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Malo-e-lelei from the kingdom of Tonga. A couple of months ago, I would´ve had a very hard time placing Tonga
on the map. Now after spending a week there - I´ll never forget and will be able to pin it out for the rest of my days :-).
The small pacific island of Tonga has been a very - no - extremely different and exciting experience.
We expected nothing really, since we knew nothing about the country, exept maybe some nice beaches.
It turned out that the paradise-like beaches were just about the only thing we didn´t come across.
We spent our time on the main island - Tongatapu - which is rich on culture and sights but has very few nice beaches.
We´d booked a bungalow a couple of days before arrival, and were met with big smiles and great hospitality.
We got a big bungalow overlooking a nice flower-filled garden.
The resort staff were incredibly friendly, smiling and a lot of fun,
and really went all the way to help us with everything.
The first impressions of Tonga still weren´t that great. There seemed very little to do and see as the island only takes
about three hours to drive around. We started by renting a car. Since there´s no reliable public transportation
available, this was the only smart way of getting around.
It didn´t take many days to discover that Tonga grows on you. Beeing the only island in the pacifics never having been
colonised - Tonga has it´s very own athmosphere and rhytm about it. Tongan´s are never in a rush.
"Tonga time" is a completely approved and accepted expression. Tongans don´t follow the clock. They follow the sun.
Time has a whole different meaning and is very individual. It takes a couple of days for westeners like us to
get the hang of it - but after beeing frustrated the first couple of times having to wait three hours for the food
you ordered (really - not just once or twice - but every single time ),
or waiting for the driver who shows up two hours later than agreed - you end up surrending to the rhytm
(either that or you end up really, really frustrated ).
In Tonga we met no more than a handful of other tourists. There is very little tourism in Tonga (probably under 100
tourists altogether in the whole country while we were there). A good thing for us,
but a shame for the tongan officials who do their best trying to promote tourism, and especially bad for tongan economy,
which mainly relies on international aid, and money sent from tongans living overseas.
There are roughly aroud 100 000 people living in Tonga, and it´s estimated that at least as many tongans live abroad.
Tonga is a very family-oriented nation, and many of the old customs and traditions still apply there.
One of theese is that family takes care of family - no matter how far related you may be.
If a cousins second aunts brother asks you for help - you help. There is also still a tradition of sending one of your
children abroad to make money to send back home. How it works is, usually the eldest child inherits the house, farm, land
or whatever there is to overtake, and the second child is sent abroad to Australia or New Zealand to work.
(Today many get schoolarships so they can study first). The parents then decide which amount of the money they make,
should be sent home to support the rest of the family.
Tonga has been a very authentic experience. With very little influence from other countries, we´ve had a lot of
"real tongan experiences". Dancing and singing is a big part of tongan traditions, and we´ve seen many of theese
traditional dances during our stay. Months and months are spent by tongan mothers making the special dresses for
the dancers. Tongans still walk the streets wearing traditional clothing.
Religion is also a very big part of tongan daily life. 90 % of the population are christian, and tongans take their
religion seriously. Church is attended several times every day. Sunday is still the big day - where everyone
dresses up for church, and it´s the meeting place for all villagers. There are churches all around the country.
After the two-hour mass, families gather for sunday meals.Nothing else happens on sundays. It is by law forbidden
to work (nowadays the few tourist related places exepted) Restaurants, shops and such are closed. Buses and taxi´s don´t
drive - even airplane´s don´t fly in Tonga on sundays. We were told it would be a shame leaving Tonga without
attending church. So, came sunday - we went to church. A lovely and very different from our western church
experiences (Even for a sworn atheist like Patrick :-) ) The priest was a serious man - he was shouting and crying
and even if we couldn´t understand a word he was preaching - you could tell - this was a man who meant what he said :-)
If this man told you you were going straight to hell - you´d believe him. The church was completely full.
The priest would preach - and people would answer out loud. There was a lot of singing.
Everyone knew the songs by heart. There was no choir, but the congregation was divided into altos, bases and sopranos -
and they could sing! No shyness here ....
Death is also an everywhere present thing in Tonga. Death is far from tabu, and the morners who are dressd up in
traditional black dresses with bamboo skirts on top, are to be seen everywhere along the roads.
In Tonga, you are allowed to bury family members anywhere as long as you own the land, so graves colourfully
decorated, are seen everywhere.
Tongan people hold some different records. Tongans for example have the most Ph D´s per capita in percentage.
They are also the highest ranking country in literacy. Very smart people. Another thing is, Tongan people are huge -
really - huge. Tongan´s are said to have the highest BMI in the world.
This was explained to us by a tongan woman who said that in Tonga, kid´s are still taught that big is beautiful
( note: til mine dejlige tøser fra arbejdet - Tonga is the place to be - vi ville bare være SÅ hotte i Tonga ! )
The days in Tonga were spent exploring the island, and there was actually plenty to see.
The capital - Nuku´Alofa - was nothing more than a few blocks big. A few restaurants, shops, hotels and churches,
and that was about it. But I loved the absence of all the usual capital standards. There were no 7elevens,
no Mc D´s , no KFC´s or pizza huts or such - very refreshing. We saw the fascinating blow holes - where water, forced
up through natural vents in the cliffs, shoots up in the air. Sometimes as high as 30 meters. An impressive sight,
although we saw them during low tide. We also visited a cave with a natural fresh water pool inside were we could swim,
and saw the south pacifics equivalent of stonehenge.Patrick and Leon also got to try a traditional male cava-cirkle.
Cava is a plant-based mild hallusigenic drink tasting a bit like muddy water,
enjoyed by men in a sit-down cirkle. They have some interesting animal life as well.
First of all there are pigs everywhere - on the roads (which is why the speed limit in Tonga is an exhilarating
40km/h....), in the fields, people´s gardens and walking around in town. They have huuuge spiders (apparently non-toxic)
and the most gigantic bat´s I´ve ever seen (called flying foxes because of their fox-like heads ).
We got to celebrate new year´s eve in Tonga. Since tongan´s really don´t celebrate new years any other way than going
to a 4-hour mass in church - our sweet resort staff tried to find something to do for us and two australian girls
staying at the resort. We ended up at another resort, eating a tongan buffet - dinner first, then a traditional
tongan dance-show followed by a fire show in a cave. Then the owner of the resort performed with some Elvis-tunes
waiting for the clock to turn 24. At the last radio-announced bell ring - people turned to hug each other
wishing happy new year - and that was it - everyone left. A very strange new year´s eve......
our last day on the island, we went to the harbour and payed one of the local fishermen to take us to the nearby small
Pangaimotu island. A very pretty tiny island - it took us 1/2-hour to walk around the whole island - but with
the nice white-sand beaches we´d expected on the main island.
On the 4th we were off to Fiji islands.
All in all a fantastic stay in Tonga - a small island that really grew on me.
I read that tongan people don´t relly care about tourism, and are not very forthcoming. But we met nothing but friendly
and welcoming people, smiling faces and people beeing helpful and interested. Nowhere else in the world have I ever
experienced the staff from the resort sending an e-mail after we left, saying "we miss you" :-)
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