Vanuatu
Way back in 1998, I decided I wanted to take a holiday,
I wasn't exactly flush at the time, but I managed to scrape
together enough funds, and roped my boy James into coming
along as well. 
Conveniently,
in the same building I was working at the time there was
a small crappy travel agency, I spoke to them about various
options, and settled on Vanuatu, I don't exactly recall
why, there was probably just a cheap package available.
I should emphasise in advance that back then I was a bad
traveller, I'd travelled all over New Zealand of course,
and jetted over to Australia a few times, but I hadn't figured
out that if you want to have fun you have to do things,
for example, when travelling to England, it is lame to hit
London and just sit around, you could do that in Auckland,
and you'd be bored, doing it in London is just as boring,
only several times more expensive, what you need to do is
hit London, launch off into Scotland, take a train to France,
jet over to Italy, etc (Europe is actualy wee, you see,
and the huge amount of competition has lead to relatively
cheap and easy travel).
Anyway, digressing. Suffice to say, I was a lame 'sit around
and hope to be entertained' traveller see Bali
for me as the 'do things and have an awesome time' traveller.
Arriving in Port Vila; The hotel.
Anyway, enough of all that. The flight was made to feel
much longer than it really was by the cramped plane, it
was a little thing. Sub-optimal, but tolerable (and all
I was paying for, so there you go).
Flying
in to land at Port Vila airport felt just right, looking
out the window as we sank below the level of the palm trees
which stretched off into the distance. Out of the plane
and into the humidity, you really know you're in a different
place when you travel into the tropics, even the very air
your breath is telling you that everything is different.
Through customs and into the dirty little airport. Grabbed
our bags, and jumped onto the coach that was hauling everyone
around to their hotels.
We
went past some really nice places, very flash, but our place
wasn't flash, it was just an ordinary cheap motel, the likes
of which you'll find pretty near everywhere - only with
more lizards.
Kaiviti Village Motel, as I mentioned, not flash, but it
was ok, nice pool with a bar, pretty good room service,
and a quick walk into the heart of Port Vila.
Speaking of the pool bar, it was while sitting at said
bar that I met the most ignorant Australian I've ever had
the good fortune to encounter. After asking if we had Pizza
in New Zealand, he was surprised to find that yes we did,
and
yes we also have Chicken, and ahh, you're pretty drunk aren't
you pal?
We got our own back in the drunkness stakes a few nights
into our stay when we tapped into our duty free. At about
3AM the manager phoned us and told us off. We felt very
naughty.
Dirt; Gouging; Kava.
Something you should know about Vanuatu is: it might be
dirty, but it sure ain't cheap.
Every thing was over priced, meals, hotels, drinks, everything.
But you can have a good time there without blowing your
budget, number two on my list of fun cheap things to do
in Vanuatu was to hit a nakamal - we went to the Chief's
Nakamal - and grab a couple of bowls of Kava, this shit
is nasty, it tastes like some sort of raw dirty root mashed
into muddy water, and filtered through someones undies,
but it does something very entertaining to your head, and
it only cost about 60c a bowl (knowing that place, it is
now $18).
The first bowl isn't really so bad, but the second one,
oh my god, it tastes fucking awful, if you can face any
more than two, good for you, we couldn't.
Finding a nakamal should be easy enough (James found the
one we went to, I don't recall how, he probably just asked
someone at the hotel), but they don't tend to be on the
main drag. They're kind of quiet places, it isn't a social
activity, you buy a bowl, then go off and drink it (don't
sip, it really fucking sucks, just gulp it down as fast
as you can, get it out of the way).
You'll probably only be able to do it once, maybe twice,
before you get some serious taste aversion, just the thought
made me feel queasy (now, 5 odd years later, I don't feel
anything, so I am probably just about ready to try another
dose or two). The effect was nice, mellow, started off by
making my mouth feel numb as we were walking back into the
"city", then the numbness spread and turned into
a general feeling of altered niceness & wellbeing. While
talking to someone in a bar, I was told that Kava was very
good for detoxifying your body, all I can tell you is I
certainly did get rid of a lot of toxins the next day, in
a lovely squirty manner. (TMI?)
