Guest Haos

Tourism is booming in Vanuatu. Our backyard is full of places like these:

Five star luxury resorts where you can sprawl about poolside, pay ridiculous amounts for decadent beauty treatments and swim up to the bar and order tasty cocktails. Sometimes I like to sneak in, play the tourist and spend an afternoon doing just that.

.

But really, at one of these places you could be anywhere in the world and there is nothing really ‘Vanuatu’ about them. Maybe that’s the point? I don’t know.

.

Anyway, there is also another burgeoning industry in Vanuatu aiming to take a slice of the tourism dollar – albeit in much smaller morsels: the guest haos. Whereas luxury tourism is really only focussed in and around Port Vila, with a smattering of places up on the island of Espirito Santo and a few down south on Tanna to cash in on the thousands of tourists that travel down that way to see the volcano, guest houses are found on every island and in most communities.

.

Guest houses are typically a set up of one or two bungalows made out of bamboo, usually situated on an impossibly beautiful beach, owned by a family who fix you three meals a day. A night in a guest haos costs somewhere between $15 and $40 (meals and funny chats with the local owners included). It can be a bit hit and miss as far as hygiene goes (I doubt very much that linen is laundered daily), but you get a bed with a mozzie net, sometimes your own private toilet and bathroom (we are talking bucket showers and sometimes pit loos), and a chance to hang out in a place that you know won’t be overrun by bogan tourists (aside from your own group of course). A place that is well and truly off the beaten track.

I went and stayed at one of these guest houses with a group of friends from around Vanuatu a couple of weekends ago. The place we stayed at was on Nguna Island off the north coast of the main island – an hour in a truck followed by a half hour spid bot ride away from Port Vila. The name of the guest house was Vat-Vaka, which makes people giggle when you say it.

This is Vat-Vaka guest haos, tucked away so that it is barely even visible from the beach.

This was the bungalow I stayed in.

This is the communal toilet block.

This is the ocean I chose to swim myself clean in rather than bathing up in the communal block because it smelled a bit funny.

We were there for three days and spent a good deal of time snorkelling the beautiful reef at our doorstep, reading, snacking on aelan kakae (island food) and scratching our full bellies while we contemplated the meaning of life.

And as for expensive beauty treatments – pffft. We byo-ed. Here I am channelling my inner island goddess.

I also got to spend some quality time with the adorable Marley.

Here she is with her mama.

More adorable pikininis could also be found nearby – here are two nguna kids dancing under the downpipe. Although I think the one on the left just wanted us to rack off so that he could continue mucking about in peace.

So rack off we did, away from our lovely Nguna escape and back to the world of fridges and flushing toilets, vowing to return i no long taem (soon).