Whilst working in Fiji I had to go and work for a month in Tonga to look after some volunteers as Madventurer had projects there as well.

When I was leaving to go to Tonga I flew from Suva airport rather than Nadi which was nice as it was just a short 20 mins drive. When I arrived at the airport I checked in and after I checked in and got my ticket I soon realised that I had picked up the wrong passport. I picked up Mandy my co workers passport. Mandy had long black hair, glasses and was a female, I had blonde hair and I am a male but they checked me in on her passport! I couldn't believe it when I realised what had happened and if I didn't look at the passport closer I would have been travelling on someone else's passport!. I luckily managed to pick call my driver who quickly picked me back up and we rushed back to the house and got the correct passport and made it back to the airport in time to get on the flight.

After a short 1 hour flight I arrived in to Tonga and was met by Miles my co-worker in Tonga and taken to the volunteer house where I meet some of the volunteers and then went onto the British embassy for a game of Tennis on the grass courts with some of the other volunteers. The volunteer house was a but like the volunteer house in Fiji spacious and a social atmosphere.

The next day which was the 10th of August and my 23rd birthday myself and some of the other volunteers and a number of other Phalanges (which means white man) played cricket against the Tongan National Cricket team. I am a good all round sports man but cricket has never been my cup of tea and I have never really played it properly I had always been into more active sports such as rugby and football. We were a bit of misfits playing cricket as only a few of us had played much before and I opened the bowling and on my first bowl it was a bit of a bouncer and it caught the opening batsman right in the face and broke his nose, a good start to the game by me! Blood was everywhere all over the wicket and we did not have any helmets to protect their face. We ended up losing by quite a margin and I found the whole event a bit dull especially sitting out in the field waiting the ball to come to me, again give me a rugby ball or football any day. Tonga is one of the smallest countries I have been to and it only has a population of 100,000 plus lots of pigs and dogs who were running around every where. One of the strangest cultural things I have ever seen in my life was in Tonga. As part of Tongan culture when a family have all males and no females the youngest males is forced to become the females of the family. From a young age he is dressed in girls clothes and forced to do female chores and his hair is grown long like a girls. Because of this you see lots of fully grown males dressed as females in the bars around Nukualofa as they are gender confused, which is really strange as all Tongans are very, very big. Tonga along with Samoa are the most obese people in the world due to their high carb diet and lack of good foods on the islands. The males are very big and muscular as well which makes for a good rugby team. One of the best things I have ever done in my life was to visit Tofua an active volcanic island off the Ha'apai island group. Myself and around 14 other people who were also working there took an overnight boat from Tongatapu island group to the Ha'apai island group. The ferry was rather interesting with plenty of animals on board and finding a comftable place to sleep was near impossible. Once we arrived at Ha'apai main port we headed to a school where the local government official worked and organised for a fishing boat to take us out to Tofua. Tofua is 6 hours away from the main island and is a short distance away from the extinct volcano Kao which comes out of the water in a cone shape. The boat trip from Ha;apai to Tofua was 6 hours over quite choppy water which made me feel quite sick. When we arrived at the island we had to take a small motorised boat to the landing spot which was basically rocks and getting off and on was not that easy. When we arrived on the island we set up our tents and camped out and quickly made a fire to cook our food. The whole island was deserted and we had no communication with the outside world, all we had was the confirmation that we would be picked up in 4 days by the boat owners. We had to bring all of our food for the tip for about 4 days. We had a mixture of noodles, chocolate bars, beans and anything else we could get our hands on. The next day we woke up and headed towards the summit of the island and towards the active volcano. We took about 2 hours to reach the summit of the island through a mixed terrain of jungle. When we got to the summit we set up camp again on a volcanic type surface which was really strange and nothing like I had seen before. Once we had set up camp we headed towards the active volcano walking around the rim of the island gaining some great views at the same time. The whole island had a great big lake in the middle of it with the old craters of extinct volcanoes and then the big one which was still active. We headed around the rim and down towards the active volcano. Once we got up to the active volcano which was a steep climb we could look right into the creator where we could see all of the lava below and smell all the gases coming out of the crater which made you feel quite sleep if you smelt to much of it. Seen the lava bubbling below was quite amazing and made you realise the true power of nature. Once we had seen the volcano we headed back to the campsite and camped out overnight before heading down the next day to the campsite where we originally camped the first night. We were all starting to run out of water and food but luckily one of the Aussie guys had brought a 10 litre tank with him, I also had to rely on my rehydration sachets as well which are a must if you are travelling around a hot country. Another thing I did in Tonga that was quite amazing as well was swimming with hump back whales. We spent a weekend on Eua which is an island off the main island group of Nukualofa and we hired a boat to take us out to swim with the whales. Tonga is the only place in the world where you can legally swim with whales. Swimming with them was quite amazing as you can never really see their size when in the boat and they grow up to 48 meters long.