparison with the Caribbean- is the sheer vastness of the Pacific. You can’t fly for an hour anywhere in the Caribbean and not see inhabited land somewhere. In the Pacific there are literally thousands of uninhabited islands. From Nadi, Fiji, we flew for almost two hours to ‘nearby’ Samoa, my 137th UN-member country BTW, and that’s not un-typical. This is in a Boeing-737, mind you, not the little Fokkers (!) that LIAT Airline flogs around the Caribs. More importantly, there are no cruise ships here, not many anyway, nothing compared to the Caribbean. I haven’t seen one since I left Auckland.

The Pago Pago idea is a good one, very good. It’s nice… not in the tourist sense, because there are none, not to speak of. I guess that’s why it’s nice for me. Once it’s been ‘done’ it’ll never be the virgin that it was before, especially not if it’s being done by everyone, and for money. Pago Pago is not like that, fairly pristine in fact, one of the prettier harbors in the world, if small, and surrounded by homes and lawns and villages, not geeked-out tourist resorts. There are hardly any hotels, in fact, at least in the ‘town’ itself, pretty much limited to one cheapie and the two Sadie Thompsons, one the former ‘Rainmaker’ of seedy Somerset Maugham fame, two extremes neither of which would please me.

I lucked out. Evalani’s, where I’m staying, is only a short walk from town, and is pleasantly mid-range, as good as any deal in Apia, really, shared bath more than made up for by cheap Internet. It’s good atmosphere, too, though I’d hesitate to say ‘authentic’. It may very well be a copy of what Americans think Polynesia is like, rather than the genuine thing itself, but that’s kitsch at least, good enough considering Evalani herself did time years ago on the stage in Vegas to some success apparently. Food’s cheap in Pago Pago, too, and more variety than Apia.

Of course the DNA of cuisine takes some weird turns this far from the source, so I bought some kim chee… WITH NO CABBAGE! I thought kim chee WAS cabbage. Then I bought a sushi roll with egg inside, and a big slice of… WTF?… SPAM! Gross! Someone put Spam in my sushi! Hand me a spoon! Chill… but there are more selections for a vegetarian here, and an entire genre of Pinoy food lacking in Western Samoa. Coffee’s even better, with decent coffee at US prices, which is good, twenty ounces for two bucks USD; do the math. Oh yeah, and they use US currency here, nickels dimes quarters, the whole enchilada. They even have enchiladas here! Apparently Mexican fishermen stop in here.

On the whole it’s not that much different from Western Samoa; that’s the attraction. Yet it’s still part of America. Here are the details- there are McD’s and KFC and Pizza Hut of course (but they’ve got those everywhere), US currency, yellow school buses, PBS, USPO, American football, and American slang. The police even have Harleys! There are also laundromats, and cars drive on the right, something Western Samoa also did until a year or so ago, probably just to piss the American Samoans off. There are NO KMarts or Home Depots or Safeway supermarkets, but then it’s a small town.

There are Napa auto parts and a modern Cineplex. All in all it’s a bit more modern than the west… but not much. The buses are cute folk art, just like the ones in the west, and there is a local produce market, but it’s spiffier than Apia’s. Almost no one wears the traditional lavalava here; I guess that’s a major difference. So many men wear them on Western Samoa that it makes it hard to tell who’s a transvestite, of which there are plenty also. There’s a Bank of Hawaii here, located conveniently next to the Dept. of Health and Human Services, and Bank of New Zealand, too, fair enough, fair dinkum.

