The flight arrived in Honiara 20 min later than the schedule. It was 1:20am, which is 2:20am in Fiji time. I was very tired and sleepy. The first thing I noticed was that the airport was so dark! Seems like they had some power problems. Because the immigration form wasn’t distributed in the airplane, everyone was struggling trying to find some light to fill out the form. I had no problem going through the immigration thanks to my colleague’s help, who is a Solomon Islander. It took only 15 min or so to the hotel. Fortunately, there was electricity in the hotel although the hotel looked very different from what I saw on their website. The pictures on the website must be at least 20 yrs old. I slept very well since it was already 4am Fiji time when I went to bed.
In the morning, I found out that the sound I heard last night was the wave. The hotel is facing to a bay. There are several people sitting in the open-air café, most of them looked like Solomon Islanders. I had breakfast at a very empty restaurant, basic toast, fruit and coffee. The guy working at the restaurant looked so happy when I told him that I’m going to the Isabel province because he’s from Isabel! Such a small world.
Later I came to UNDP Office and met my colleagues. They were telling me that I came in a very exciting time and it seems that I’ll have lots of interesting meetings. I’m sure that I’ll learn a lot for the coming 2 weeks and very much looking forward to discussions and dialogues with a wide range of people.
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