A Nice Little Saturday

Today was my "How to Survive in Port Moresby" tour of the city.  After a much needed nap on Friday afternoon and a wonderful Welcome BBQ at Andrew and Nierelle's house on Friday night, I spent the morning attempting to get my bearings in POM.  Andrew picked me up around 9:00 a.m. and took me around.  We wandered around a few grocery stores and Brian Bell (a small Walmart-esque store) where I paid 375K for a Sunbeam hairdryer (about $150 US) because otherwise I would not have one and my hair would continue to drip all day in this humid weather.  He took me to the gym at the Holiday Inn where I will have my membership paid for by school.  It has a fabulous pool and restaurant which I have access to as well - nothing like our low budget Holiday Inns.  The grounds and gardens are beautiful, lush and green with pig pink flowers everywhere.  We then headed to Vision City. 

While the rest of the world has been suffering due to plummeting economies, Papua New Guinea has apparently been booming.  It is the second richest nation in the world when speaking of natural resources.  Gold, silver, natural gas, you name, they've got it.  Vision City is the first evidence in the city of this money that is starting to come here.  It a shopping mall.  There is a small food court, a coffee stand that will charge you the same price as Starbucks so as to make you feel right at home, a Hogs Breath (think Outback Steak House), and a grocery store (the Publix version as compared to FoodWorld which is dingy).  There are cell phone stores and novelty shops and a pharmacy.  It's nothing compared to the massive malls in the United States, but here it is something special.  It is where one would venture to when needing the creature comforts of Western society. 

While Vision City is a testament to the booming economy, if you look around Port Moresby there is little evidence else where.  People line the streets just watching life go by.  The masses of people walking along the roads will take some getting used to.  Some have little stands set up selling anything from a single tire (most likely stolen) to little baggies of Twisties (Cheetos without the orangy goodness) to bilums or bags and art and of course there are beetle nut markets everywhere.  Two barefoot gentlemen had set up shop at an intersection and were selling novelty pets.  We were coming around the round-a-bout and stopped a bit in front of them.  I saw a small animal jumping up and down and looked right at Andrew, "WHAT WAS THAT?!"  It turned out to be a baby Walibi for sale and his mother was sitting between the legs of the older gentleman.  Andrew looks right at me, bewildered, "THAT?  That's what you're concerned about?  Isn't that a bald eagle in that make shift cage??"  It surely looked like one!  A makeshift chicken wire cage had been rigged together in the shape of a pyramid and sat on the ground with a bald eagle prancing around inside of it.  After some research (gotta love google) I found that Papua New Guinea has a sea eagle that looks identical to the American Bald Eagle.  It was definitely a site, but I have to say seeing a Walibi on the side of the road being sold as a pet was no less of one - no matter how common place it might become in the future.

My tour ended at the Crowne Plaza for morning tea.  I kept saying breakfast, but you eat that at home, it's tea when you have it out.  The English language between Australians, the British, New Zealanders and the lone American is surprisingly great.  The other Deputy and Andy, a teacher at Port Moresby International School (PMIS, the name of the compound I live on as the high school is at the bottom of the hill) joined us and then Andrew ran off to production rehearsal. 

The three of us headed to the Yacht Club, the Yachtie, for a couple afternoon beers (everything here is speckled with a drink here and a few there) and a walk out on the docks and the jetty.  The water is a shade of turquoise I have never seen a liquid be - this is without mentioning that the water around the Yachtie is considered dirty - I can't wait to see the clean water out by the islands.  Angel Fish, Sargeant Major Fish (learned that on Spring Break in Key West during college!), and a few others I couldn't identify swam among the barnacles and seaweed calling the floating docks home.

Yesterday evening was spent eating out.  If you like Asian cuisine, Papua New Guinea is the place to come.  On every corner there is a different variety - Chinese, Thai, Korean, Japanese.  I went to dinner with Andy, Sally, and Carolyn at a nice Korean place.  For 50K I had a couple drinks with dinner and an coma inducing amount of food.  That's about $20.  This evened out my anxiety about the $150 cheap hairdryer I purchased earlier in the day.  After dinner drinks were had and I walked through the compound back in a cool wind back to my house on stilts.  All in all a nice little Saturday.