On the whole I’d say people are friendlier in AS, though that might be subject to debate. My hotel clerk even hugged me at checkout (almost broke my back, actually), good service! Like many places, generally women are friendly and the men are jerks, preferring to cop a ‘tude rather than being nice, being mutha’s while the women are being mothers, looking for a tree to piss on in the middle of a desert (‘at’s a metapho’). Guys working on a sixty-foot-long boat even get weird when I ask to take a picture of it- “What do you do in America?” I’m a writer. “What kind of writer?” I’m a poet. “What’s that?” (Such is the state of the art). I write poems… (and all the men move away from me on the bench) and a few blogs (and all the men move back)… including a travel blog. “Oh, yeah? This boat here is the one we race…” and so on, Byron, Shelley, and Keats rolling over in their collective graves simultaneously at the depths to which their art has fallen. And a couple other guys jerked me around a little, but no big deal, maybe just a knee-jerk assertion of independence.

In West Samoa the ‘tude is more just a fashion statement, every guy with a punky shock of blonde hair dyed in, like Mary-Something’s hair gel erection, a highlight to contrast with the dark glasses. On the American side there are even some righteous repercussions from the Samoans who’ve come back to make things better, one Mary (no relation to the above) explaining to me about the massive corruption that goes on, and how many westerners have come to the American side to fill in the gaps by the Samoan-Americans who’ve gone on to America, more than half as a rule of thumb. So there’s plenty of politics here, and some people who’ve cut enough cane with the campesinos to know how to do it.

Then there’s the ‘yacht club.’ They anchor over and get their mail and repair their boats and what-not, supplementing the few genuine ex-pats who are hardy perennials. Here’s the deal on that- Americans can stay as long as they want, but to buy land, they have to marry in. Thus there are no big developments, mostly just home-grown ones, and franchises servicing the local economy. This is a tourist bonanza waiting to happen, best-kept secret in the South Pacific I reckon. Did I mention that the harbor is beautiful? So the west may have better beaches, but all in all I might prefer the American side, particularly for those advantages that citizenship would bring. I’m glad I came. Now it’s time to go already, boo-hoo.

My flight from Fiji to Samoa is one of those God-awful affairs that occurs in the dead of night and is best forgotten. I had assumed it was at this hour because the flight continued on to Hawaii, but no, that’s a different schedule. This one was not even half-full and exists for what reason I know not. Maybe the return to Fiji at 5:30am is full. So I figure I’ll just kill a few hours until the sun comes up, and then take a bus or shuttle into town. There’s only one problem- there is no bus or shuttle, because there are no flights. Faleolo airport on the island of Upola in Samoa is not exactly Grand Central Station. That’s because the frequent air shuttles to Pago Pago in American Samoa leave from the old small airport close in to town. So I end up taking an expensive taxi in, and am lucky to find that.

There is one benefit to the wait, though. The wait for sunlight allows for a nice tour of rural Samoa on the hour-long ride to Apia, and that’s something you can’t see in the capital. Tours would cost more than twice this. Since I’m paying only $14 a night for a place anyway- less than a dorm bed in Nadi- cost is not much of a factor, just the hassle of checking in to a room at 6am seems absurd somehow. How did I know the flight would be on time? The capital city of Apia is totally different from the villages, which are centered around traditional fale houses, post-and-beam open structures which seem to be multi-purpose, though at the early hour I think I caught some people still sleeping there. An intermediate step toward modernity seems to be actual houses with sides, but curvilinear hip roofs, that with tin roofs even!

Apia is something of a real live- if slightly funky- capital city, nicer than Honiara, S.I. at least, with multiple coffee houses and kick-ass caffeine. I’m enjoying my dirt-cheap digs, too, as a matter of principle, if nothing else, though it’s nice to be part of a pre-hostel situation in which the local people’s lodgings included communal kitchen as a matter of course. Those can still be found elsewhere, too, the Caribbean sometimes, for one. I check around and $30 will get me a private bathroom, but not much more, and $50 will get me that and A/C, but no Sat-TV. I think I’ll just enjoy the discount to my Australia-size current budget deficit. I don’t even complain about the $3.50/hour charge for Wi-Fi, especially when that’s the absolute cheapest available at any cyber-café in town, especially when it’s in my room, especially when there’s no rounding to the next fifteen minutes, like in Fiji, so I can log in-and-out at will, handy for a long e-mail.

