PNG, as in Papua New Guinea... not Penang! Just coz' someone I know made that mistake. Lol.
I went to Papua New Guinea in December 09 for work. It was my first time in the country, and prior to leaving, I had no lack of friends warning me to be careful and watch out for cannibals. Well, I'm still alive and well, not being digested in some Papua New Guinean's stomach, and while I met and spoke to quite a number of the locals in the course of my work, there wasn't a cannibal anywhere. My client also reassured me that if there were cannibals before, the people had stopped that lifestyle ages ago. I didn't even get to see any tribes, and I closest I got were nice paintings and photos of tribal people at the airport, as well as a friendly looking statue at the hotel I stayed overnight at.
Nevertheless, even without cannibals, I was told the place still wasn't all that safe, as the locals are quite poor and are known to do untoward things to foreigners unfamiliar with the place. So I and my colleagues were advised not to go out on our own, ever, which was fine, coz' the clients put us up at a pretty nice hotel (the Crown Plaza) for one night at Port Moresby, before we took another flight the next day to the island where our work was to be carried out at some palm oil mills. It was at the Crown Plaza where I got my first taste of Melanesian food, which is the local food is Papua New Guinea (at least I think so. You can go google the history of it. Haha). And they were serving crocodile meat served in some yellow sauce, which for the most part sounded quite unappetizing to me and also made me feel very guilty about the thought of eating part of an endangered animal. But since I was having a buffet, it was one of the dishes and the crocodile was already dead, I took a teeny tiny bit to try it out, and the meat was, not un expectedly, very tough. With curiosity satisfied, I decided not to take another bite. Apparently though, crocodile meat isn't supposed to be so tough, according to my client, so the hotel folks probably didn't cook it right. Not that I would know the difference anyway. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the crocodile meat, but with all the sauce covering it, it didn't really look much different from chicken meat in yellow sauce.
At the airport, it was also not uncommon to see large groups of people sitting outside the airport, especially the domestic terminal. I'm not sure if they are waiting for people to arrive or just making a nuisance of themselves. I wanted to take a photo of the people, but I was also a bit worried I might get into trouble with some of them for it. So the most I got was this lady making herself comfy in the airport itself.
Either way, I and my colleagues were again advised to just walk as quickly as possible to the check-in counter, check-in and then head straight for the waiting area, just to be safe. Unfortunately even that wasn't so smooth sailing, coz' when we got to the check-in counter, it turns out the plane (which we all had valid tickets for) was overbooked and already full! At first, they said they couldn't fit any of us on the plane, but our client's consultant who was with us, talked to them and after a while they miraculously somehow got 3 seats for us...which was enough coz' there were 4 of us. So the poor consultant had to stay behind for one night while the rest of us went on the plane. And this is apparently why the local airline, Air Niugini, is also known as Air Agony.
That aside, there is very little industry on the island where we flew too, so the greenery was rather untouched, and since the landscape was quite hilly, it made for beautiful scenery from the plane.
After landing and being picked up by our clients, we were driven throughs mile and miles of forest (on surprisingly good roads though) to our resort), where along the way, it was common to see people walking along the road with their baskets, and sometimes children not wearing any clothes, and at one point we passed by a group selling vegetables and other wares by the roadside. Their items were all placed on the ground, no tables. Even though it was raining quite heavily (as in cats and dogs heavy!) they didn't even move to get shelter. They all stayed under their stall umbrellas and continue their business! Food cleaniness must be a major issue among the locals....
For some reason, the locals also have a strange way of disposing of their old and worn out shoes... by chucking them onto telephone lines! Don't ask me why...
Even with all the problems and potential safety issues, there are also of course, good things about PNG. Of course, not all the people are up to no good. As part of my job is to interview the local stakeholders, including the villagers and locals working for the company, to see how the company's activities are affecting them, I had no choice but to go right into some of the villages and talk to the people. Not all of them speak English, but some did speak English quite well, and while I was there I was quite warmly welcomed by the locals. So much that while I was speaking to the members of one family outside their home, my presence attracted a swarm of other local, curious at one this unfamiliar Chinese girl was doing in their midst. After 5 minutes, I was practically surrounded by the locals, young and old alike, all watching me with curiosity while I continued to interview one of the local ladies. Of course, I just had to have some photos with the bunch of people.... And these don't even show all of them!
