Vanuatu After The Cyclone

2023, Mar 07    

Vanuatu | Country 18 | 2 day |

What a country, what a geography!

Some aspects of the Vanuatu trip that I find really unique:

• A lot of foreign aid from Australia (and some more from the other Asian countries)
• Vanuatu consists of many islands of significant size. Efate, the main island, is approximately equivalent to Oahu in Hawaii, being its main island.
• History of joint British and French governments
• 3 days after 2 consecutive cyclones and an earthquake, people are resilient; there was no power to half the island, (almost) no food at supermarkets, yet life goes on
• The natives speak Bislama pidgin

Wait, why are 90% of the passengers Chinese?

The Vanuatu Port Vila airport is back up and running! I hopped onto the flight with about 10 other passengers. The flight from Nadi was fairly short and we arrived in the afternoon.

At immigration, that’s when it dawned on me, 90% of the folks on the flight were Chinese. It was apparent because they were all translating and filling out the immigration form together and spoke the language. Without having a clue, I went through customs, having completed mine during the flight.

The taxis at airports are all from the same company. I hate when this happens, because as predicted, every driver at the airport was quoting me $50 USD for a 13 minute drive.

That’s when a Chinese person came up to me and asked if I had seen other Chinese folks from the flight. Apparently, there are only 2 flights that day and they were getting worried from waiting.

I got to chatting with him in Chinese. He does not drive for a living but has been a construction manager for China’s foreign aid work in Vanuatu.

I assured him that the other folks will be coming out any minute now, and we got to chatting some more.

Apparently, he has previously worked in Africa on foreign aid for 5+ years, and have been deployed to Vanuatu last year. He graciously offered to drop me off along the way. And after waiting for the other 7 or 8 passengers that we are picking up, we started driving towards Port Vila.

Port Vila

It wasn’t pretty.

Trees had no leaves. Road signs were down everywhere. And roads were constricted from fallen debris.

Inside the main supermarket, Au Bon Marche, many shelves were empty. No bread, no meat and barely some processed food.

Inside the hotel, I checked in and chatted with the lady manager who was running the show. She is from Australia and has been running this hotel for half a decade. She apologized multiple times that there were no towels, and I had no issues.

It was a great room, and it was totally fine that AC stopped working - I was just happy that there was electricity.

I hope that they got the sign replaced eventually

Their windows were clearly ready for the cyclone season

Around the capital

A lot of foreign aid government projects

Downtown Port Vila is beautiful. You can see the beaches and resorts across the bay, and there are clearly many shopping activities during brighter times.

The restaurant that I really wanted to try was unfortunately closed. The specialty dish is the fruit bat (many online media about it).

L’Houstalet is a very famous restaurant where the French chef is well loved

The main island supermarket is Au Bon Marche. It was founded by a Chinese person over 50+ years ago. The founder and family worked on the French ship, and immigrated. I love the chain location names, like Au Bon Marche Nambatri (like #3?), Nambatu (#2), Freshwota, …etc.

There are many foreign merchandise being sold, like machete knives..

Everything is expensive on the island. Meals are around $15 usd.

Everywhere, people on the island were burning piles of leaves; workers were breaking down fallen trees, hauling away broken signs. You can see tons of roofs being held down and secured by heavy sandbags.

I also visited the Vanuatu National Museum. It was closed, but $5 extra with the workers doing renovations came in handy.

Blue Lagoon adventures

I decided to visit a touristy spot called the Blue Lagoon. It’s about 30 minutes from the town center.

As there weren’t really taxis around, I took the bus / van. The bus/van system was really unique - there isn’t a predefined route. Every passenger would tell the driver where they are going, and the driver would tell them how much to pay.

After quite a few vans, a driver and his co-driver finally picked me up. We went around town, and after about an hour, we finally arrived. Unfortunately, the driver tried to charge me extra (I guess there weren’t other passengers that they picked up).

Blue Lagoon has some really blue water. There were 2-3 other families around, while all the workers were cleaning up after the cyclone.

I stayed for about an hour and went back.

The main issue was that the main perimeter road didn’t have any cars at all, let alone buses. There was no cell signal. So my only option was to wait for another family from the Lagoon to head back, or to start walking.

I started on foot towards town. I intimately saw the white sand beaches, the fallen trees, the flooded roads and slightly damaged but still standing houses.

After 30-40 mins, I was helped by this truck driving by. I couldn’t understand them as they spoke in bislama. However, they understood me, and I hopped into the back.

There were 8-10 women and children in the back. A few sweet kids spoke with me in English.

In these remote locations of the world, there exist the most beautiful people.

4am Airport Shenanigans

I was only in Vanuatu for two days. Even though my flight from Fiji got pushed back by two days, my flight towards New Zealand remained unchanged.

Because I only stayed two nights instead of four, the hotel owner offered to book a taxi for the morning.

I was right inside the hotel gate at 4am waiting for the taxi driver when a taxi pulled up. I figure that it must be the right person. Right?

Wrong! As I didn’t have a lot of cash left, I asked the driver if I can go inside the airport for the ATM. Unfortunately, even the ATM is offline. The driver was gracious enough to take USD. Crisis averted…

Then came the next exciting adventure. During check-in, the attendant said that I didn’t have the visa paperwork for NZ. I thought that I didn’t need a visa?

The manager told me that I needed to apply for the eTA. I completed the online form and waited. The website really scared me as it said that a deicison can take 48 hours.

Fortunately, mine was approved in just a minute, and I exited Vanuatu!