Apia doesn’t have much, but it DOES have a long coastal stretch rimming the city, so that’s nice. My cheapo hotel is very close to the market and bus station and supermarkets, so that’s nice, too. Those are at least as good as Fiji (influence from brother American Samoa?) and far better than Honiara. The people seem to be a little rougher, though, less graceful and less gracious, a wild quality I’d noticed in New Zealand and already decided it was a Maori thing. Despite the Polynesian self-designation as friendliest of the friendlies, I’d rate them below the Melanesians. Some of these guys, in fact, seem to wear on their faces something I’d describe as something between a perpetual frown and a scowl… a ‘frowl’ or a ‘scown’, maybe? Some of them look like they’d rather kick my ass than tolerate it, maybe an influence from the infamous ‘Sons of Samoa’ gangs in the US and NZ?

The market women seem pretty nice, though, but surprisingly clumsy at dealing with foreigners. People are constantly bumping into me and cutting me off, less polite in general, not bump-and-grab, mind you, just bump. The food doesn’t look especially appetizing, either, variations on the ‘deep-fried’ theme. I know where these big bellies come from, and I can spell it out in two words- ‘extra crispy,’ just like the Colonel does it. These people don’t add years to their lives; they add inches. Chinese immigration is in its infancy here, so they cater mostly to local tastes. One of the few Chinese places has ‘egg fu yung’, though, so given my newfound semi-vegetarianism and theories of culinary DNA, I have to try that, to compare to related versions in Indonesia and the US. It turns out to be something very familiar. In the US we call it ‘scrambled eggs’, though given the addition of some green and reds, maybe ‘harvest eggs’ or maybe a ‘dirty scramble’. I haven’t found anything called ‘chop suey’ yet without chicken, though, but I’ll be looking, since the vegetarian version in Fiji was okay. The culinary genome project never sleeps. Neither does my hunger. The fresh produce market has plenty of fruits, but not many vegetables, almost nothing in fact. That you have to get in the supermarket in its own little refrigerated section. That’ll give you a clue as to where they come from.

Churches are everywhere here, Christian ones of all kinds, so it’ll be interesting to see Samoa on a Sunday. They’re called ekalesia in the local lingo. That sounds like it came straight from Greek. Once you start reading the street signs in Athens, you realize that many- if not most- of the modern English and Spanish words you assumed came from Latin, in fact originally came from Greek. You do that, too, don’t you? All the countries around here seem shut down pretty tight on Sundays, half day on Saturdays, too, though Tonga may be the strictest. That’ll be next week.

For now I’m just waiting on a clear sunny day to go to the neighboring island of Savai’i, supposedly the cradle of Polynesian culture. That may or may not happen, given the daily rains we’ve been having. After staying city-bound in Honiara for a week, I’m anxious to make some tracks, see some islands. That is what defines the region, after all, not FaceBook. And after a few days in Apia I’m starting to get antsy. There’s a ferry several times a day across the drink to the big island, but I’m unsure. I’ll have to give up my dirt-cheap digs here to do it. Will there be Internet there? I know in my heart that Salelologa is just another sh*tty little town that I’ll end up walking around aimlessly like I’m doing now in Apia. How could it be anything else? But enough of that ‘tude… I need to keep the best face on things, polish the shiny happy Hardie K for public show, accept some responsibility for… you, my readers? Not exactly…

There’s this young Japanese girl where I’m staying, and I mean super young, can’t be a day over eighteen, okay maybe twenty-one, though admittedly the older I get, the younger they look. She’s traveling alone, too, and doesn’t seem very happy, staring off into space mostly. I’ve seen her a day or two now, and wanted to say hi, but she doesn’t make eye contact, deliberately avoids it, I suspect. I finally break the ice today and she seems okay, but I don’t know, since I see her later alone in a parking lot in town, staring vacantly at the gravel. Her hair is cut off short, which may just be her style, or orientation, or disease, or it may mean some guy dumped her… hard. That’s what young Thai girls do, if they’re the dumpee. Now I’ve seen young Japanese girls traveling alone many times, but never looking this lost. Why do parents let their kids do this? Do they even know? Anyway, she doesn’t need to see the dark side of my moon. Who knows? Maybe she’s thinking the same about me… I’ll try to engage her, but carefully. I don’t want to scare her away. She’s probably okay, just an overdose of self-consciousness. I know the type.

