Luganville - The Mighty Metropolis

You're getting lucky another post. Although this one much shorter than the previous. Now that we have an internet connection at home, I am enjoying this. One reader requested a couple of pictures of the town of Luganville. So here are seven pictures that I took when I was visiting here in October 2007 to see just what the place looked like.

This is the municipal building. I read its been under renovations for months or more. But I noticed yesterday that the scaffolding is starting to come down. I guess I'll have to go take another picture.



This is the farmers market. The village people (not the 1980's group) from near and far come here to sell their produce.



Here we are doing some shopping in the market. The market is interesting for several reasons. One is that the vendors sleep under the tables at night. They will stay a few nights until their goods are sold.




The butcher. Apparently Santo Beef is world famous for its high quality, and a specialty exporter to Japan.




Here is the fancy part of town. I'll have to get some shots of the derelict part and show that. Its interesting how media can manipulate the uniformed. I post one or two nice pics you think its a clean fancy place, I post a few others and the foreign aid will start arriving.



The Baha'i Centre were we are staying. How do you like my tan (steve`s tan)? When I live in a foreign country, I try to dress like the locals in order to blend in.



The road in front of the Baha'i Centre. Pretty good surface, not many pot holes at all.

Third World Technology - see how many you can count

Well, as you may know Vanuatu is economically classified as an LDC - Least Developed Country, a.k.a. Third World Country. Funny enough, after arriving here we purchased a cell phone, or "mobile phone" as the locals say. I say funny enough since we never had one in Canada. We were in that minority few who never owned one.

Technology here can sometimes be expensive, so when one of our friends was travelling to Malaysia we asked them to pick us up a mobile (phone that is, not trailer). You see for the price we paid in Malaysia we got a fancy fancy phone, not the bottom of the ladder one you would get here.

So yesterday after chatting on skype from the mid-most heart of the ocean with a friend in New York she suggested I post a town map I thought I'll just pop into town and take a picture of the local tourist billboard map.

But unfortunately Carren had taken the digital camera with her, then I remembered, hey, we got a camera phone, I'll just take a picture of it and bing, I'm done.

So off to town I went, took the picture (notice the guys feet under the sign) came home and then thought, hmm, now how do I get this onto my laptop. This being my first 'mobile' phone, I knew about emailing pics (pictures) but didn't think that service would be available here. Then thought, hey my laptop has a 'bluetooth' which I've never used, I wonder if the phone does too. After a few clickings around, I round it, then managed to link the laptop and phone and transmit myself the picture.

Don't you just love Third World Technology?

Anyway, that was the long version of how I got this picture of the map. I hope it comes out ok. It is also my first ever 'mobile' phone picture. Now to see if I can find where the bluetooth saved the thing.

Our New Home

Well looks like we made it. After we moved to Vanuatu, we thought, heck as long as we're on the edge of the earth we might as well go closer to the edge but not fall off. So we moved from the main island of Efate, to the second most populated island called Espiritu Santo, of Santo for short. Its actually physically the largest island and has the only other 'town' in the country "Luganville". People who live here end up saying they live in Santo rather than Lugaville, probably because its shorter and easier to say.

Here is a linke with a map of the island [the link has been moved to links section. just look to your right]. I like this map because it has the names of all the villages - sort of makes the place look like there are cities everywhere! Luganville is at the bottom of the map beside the international airport marker. Of course on this map it looks like the airport is far out of town, and I guess it is. It must be almost a 10 minute drive out of town.

Perhaps our biggest change in coming here is that we now have an internet connection at our house! Yes, its even a 'high speed" connection. Its not as fast as most western highspeed, but considering where we are it's pretty darn good!

I've been trying to google a Luganville town map but there is nothing reasonable on the web. There is a hand painted map in town I'll go take a photograph of it and post it tomorrow.

Until then here is a map of the whole country. Enjoy!