If you look closely, the second guy from the right on the pic above as a bloody red mouth. That isn't blood and he's not a vampire. It's actually due to a local habit of chewing something called bettlenut mixed with some other spices. The bettlenut itself is white, but red colour comes from the mixing with spices, and apparently it gives them a kick but causes mouth cancer and give them really bad teeth. Kinda like the local equivalent of smoking. All in all, it doesn't make them look very good.
After working for a good whole week, my colleagues and I got a day off to enjoy the place, and so we went off to another nearby resort to enjoy some really holidaying activities. I and the client's consultant went for the diving and snorkelling trip (actually I was the only snorkellor coz' I can't dive, and all the other 6 people on the boat were all divers. Makes me wanna do a diving course, like NOW), while my other two colleagues who can't swim (how sad) went for a village walk to meet some of the locals. Since I had already met some locals, I didn't see much point in going for that, especially since I heard the reefs in PNG are awesome. I did get some photos from my colleagues though, of them visiting a hot spring, and being slapped on with war paint from colours produced from a rock!
They also saw a lot of cute little piggies owned by the locals. Pig butts!
For me though, while on a while, the snorkelling itself turned out to be not really that great (the reefs we went to were pretty shallow and I saw mostly small fish, which I see a lot of in Malaysia as well. There weren't any really big animals at the reef, unlike in Malaysia where I can see moray eels, sting rays, and even huge monster like fishes hovering just a few meters below me). One of the interesting things I did see where apparently people with the ability to walk on water!
Ok lah, they weren't on the water's surface but halfway submerged in it, so it's pretty obvious they are standing on something. They're actually standing on the coral reefs, which as I mentioned are very shallow, and also very flat at the top so people could easily walk on it. All the corals have a steep edge, so basically the coral reef is shaped like a mountain with a shaved off top. The peopl are apparently gathering stuff from the corals, and in destroying them in the process. So sad, but hey they're the locals, so what can I say.
The thing that did make the snorkelling trip really all worth it (and most of my friends would have heard this from me already) was the rare chance to swim with dolphins! ~:O
Well, technically we weren't swimming with them. We were hanging onto the side of the boat watching the dolphins. The boat has something called a boon net, which people can hang onto at the side of the boat, and then with our snorkelling masks on, we can stick our heads underwater and watch the dolphins swim below us. So while the boat is moving, the dolphins will swim alongside the boat. That's me in the middle sticking my head above the water coz' water kept getting inside it, which was rather annoying.
I can safely say that this is probably the coolest thing I've ever done in my life! Sky diving in Australia comes a close second. The dolphins were so graceful and they were having so much fun jumping up and down in the water in front of us! And there were so many of them! There were 3 main groups, with probably at least 20 in each, based on what we saw breaking the water. Who knows how many more were underneath? I can't even describe it. It's just something you gotta experience for yourself, getting right in there next to dolphins in their natural habitat. AWESOME. Of course, suffering from a sunburn for a week or two after that wasn't so fun. I didn't know we could go snorkelling there, so I didn't being any sunblock. It was also kinda dark and cloudy that day, so I thought I wouldn't get sunburned. Turns out I was WRONG... but at least the burn wasn't too bad. Now I just have really weird looking tan line on me, which hopefully even out with the rest of my body in due time. Still, the dolphins made it all worth it. :)
So there you have it, my first experience in PNG, and it had its ups and downs, but nevertheless a fascinating place to be. Not a place I would wanna stay long term though, and even for holiday, it's so expensive that if accomodation weren't paid for by the client, it might make me bankcrupt. Still it's interesting to see the simple lifestyle of the people there, and to end it all of, here's a lovely serene pic, which I unfortunately can't take credit for coz' it was taken by my colleague... but it's a nice photo. :)
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