So then I get this BIG IDEA (that’s the best part of independent travel; big ideas are okay). There’s another island only slightly farther away than Savai’i, but in the other direction! It’s called America, American Samoa, that is- greenbacks, KFC, Kmart, le schmear entire if my calculations are correct. Now that could be interesting. They’re US nationals, if not citizens, with full rights to immigrate to the mainland. If I know my Constitutional law, that privilege should be reciprocal, meaning that I should have full rights to live there, visa-free and without time limits. Opportunities like this don’t present themselves every day, paradise with no passport. Maybe I should check it out. The half-hour RT flight is less than $200 total, but I can’t find a hotel for less than $100 to save my life. Rev the engine and… chill…

Weather drops to 80% precip on Sunday. That’s like a sunny day for these parts, and as good as it’ll get, too, rain scheduled for the entire week to come. But the Pago Pago idea entices me enough that I’ll wait another day to talk to a travel agent. They just might have a package deal or something thrifty for the homies, maybe a mid-week special, since I don’t have to fly on to Tonga until Friday. I DO have to fly from a different airport, though, so no short-cuts there. Till then I’ll just chill and enjoy a quiet Sunday, since I don’t have any choice, maybe go to church. What religion do I want today? So I decide to go church-hopping, just follow the music. It somehow pleases me to wander a city when it’s totally abandoned, like a graveyard at midnight, very similar, actually, as though I’m somehow vindicated by its lifelessness.

But the churches are busy, everyone dressed in their Sunday best, mostly white. I like the ones that open right on to the street, so I can just look in through the doorway and get the vibe. I don’t particularly care for the part, “now let’s welcome our visitors.” That’s usually me. I don’t want to get that involved, unless they’ve got food. No Christian church has ever kicked me out, though a mosque has. I’m not sure a Hindu temple would let me in in the first place, ‘Hindu only.’ Do they issue membership cards?

So I’m trying to engage Tanaka, the Japanese girl, but it’s not easy. She’s either the shiest most sensitive person I’ve ever met, or someone’s hurt her badly, left her unable to even make eye contact. I think of all the dogs I’ve ever seen beaten. I’m like Attila the Hun compared to this girl. I try to check her wrists for slashes or gashes, but she’s wearing long sleeves. In this heat? That makes sense, no cause for worry. She says she’s been sick with some diarrhea, so I guess that CAN cause some vacant stares. She also says she’s traveling around the world. Good luck. So I say her a little prayer and entrust her to the gods. I’m going to Pago Pago for a couple days, America in the South Pacific. How much can a hotel for two nights possibly set me back? In another week I’ll be back in the REAL America. Stay tuned…

The term ‘South Pacific’ conjures up many images, most of them exotic and alluring, evoking images of booty-twitching girls, deep-sea diving, and exotic rituals, snapshots gleaned from the S. Pac mega-malls of Hawaii and Tahiti. What it does NOT usually evoke are images of incredible vastness and diversity. We’re talking about a third of the planet here, remember? You don’t usually think of New Zealand in the same region, but there it is, complete with Polynesian Maoris. You DO think of Fiji, almost in the breath, but the reality is a bit different. Fiji occupies something of a unique position in the Pacific Ocean, in many ways. For one thing, it’s not Polynesian, like Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, and others. Nor is it Micronesian, probably the least known of the Austronesian groups. It’s Melanesian, like the Solomons, Vanuatu and, to a lesser extent, Papua NG. That means they have dark skin… and a unique culture.

