Tusker Beer, Vanuatu 2009 (New Hebrides

Enjoying a Tusker beer on Efate Island, Vanuatu (formerly known as the New Hebrides),  Christmas Eve 2009.

Market Scenes of the Pacific

The Pacific retains its strong agrarian culture.  Small markets sell strange and exotic produce to local housewives.

This is a market in Port Vila, Vanuatu:

This is Nadi Market in Fiji:

And here is the main market on Tongatapu, Tonga:

Vanuatu canoe

On Vanuatu, local boys use a home made outrigger canoe to cross the lagoon on a fishing trip. 

These outrigger canoes are ubiquitous across the Pacific. I didn't visit a single island where I didn't see them. 

Pacific Snorkeling

Pacific Lagoons and Atolls are perfect place for snorkeling.  The water is warm and crystal clear, and they teem with fish and aquatic life. 

There are few dangers, unless you find a shark basking in the warmth, or get too close to the Pacific ocean and find yourself being pulled out into the ocean, where the currents and swell soon create problems. 

This was me in Vanuatu, in the lagoon near Port Vila, near the ocean entrance. 

Lagoon Starfish

The Lagoon at Port Vila, Vanuatu is renowned for its colourful tropical starfish. 

Bauerfield Airport, Vanuatu

Like most airfields in the Pacific the international airport at Port Vila, Vanuatu was originally a US Army Air Corp airfield.  

It is named after LTCOL Harold Bauer, a US Marine fighter pilot who engaged enemy aircraft attacking the USS Mcfarland.  He destroyed four before running out of fuel.  He was lost in action on the Battle of Guadalcanal a month later. 

The airport still has the original control tower.

Karva ceremony

On a secluded beach on Efate Island,  dancers performed and then invited me to drink mud-like kava that left my lips numb and me unable to speak. 

Erakor Island

Formerly a mission station, Erakor Island sits in the entrance to a lagoon on Efate Island, Vanuatu.  The waters are crystal clear, as warm as bathwater and teeming with fish. 

I had a beer on this Island, Christmas Eve 2008.

Vanuatu 2008

In 2008 I found myself in Vanuatu, a small island nation in the Pacific.  Just as I walked out of the Office Pub at sunset a large yacht was making its way into Vila Bay.

Vanuatu was known as the New Hebrides until independence in 1980.  New Hebrides was held as a jointly owned colonial possession by both France and the UK, who duplicated everything to replicate both nations. There were both French and British prisons, courts etc. which must have been confusing for the locals.

Vanuatu is now developing itself as a tourist destination.

Bangla Road 2009

Phuket, once a tin mining island backwater, became a trendy holiday resort in the late 1970s.  By the 1990s the main areas like Patong were sleaze traps for tourists, with transvestites and prostitutes vying for trade in a thousand hole-in-the-wall bars.

But every night the sun still sets on the Andaman Sea in spectacular style.  As it slips below the horizon the sky bursts into mother natures light show.   Hookers and pimps, drug dealers and drunks, stop and admire in unison, before going back to their world.