Depending on where you're from, and where you've travelled
to, you might be surprised by the general state of the place,
which is to say: dirty, kind of run down, with crappy footpaths,
and rubbish on the beaches. 
This
is not a super flash blinding white sands, sparkling clean
piece of paradise, which is not to say that it isn't a nice
place to spend a week (forgive the double negative), because
we had a good time.
The dirtiness I guess in on a par with Bali, only the people
(Ni Vanuatu) in Port Vila were really nice, while the people
in Bali where aggresive sales people.
Fun in the water.
The number one cheap fun thing to do, for me, was to travel
around to some of the smaller islands off the main land
mass and go snorkelling, including a partially surface wreck
dive right in the harbor of Port Vila, there was a free
ferry over to Iririki Island (which features the Iririki
Island Resort, one of the places on our short list of places
to stay, and thankfully we didn't go there, because while
it seemed like a much nicer place than where we went, it
turned out that while we were there they were having a problem
with the sewerage. Gah.) we circumnavigated the whole island,
and I've got to tell you, the wreck is the only thing there
worthy of excitement, there were many crazy cool
long spined (like 30cm - 50cm) sea urchins, but for the
most part it was pretty dead.
I'm sure that if anyone experienced with diving had seen
me swimming inside the wreck, wearing just shorts and a
mask, they would have had a heart attack and told me off
for being reckless, but I had a really good time, and I
didn't even die! (Yay for not drowning, or carving off great
hunks off flesh on rusty old hatches, and such.)
If
you want less in the way of wrecks, and more in the way
of an incredible profusion of brightly coloured tropical
fish, huge growths of coral, and generally good fun, take
a shuttle out to Hideaway Island, again the ferry is free,
but you have to pay to use the beach (I think it was about
$5), you can rent snorkel gear (it looked really crappy),
take rides in glass bottomed boats, or even go for a SCUBA
dive, but I'd actually lugged flippers and mask all the
way from Auckland. (The stuff for rent looked like really
shitty gear.)
This
was the best snorkel I've ever had in my life. The coral
was amazing, and totally accessible, right off the beach
I was immediately surrounded by throngs of lovely fishies.
I had an awesome day there, in small part thanks to the
bar on the beach (no, I didn't drink before snorkeling),
including the really nice guy tending the bar.
The goodness of food.
One
of the best dinners I've ever had was in Port Vila, there's
a little French restaurant at the edge of town (I don't
remember the name of the place, it is either next door to
Gino's or very near it, which is right next to the Kaiviti
Village Motel), I had the coconut crab, in a sort of garlicky
sauce. It was AWESOME. I have no idea what it cost, I never
got very good at translating the currency, and price for
the most part seemed divorced from value, things were just
a rip, in whatever currency you used, so it was best to
just not think about it too much.
Now, if I was going to go again, I'd definitely try the
Flying Fox, which is a specialty in at least one of the
restaurants, and appeals to me for some reason, probably
because it sounds like such a weird thing to eat.
We also went to a farmers market sort of thing one morning,
grabbed a pineapple (one of the best I've had in
my life) and some weird nut things, etc.
The crappiness of my photos.
This
was in my pre-digital days, also apparently in my pre-taking-interesting-photos
days. Regardless, I've got a gallery of my photos up, I
couldn't be arsed doing the job right with my good scanner,
so I just dropped them through my rubbishy auto feeder scanner.
The Vanuatu Gallery
is here.
Other thoughts.
I got a couple of carvings before leaving, 
one
is a really dodgy fertility god wooden cock looking thing,
and the other is a happy wooden pig. Check them over carefully
for holes (caused by borer, termites, etc) before buying
though, if there is any sign of insect life, customs will
take them away and burn them for you (James was annoyed
that I even declared my carvings, but I reckon it's better
to be safe than really really sorry).
Oh, and check out the cool number plates, the smallest
number we saw was something like "7". And the
taxis and buses are pretty cool (and interchangeable). They're
mostly just van sort of things, the difference between them
being tiny little labels ("[B]" is for bus, etc).
Pidgin is widely spoken and written, and it really is a
funny sort of language with the limited vocabulary and odd
syntax, leading to some comical advertising.