I always assumed that Fiji was a tourism monster, but it’s not, not really, not with a mere half million arrivals a year. And if many of those arrivals are like me, mother-hubbers coming and going to visit the neighbors, then that’s an over-count. Considering some of the political problems they’ve had over the last decade, they may be in a post-peak lull, though it still counts as the nambawan industry in the country. It’s maybe even at its best being used exactly the way I’m using it- as a hub from which to access the other nearby islands. You can do that for a reasonable price with Air Pacific’s ‘Bula Pass’, which allows trips to neighboring island countries for up to thirty days. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Some of those places they fly to only once a week. Others have little or nothing once you get there. What could an island nation of 10,000 souls have? (Answer: 10,000 islands) I know people with that many FaceBook friends.

On my first entry to Fiji I fly in straight from Auckland, NZ on New Year’s Day. After several days of some fairly intense tourism in NZ- about as intense as I get- I could use a day off. That’s a good thing, because Fiji is pretty much shut down for the holidays. After enduring baggage claim Hell- at least an hour, just coming and coming like the P.O. mail, Fijian baggage torture- I finally get the free ride out to my hotel. I’m staying out at Wailoaloa Beach right behind the airport, where there are some half dozen accommodations, mostly backpacker-oriented. That’s okay, but the bus into the town of Nadi isn’t running on the holiday. That’s okay, too, since I can catch it on the way back. There’s probably not much there anyway. Suva down the coast is the main city… maybe I’ll catch it on the rebound, too.

So I do something I haven’t done in a long time, read an entire book in one day. I also do something I’ve never done, read an Elmore Leonard book. That’s out of the way now. Aside from the pencil thin plot line, the only thing I remember is the phrase ‘sensible breasts.’ I’m still trying to figure that one out. Are they touchable, or are they merely reasonable? If novels are judged by the speed that they can be read, then Leonard’s got something there. Give him another decade and he’ll make it. It took me a month to read Happy Isles of Oceania by Paul Theroux, author of Old Patagonia Express and proud uncle to the travel genre, and months to read Michener’s Caribbean. Theroux is a good writer, though, if a bit flat for my poetic sensibilities. Michener was torture.

The beach at Wailoaloa is nothing special, so the kids with bucks all go out to ‘the Yasawas’ where life is even groovier, I guess. The ones who stay behind spend most of the day FaceBooking and sun-bathing, taking the occasional pizza break. The rumor is that there’s a Hard Rock Café over at the tourist enclave of Denarau, so conspiracies make the rounds over that. These are back-packers, mind you. Other than that entertainment is limited to the occasional fire show over at Smuggler’s Cove, and the live band next door. Mostly they’re pretty hokey, dancers who can’t decide whether they want to break-dance like yesterday’s hip-hop or get all achy-breaky like Miley’s dad… all the while twirling fire like majorettes in the marching band. And the music is mostly limp renditions of 70’s folk rock, but still not bad for the price… free. But the food is not free, many times the prices available in town.

The poor Chinese guy ten minutes walk down the street has decent Chinese chow for less than $3 and can’t buy a customer, except me. You’ve got to give the Chinese a lot of credit for helping develop much of the third world one shop at the time, one family at the time, selling goods and cooking meals for those with neither the skills nor the resources to do so themselves. Keep in mind that this is nothing new. They’ve been doing this in Asia for years, long before everything was ‘Made in China’. Now they’re exporting the revolution. Here in Fiji, though, they play second fiddle to the Indians, who almost equal the locals in numbers, DID in fact before an army coup by Fijian soldiers sent them scurrying. Ethnic Fijians run the military; Indians run the businesses. It’s called ‘power sharing’ I think.

