Tonight I’m going back to Samoa to pick up my Chinese visa. It will be my fourth trip across the date line in a month. I’ll have to make a 5th trip across in a few days going back to Fiji. I might have to make a 6th and a 7th crossing, but I’ll know …
Almost every night I get to tell the same story: the story of my trip. Most people I meet on my travels are just visiting somewhere for a weekend. Sometimes I’ll pull out my laptop and show them the Google Earth map and walk them through the places I’ve been and the places I’m going. …
While I knew of rugby and even knew people who played rugby, my first real introduction to rugby has come during my trip here to the Pacific. New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga are all big rugby countries, and its hard to avoid it when you’re here. In Tonga, while wandering around Nuku’alofa, I came …
I managed to salvage the missed Tonga flight. I went to the Air New Zealand office in Apia and got the ticket changed to July 11, which is when I should be arriving back from Tokelau. If the Tokelau boat can’t get fixed before then, I can move the date up a week. I also …
I’m alive in Nuku’alofa, Tonga! My initial thoughts in the drive in from the airport: Like most pacific countries, it seems like there was a burst of building activities in 50s and 60s. My “hotel” tonight looks like something you’d have made on a road trip in the Kennedy administration. There were fields with crops …