From Paradise to Middle Earth

Day 127

"And now I'm all alone again
Nowhere to turn, no one to go to."

First little flashback back to Uoleva island. Here are some of the pictures I took there.

Traveling in Kingdom of Tonga went relatively easy...until saturday. It seems that everything piled on that day. I was suppose to fly from Ha'apai to Tongatapu at 15:00 so we had booked Taxi to pick us up from guesthouse at 13:45. At 14:00 there was still no Taxi so Andrew called the guy and apperantly he wasn't in the "mood" to drive us to airport and told us to get someone else...wtf?! Well, after some persuasion we finally managed to drag his ass to our guesthouse and got to airport around 14:15. But that was just start of it.

At check-in there was chaos. Flight was full so lot of Tongans were there asking for possible standby seats if someone doesn't show up. Well, it required to be rude to them to finally make it to counter and get seats. I sat down and watched as they were throwing our luggage in to the belly of the plane. All the sudden they stopped when about half was inside. Pilot came back from plane and told us that plane was overweight so they were going to leave all luggage behind and get them to Tongatapu later in the evening. We weren't too happy about that, but after he convinced that he himself was going to fly back and get the luggage we boarded the plane.

Ok, so now we went to Tongatapu and immediately in the counter there we asked when are our bags coming. You can imagine our faces when attendant told us that there are no planes going back to Ha'apai tonight and since next day was sunday(Tongans are not allowed to work on sunday's by law), it ment we were going to have to wait for our luggage till monday! Well, at this moment we started to cause a riot. We demanded to speak their manager and boss. After about 1 hour yelling at them and threatening lawsuits, there finally was plane going back to get our bags.

Now, if only this was the end of it. Guesthouse had sent car to pick me up but since we were still waiting for our luggage, I told him if he could return in 1.5h again. He told me "yes yes, no problem". Well, finally when I got my bag at 20:00 it was 2.5h after that and no car(Guesthouse was 35km away from airport). I called guesthouse and the guy had forgot to pick me up again!

Eh, so after all the hassle I got to guesthouse and decided that I needed a drink. I walked 5 mins to nearest store and asked for sixpack. Took it and started walking back when local police came to me "you are not allowed to buy beer after 17!". So I had to return beer back to store. At that point I decided to just go in my room and do nothing cause things clearly weren't going my way that day.

Next 4 days I spent in Tongatapu not doing much really. On last night I finally got chance to drink Kava. Had about 20 cups and was feeling QUITE light-headed :)


Finally, little info about Tonga:

To understand Tonga and what life is there, you need to understand people. Tongans do not have ambitions or thrive to make more money and wealth. When they reach certain income level which is enough to feed their family, dogs and pigs, then they stop. The easiest way to do this is to send 1-2 children overseas and have them send money back to them. That basically leaves entire family "unemployed" but still they have enough money to live and live happily. THAT is also reason why nothing works in Tonga, nothing ever gets done because no one wants to do it.

Other thing is their funerals...when someone in village dies, entire village participates in funeral ceremony that lasts 3-5 days, and of course no one works during that time. Then when funeral ends it's most likely someone's birthday, then some get married, then someone else dies, etc. So no wonder nothing ever gets done.

All in all...I am happy to have traveled to Tonga and it was definetly worth it. But...I seriously doubt that I will ever go back there.

So what's going on now? Now I have reached New Zealand and Auckland where I'm spending next 4 days before heading out to Pacific again. It's bloody freezing here atm, temperatures are around +15 and inside 24h I have learned what famous description of NZ weather really means: "Four seasons in one day".