As you might have seen looking at my twitter feed, we’ve been pretty damn busy. Firstly it was an awesome 2 weeks on the Gold Coast staying at Chevron (which is fantastic value). We were on the 13th floor, and on the final night had to move up to the 49th floor – as I neglected to actually get a room for our final night – long story, won’t bore you with the details.
As it so happened, we ended up at Movie World about 5 times, Sea World a couple of times, and caught up with both my family in Brisbane as well as Lesley and Peter (with kids) a couple of times. One thing about being an expat (esp here) is that the friends you make, are friends for life. We would do anything for our friends here, you have to – in order to have something that may resemble a family for support…. The kids loved the Gold Coast, Jacinta loved being able to walk around, I loved coming back to Port Moresby 🙂 Holiday’s I find relatively difficult, I like my own space, and I really needed to relax and unwind – but didn’t really do that.
ON getting back to Moresby, we found our apartment completely full with mould – which of course triggered off Xavier’s asthma – and it’s been a neverending battle since. Word for the wise – don’t shut your place up when you go out, leave some windows open for circulation, or set the AC on a timer….. I have (fingers crossed) approached our compound owners to see if we can move into a vacant apartment as it will be better for the kids – unit 1 rather than 7, so we’ll see I suppose..
So back into Moresby, where the elections were in full swing. Pictures in the papers of children voting, reports of ballot boxes missing, or burnt. Generally, an election nightmare. But at the end of the day – if the country can get a stable government for the next 5 years, that will really assist the economic growth that we are having, I just wish that electoral reform could happen here to weed out all the dodgy shit going down… As it stands now, Peter O’Neill looks like he has the support of most MP’s including Sir Michael Somare – and with that – it looks like the elections here are a success.
A few days after getting back to PNG, and I was off again – this time to Bangkok, via Brisbane and Sydney – for a day, then back via Manilla to Port Moresby. Yes – a huge tip and not one I would like to do again in a hurry – especially just for one day. But required nonetheless….
Back in Moresby and Elections still going on, this is the problem with the LPV system – you aren’t just counting the winner, you need to count every mark – so of course it takes bloody ages.
The last two weeks, we finally went to the Aviat (which we like as it’s pretty casual), and happened to only spend one friday night at the Yachty (I know – what is the world coming too!!). Managed to spend some more Kina at the Ela Beach craft markets – and then took Adam and Jenny up to the PAU markets on Sunday 🙂
phew.
Give me a few more days and I’ll get some more pictures up 😉
Aaron
A Kiwi Expat in PNG 