first time away

Is it all over? Has anyone been to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands lately? One of my Solomon Islander friends went there, and was appalled.

What was it that appalled him?

Kwajalein is supposed to be very nice. I applied for a job there. You can only go there if you work there or are invited as a guest. You have to go through a formal U.S. background check/security clearance process.

I have stopped at Kwaj several times, but never off the plane. It's pretty odd coming across this Kansas town in the middle of the Pacific. And even funnier to read things like Lonely Planet on the lagoon. Shark infested nasty place, compared with the wonderful things they say about most lagoons. Of course most lagoons don't have IBM's landing in the middle of them periodically (not armed mostly), sent from California. What is supposed to be nice about it?

And Watsoff- might i remind you of Bali? Not so long ago, and not a foreign gov. And wasn't there a bomb going off in Mauritius or some other island starting with an M just a week or so ago?

Oh- and I think that there is still a local population that lives on a slightly outer island of Kwaj- horrible poverty and all put rushed of Kwaj itself in blindfold. Well, maybe a bit of an exaggeration but it is pretty awful if memory serves.

Hi 5Waldos: of course Bali ... but that's not the South Pacific (although I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't eventually spread to West Papua as the now-banned Islamic fundamentalists have taken refuge there).

I guess I would agree that at this point, groups of tourists are not targeted as are groups of civilians in some places in the west at the moment. Although the Phillipines? Also not south pacific in fact (well, neither is Bikini for that matter). There are generally not the terrorists that we are becoming wary of on most of the islands. Although I have certainly seen my fair share of violence against tourists. And if we go back far enough, there were some very nasty interactions between natives and early visitors. But this is a bogus posting, and certainly home is every bit as dangerous as other places in the world. You are more apt to die of an accident near home (is it something like 1/2 mile?), and if you are a child, more apt to be abducted and brutalized by a family member or friends, and most apt to be murdered at any age by someone you know. So, the moral here is- get out and away from anyone you know as quickly as possible- they are all out to get you!

Uh- why isn't Bali, a part of the Spice Islands of fable and fantasy, part of the South Pacific? It is south. It is more or less in the Pacific. Probably in a sea or two- is it already the Indian Ocean by then? Just wondering.

I think as it's part of Indonesia it's not considered the South Pacific (or at least not the South Pacific as we refer to these days; Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia). Melanesian West Papua, although also part of Indonesia, is considered SP because of the native Papuans (who are now well-outnumbered by transmigrated Indonesians). But I could be totally of my head on this one.

I guess I'm lucky, though, as I've not encountered any violence against tourists in any of the SP nations I've been to (other than a bit of pilfering in Samoa & Solomons), but I have seen violence against each other, as it were. Even in Solomons during, and right after, the "troubles," visitors were not targets. But then street crime raised it's head and everyone, regardless of where they came from, became targets of - mostly - house break-ins (so again, not really a tourist thing either).

Had to laugh at the last line of your #28 post ... but it's sad that some people do seem to think that way.

But Micronesia is in fact the North Pacific. I think maybe that South Pacific is more a ideal than a place on the globe. Some enchanted evening and all.

I saw outsiders targeted- not tourists as such I guess. More ex-pats. Except for the petty kinds of crimes- theft and such. But I have seen some of the violence against the not-us.