How one email brings back so many memories!

Yours truly in 2006 outside the closed Niua Kalo Beach Hotel
which has since re-opened (again) as Ha'apai Beach Resort

 

An Englishman living in Taiwan emailed me: "I first read Tom Neale's book in 2020, after finding a copy of 'An Island to Myself' (rather than the later 'Oneself'). I lent my copy of the former to a couple of good friends, and they both loved it too. I think it's such a simple but profound story, perhaps more so for leaving out the parts of his life that he did. Since then I've come across your website's articles about Tom, and your mention of the interview with him in 'A voice from beyond the grave' really piqued my interest. I understand that it's not to be shared publicly, but would it be possible for me to be able to watch it, please?"

Of course, between two Tom Neale fans, we came to an arrangement, but what 'piqued' my interest was when he told me he'd be sailing to Tonga aboard the Dutch tall ship OOSTERSCHELDE to spend four nights at "Serenity Eco Retreat" on the island of Uoleva in the Ha'apai group.

 

"On the eve of the New Year, I sit beside an oil lamp looking at the ocean. The sun has just set and the new moon hangs below Venus, the brilliant evening star. I am on an uninhabited island in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. This is where I live now. This is the place and the experience I wish to share with others as I reflect on the long path that has brought me to a place called Serenity - as well as to a state of serenity. Life is different here. There are no roads, villages, or cars. I must be conscious of every little thing: tides, winds, and how to obtain water, food, and electricity. Yet in most ways life is simple."
Click here for a preview

 

The owner, Patti Ernst, is just one in a long line of expats who came to Tonga and tried to make a living there by throwing a mattress on the beach and calling it an eco-resort. She even wrote a book about it!

The book is selling well - both on ebay and amazon.com - but will her "resort"? It's been advertised for sale at well over a million US dollars (now reduced to US$975,000) - click here - since I last visited Tonga.

 

Here is their facebook page

 

During my travels through Tonga I bumped into another expatriate, a somewhat tragic figure in the mould of Geoffrey Firmin, the protagonist in "Under the Volcano", who tried to talk me into buying the run-down "Niua Kalo Beach Hotel". I didn't but years later, in a Hibernian-Teutonic joint venture, Brian Heagney and Sabine Frank did - until Cyclone Ian wiped them out - click here. It's now run as Ha'apai Beach Resort and would be my first choice if I travelled to the Kingdom of Tonga again.

Strange, how one email brings back so many memories!

Googlemap Riverbend