Malo'eleleii!! Or Hello as they say in Tongan Well here I am in the middle of the South Pacific just slightly north of New Zealand but right next to the international date line (in fact if it was a line and not so much of a squiggle, I would be writing this on the other side of the date line having gained a day in my life! But anyway, right now I am possibly the farthest away from Blighty as possible! And five and a half hours away from OZ!

So what can I say about the place? Well bit of a geography lesson! Tonga is basically 3 groups of islands, in the middle of the pacific Tongatapu holding Nuku'lofa the Tongan capital. Unlike many pacific islands Tonga still has a fully reigning king, who you can spot in the local church on a Sunday but unlike our royal family what this king says GOES!!!.

Tonga is one of the very few islands in the south pacific never to be colonised so it has all the makings of something like Hawaii or American Samoa but is SO poor it certainly does not! It still has a very raw quality to it & for anyone who thinks that a 2 week trip in Peru or Thailand is comparable it ain't!

Well the reason for my trip here (amongst others) was to swim with humpback whales. Both Tonga and Niue another much smaller pacific island/country are the only places in the world where this is possible, unfortunately, I was too late on this one and the whales had well gone by the time I got there…. So instead I started to get myself to grips with the culture of the place. Luckily when I got off the plane at Nuku'lofa I met a travel journalist from one of the big travel guides who gave me some insider information on the place, to be honest I didn't believe him to start with at all! Until I asked around, about things like "do they really eat dogs?" but yes it was true!!

Tonga has around 100,000 people with an ever growing population (I think that that figure must be wrong as I've seen at least 100,00 kids running around today!)About 75,000 people live on Tongatapu the main island with the capital. On this island there are over 350 churches! Just to put that into perspective there are 1000,00 people in Chester! and not nearly as many churches and these are for almost all religions! church is a big part of these peoples lives, they even run the schools. Sunday is a major day here with nothing open, and I mean nothing not even buses run! Only about 6pm can you buy bread!! Funerals as well are absolutely enormous and can almost bankrupt a family. They have a wake all night and then singing until dawn when the funeral actually takes place everyone takes part in these and they can involve hundreds of people, everyone that attends wear mats around their waists and up to their chests that have been passed down from generation to generation as a sign of respect, called TA'ovala. Evcerywhere you walk and seems at anytime at night all you can hear are choir groups singing!

The Tongan people are enourmous people both in width and girth (the Samoans are even bigger!) and I guess thats why they kicked so many peoples arses in the rugby this year.

On the subject of clothes its rare to see a man in trousers and even rarer to see him in shorts most men wear black sarongs and if it's a formal occasion i.e. church they wear the rattan mats. The girls wear "hoola" skirts like you would see in a Hawaiian TV show on top of their school uniforms.

What else can I tell you about Tonga? Well once there and people start to know your face, people are unbelievable friendly to you and have on very many occasion offer you lifts if they are going your way or ask them to stay with you in their homes for the night, Tongans love having new visitors around

Also despite the fact that there is so much coastline, it is illegal for the Tongans or anyone to swim in the sea with anything other than being fully clothed!!! Young and old, check out the pictures.

So what have I been doing since I have been here………