The marketing slogan for Tonga is "Where Time Begins". This refers to the fact that Tonga is the first country west of the International Date Line, so each day officially starts here ahead of the rest of the world.
For some reason I expected Tonga to be more primitive than Fiji, but it turned out to be the opposite. Tonga is more advanced and developed than Fiji. In fact the shower in my hotel room was the most technologically advanced shower I had ever seen! It was electronically operated, with a control panel to control the lighting, radio, jets, and water temperature. Tongan culture is also more distinct and advanced than Fiji culture.
I arrived in Tonga on a Saturday night. This turned out to be the worst possible day of the week to arrive. Because the plane was delayed by two hours, it was too late to do anything that evening. No problem, I thought, I can schedule some activities the next day. However it turns out that the entire island completely shuts down on Sundays, and I mean completely. Of course all shops and businesses are closed. But also all transportation - airline flights, buses, even taxis are unavailable. Even the hotel was shut down, closing the restaurant and front desk and all hotel staff left the hotel, leaving the guests in their rooms but with everything else closed. So an entire day was wasted. They even turned off the wireless routers before leaving, so I couldn't even pass the time on the internet.
[Update: After walking all through town I finally did find one place that was open -- a pretty good Chinese restaurant, and had dim sum there]
[Update: A nice guy took me on a tour of the island (you can drive around the whole island in about 2-3 hours), so the day wasn't wasted after all!]
1 comment:
woah if they had cool showers, what other gadgets did they have?
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