Over the weekend, I got a chance to walk around Honiara. I walked along the main street, taking pictures and doing some grocery shopping. Compared to Suva, Honiara is much smaller in scale and the variety of things you can find in shops is very limited. Now, I understand that Suva is actually a huge city in the South-Pacific standard. I’d have liked to get some yogurt at a super market, but all I found was the ones saying “expiry date: December 2002”. So, I didn’t take a chance. Still, I got some Australian instant noodles, chips, and local beer.
On Saturday evening, my colleague took me and other colleagues to a very nice bar where they serve sashimi!! They even put wasabi in the soy sauce ball. The quality of tuna was really good. We missed the sunset, but still, the view from the bar was beautiful. I enjoyed talking with lots of people, who are very keen on their job in the Solomons. It was surely interesting and inspiring.
On Sunday morning, I again went out just to take a walk. Like in Suva, most of the shops are closed, but several Chinese-owned shops were open. Also, I noticed that there are so many venders on the street selling lots of heaps of small fruits. I don’t recall how you call them, but if you chew the fruit, your mouth gets very red. I remember I saw the same fruits in India or somewhere. It looked interesting, but I didn’t dare to try. This time, I walked along the port, where I saw some very old ships. They looked really rusty and I didn’t think they were used. But again, everything looks old in this city and they may be still using the ship. For instance, the newspapers left in the hotel lobby for guests are all from December 2002.
It has been such a relaxing weekend. Since there is not much to see in the city, I spent lots of time reading in my room. Finished a book about nationalism and globalization, which really made me wonder where the world will be going. How a country like the Solomons, which is left behind from globalization, can build a government and administrative system with such limited resources? I don’t really understand that the US is trying to spend money on starting a war with Iraq while there are so many other critical problems to be tackled in the world…
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