Samoa - Talofa

Talofa is the national greeting in Samoa which is where my work took me last week. I flew up with one of my colleagues, Kyle, on Wednesday and stayed there through Monday evening. It was kind of weird flying there because while it is the same time as New Zealand, it is a full day behind as it's just across the international dateline. So I flew out of Auckland on Wed. morning and arrived in Apia on Tuesday morning.

It was hot and humid in Samoa. This is still their rainy season so it was very humid the whole time there. Thank goodness my hotel, Aggie Grey's, had air conditioning. When I first went to the room, it had a whole bunch of windows which were all opened and I thought that there would not be air conditioning and really panicked until I got inside.

One of my friends from work has a girlfriend who is a flight attendant for Air NZ and happened to be staying at the same hotel as us the first night. She and a few others took me and Kyle out with them for dinner on the first night to the Yacht Club at a restaurant called Swashbucklers which was nice. We had a great meal out on the deck overlooking the water. The next few days were fairly uneventful as we actually had work to do, although Wednesday night's dinner was a Fia Fia night at the hotel where we got to see the traditional Samoa singing and dancing and eat some of the traditional food such as taro (a favorite was baby taro leaves in coconut milk), fish, roasted pig, seaweed, etc. About the only thing I didn't like was sea urchin which really grossed me out, but I can tick it off the list for trying it.

One really strange thing I noticed about Samoa was that there were a whole bunch of trannies (lady boys) all over the place. One of the locals at work explained that these are called Fa'afafine. Apparently, in the past in Samoa, parents in families with mostly boys used make the youngest male dress as a female and assist with the cleaning and cooking with the other women. They were essentially raised as a female. I think that the practice of forcing the youngest male to become a transvestite is less practiced now, however there are still a lot of fa'afafine around, but more so by choice or because they acted effeminate as children so their parents realized that they were fa'afafine. It's a shocking tradition to say the least, but it appears to be socially acceptable over there. The place where I was working had a number of these fa'afafine as did the hotel where we stayed. I guess it's part of their culture there and the people seem very accepting of it. I found this to be strange especially considering that the people of Samoa are very religious. In fact, all the stores are closed on Sundays and everyone wears white and goes to church - they are mainly Methodist, catholic, Mormon, and one other that I can't remember - maybe 7th day Adventist.

Anyway, we were supposed to have to work on Saturday to do a stock-take, however it got pushed up to Friday so we ended up having the whole weekend off. Kyle and I took a full day tour of the island stopping at several waterfalls and having a barbecue and relaxing couple of hours on the beach. This part of the island was much more like the Samoa I expected to see. We had to stay right in town due to its proximity to our client and the town itself was not the nicest place - not bad or anything, but not like a tropical resort that you might expect. After the tour, we met up with a couple of the guys from work for a night out at some of the local bars after having a few drinks along the sea wall. This ended up being a fun night, but thankfully the bars closed at midnight there or it might have been a rough next day.

Sunday was a relaxing day at the hotel as everything was closed as it always is on Sundays there. Monday was our last day at work before catching the 8:30 plane back to Auckland. I'll be back in May for another two weeks so will have to see what else the island has to offer. Some pictures from my Saturday tour are below:

The pool at Aggie Grey's (my hotel)

View out over a valley on our tour

Me at Lalomanu Beach

BBQ Lunch at Lalomanu Beach

Me hanging out before lunch

The beaches on Samoa are apparently all deserted and secluded like this. They are all owned by local families. You can go to them but might have to pay around $5 to use the beach (not bad). Many, including this one, had little wooden beach huts you could rent out for $80 Samoan Tala (approx. $25 - $30 USD) per night which included three cooked meals.

Nice clear water, but they didn't have snorkel gear to rent

Back on the road to continue our tour

Waterfall at one of the villages along the way

Another waterfall higher up in the mountains