Next day I kill time again, catching up on some Net, available at the inn… for a price. Mostly I’m making plans for the Solomons, though. It’s the only dicey country of the ones I’ve left to visit on this trip, so trying to do a little advance homework. It should be a piece of cake compared to PNG, though. So I store away my spare laptop, Levis and down jacket, etc. at the inn to lighten my load, since I’m a little unsure about my arrangements in the Solomons, maybe taking a boat ride or two, best to give myself some better odds. That’s prescience, since I didn’t take the boat, but I did need the odds. In general I’m glad I left half my bags in Fiji (one laptop bag, that is), since I ended up winging it a bit, and wasn’t sure of the local attitude. Unfortunately that means I also left my coffee filter-drip rig behind, so couldn’t avail myself fully of the opportunities available with a tea kettle… oh, the cruel irony of fate, there on Irony Bottom Sound.

After the Solomons I have another couple of days back in Fiji before continuing on to Samoa. This time is a bit better. Knowing that Wednesday is ‘kava night’ I forego the interminable wait at the airport for the free ride to the hostel. My time is worth something, right? It pays off. I manage to insinuate myself into a kava ceremony complete with soundtrack, a group called the ‘Kavaholics’ playing folksy Pacific island songs, punctuated by recurring rounds of kava drinking. The gunk itself is pretty tasteless and murky, but the effect is nice, for me at least, a mild stimulant that tingles your tongue and your insides, too. The band’s pretty good, too.

Next day I finally make it into the nearby town of Nadi, interesting enough but hardly ‘must-see’, and made somewhat unbearable by constant hawking and general solicitousness. I think they’re mostly just being nice, but it becomes too much. How many times can you answer the question, “Where are you from?” from complete and total strangers. I don’t mean to be rude, but give it a rest, guys. The Indian sweets seller asked me the same question AFTER the sale, so that’s a clue to its genuine nature. In Thailand a common greeting translates as “where are you going?” I guess this is Thailand’s ‘Bizarro world.’ That’s the nice thing about traveling in Australia and New Zealand. Aussies, Kiwis & tourists all look the same, so you can blend in unnoticeably… at least until you speak.

The best thing about Nadi is the food, plentiful and cheap, and of both types, Indian and Chinese. There’s no shortage of options for a vegetarian, either, so I get a HUGE plate of curried veggies for $4FJD. The only problem is that I’m covered with sweat by the end, the curse of tropical life, especially in the rainy season. Then I find what I’ve been wanting most for the last two weeks- free Wi-Fi, available at the more down-scale of the backpacker inns at the beach. And as fate would have it, the first time in months that I go more than 48 hours without checking my e-mail, of course an important business client contacts me, asking my turnaround time for an order out of Thailand. So my fate is sealed. My reverie is to be interrupted by business; it’s a disease. This would be another of Hardie K’s laws, but I think Murphy got there first…

Next day at breakfast I meet and befriend Jo, a lovely Chinese girl from Sydney, so we hang out together for the day, I showing her the town of Nadi and mostly watching her shop. It’s a never-ending revelation- and source of inspiration- for me to see how the other sex processes life… and merchandise. So when I check my e-mail late in the afternoon, my wife Tang wants me to call her urgently, some sort of emergency I can’t quite make out amidst the somewhat scrambled English (hold the salsa). If anybody knows a ‘smartphone’ with Thai language, please advise. So I Skype her, and it turns out she’s just lonely. It figures. I can’t get away with anything, no matter if it’s Platonic or Aristotelian, Nietzschean or Freudian. It’s my fate again. The minute I start hanging out with Chinese girls, time warps and space compresses, sending out mixed signals to anyone- including myself- who can crack the code. But I digress.

All in all, Fiji’s good, maybe the best of the immediate lot, something of a cultural mix, Melanesian but with Polynesian characteristics, traditional yet modern, all at reasonable prices. Hardie K heartily recommends. I might even go back if I don’t like Samoa… or miss my connection to Tonga, or…