“Pick Me!” said the Kingdom of Tonga

Some people just can't get enough of it and so here is another episode by fulltime-raconteur and parttime-realtor Robert Bryce who now resides in Savusavu in 'Feejee':

 

“Pick Me!” said the Kingdom of Tonga
by Robert Bryce

"Looking for a place to settle in the South Pacific that is a little storybook, with perfect weather, white sand beaches, uninhabited islands galore and a sense of humor? Try our Kingdom, right out of “Alice in Wonderland.” The Mad Hatter is alive and well here. Nothing is very serious, life is a cool breeze with a cold beer–or just plain soda.

We live in a funny place, “fun” being the root word. Full of characters and scenes from Alice’s memorable trip, Tonga is a full length feature with a real King and a very Royal family. Pomp and ceremony, ancient culture and with a grin of the fat Cheshire cat.

Unlike Alice’s encounter with the Queen, this Royal family is the epitome of why Captain Cook dubbed the place; “The Friendly Islands.” Freedom abounds here, maybe to a bit of a fault, as some have complained who are used to a regulation for every thing they do and even think. We are very unrestricted in our personal and business affairs. Unenforced fair play and good will prevail, with very minor exceptions. Their law is English and has a British citizen ruling in their highest court, but the country is an Independent, Constitutional Monarchy with a soft heart. No guns or threats, no terrorists, just tourists.

A major factor is choosing your next homeland is; can you qualify to live there? Some equally (almost) nice places may exist, but the requirements to reside will take a piece of your hide. Tonga’s rules for qualifying for a residence type visa are affordable and easy to live with. A non-working visa can be obtained by showing as little as $6,000 USD per year in “assured income.” To get a business visa, one need only invest as little as $27,000 USD in a business. Try that in St. Kitts.

This bargain entry residency program won’t last forever. Tonga is emerging and suddenly getting the attention of the world; thanks in part to a little political demonstration that turned into a full on painting of the roses red. Now that is put to bed, thanks to Fred (our Prime Minister) the culprits are eating bread—and water.

We, the wife and I and our child of three years, have lived nearly six years in the Vava’u Island Group of this marvelous place called “Tonga.” We may live in what is considered an undeveloped country, but undeveloped or underdeveloped has a new and wonderful meaning to us. Not only does it provide opportunity, but inexpensive living with a home at a small fraction of the price of anything back home that can boast of being on the water overlooking the pristine harbour spreckled with sailing boats and assorted native craft that traverse these reef protected waterways. Twice monthly the cargo ship with all of our imported goods passes by our house where the green islands narrow to the entrance of the Port of Refuge Harbour. The main town is three kilometers away and our business, the Internet cafe is right on the bay. Life is as good as it gets surrounded with an ambiance of “azure seas, blue skies and emerald isles,” to quote the brochure. We say we haven’t “worked” since we got here, even though we head out most every day to what we playfully call the “office.” Work is play and everyday is play day. Friendly, loyal and competent staff tend to everything in our Internet cafe and its many subsidiaries. I broker land and business sales/leasing, part time or as needed. We invented the broker concept out here. Imagine living where there has never been a real estate broker. We never did that before either, so we are untainted and good at it with no greed and no problems.

Our typical day is like most anyone’s that has two or three meals per day and sleeps at night. The difference in living here might be the perpetural scenery and the laid back pace and what we routinely do and how we get around and where we go. In these things we may have a differential gap. We use boats as much as we use cars to transport people and things. To get to work here you might use either since many houses and most of the business are located on or near the water. At this writing, today is Sunday, a day of required rest, relaxation and no business. We took one of the boats, a whaler type with a canvas roof and headed out in the inter-island waterways with the intention to stop in at one of the resorts on an island for a meal and a little socializing. It was Mala Island Resort today. The island group is small in population, under 20,000 people, so you get to know every resort owner pretty well. The welcomes are genuine and there are always some staff to help tie up the boat. Greetings and warm receptions are the norm, then a sit on the veranda with friends while overlooking the big sandy beach below where wife and child would meet up with same of another for a swim in a bluer lagoon than Technicolor could ever imitate. The scene is never tiring with several different hues of blues and greens in the sea below. The placid pools reflecting puffy white clouds stand there waiting for the afternoon trades to freshen and give them a ripple. The picture will distract you trying to engage in a little conversation with friends and visitors. Don’t look out the window at this bliss and expect to carry on an intelligent telephone conversation either.

When it is BBQ time more folks arrive. The food is good and the wine is fine. No TV, so we provide our own entertainment. Interesting conversations abound with topics about everything and from everywhere in the world. Our ride home took us by a cave that we could enter by boat. The late afternoon sun put a ray of light into the prism of water inside the cave, lighting it up from the bottom 100 feet down. The caverns below matched those above. A light show produced and directed by nature with a cast of thousands; all free and just for me. The waterway through the reef protected islands assures a safe and lake like ride home. We decided to out run a rain cloud for fun and planed swiftly through the islands to the right and to the left carving out a curved path through the placid sea within the sea that left the trail of white water on blue. I know, it is too good to be true.

Tomorrow we will take another boat to an island where some folks visiting from Atlanta want to buy/lease some land. With four native boys with bush knives leading the way, we will land on the lee beach in the calm lagoon and cut a trail through the jungle to the raging ocean on the islands windward side. A regular kind of adventure with no fear, for there are no snakes, nor any ugly critters that can seriously harm. Tonga was blessed with only the benign.

These are scenes of many a day in our new homeland, safe and far from the fears and uncertainties of where we came from. No Malaria, no mental hospitals, no welfare systems necessary either, and where “big brother” just means a helping hand; where the police are unarmed and in reserve, not out creating trouble and where people and boats don’t need registration numbers—you are free.

For more on Tonga, just ask Alice. If she is at tea, then ask me… glad to help.

Robert Bryce

PS, no traffic lights either…"

P.S. You can email Robert on tongaproperty[AT]yahoo.com . In the meantime, my advice - which is free, abundant and probably totally useless - to anybody who wants to buy Tongan real estate: read my Investinginpair-a-dice blog.

Paint your wagon

Robert Bryce's evocative stories about Tonga have struck a chord with some of my readers and I have decided to rescue another one of his literary gems from the obscurity of the www.escapeartist.com website and republish it here:

 

“Paint Your Wagon”
Transplanted In The Islands Of Tonga
July 2005

"That old musical tells the story of “moving west,” to the new frontier. Back then it was California. Horace Greeley’s “go west” advice still stands good, but the frontier has moved decidedly more west. These days, “Tonga or Bust” is the new call to freedom. Folks are painting their wagons (that would be shipping containers today) and heading to the Southern Hemisphere. Tonga is indeed the new and perhaps last frontier. To find it, you continue going west from California, and a little south, too. At about where you begin to go east again, stop there. That will be the South Pacific. The Kingdom of Tonga is right in the middle of the South Pacific.

Here is where you will find what every pioneer is looking for, and more: freedom, opportunity, fresh air, pristine environment and good folks of similar mind - same ole frontier - different country.

“Home is a place for coming from, with dreams of going to, which with any luck…, never will come true.” A line from my theme song for many years, taken from Paint Your Wagon; “born under a Wandr’n Star.” It is so true.

I moved to the Kingdom of Tonga four years ago with my wife, our baby born here and even grandma flew in. There are a few wise grandmas out here. We chose this group of islands for a lot of reasons, one being they seem to still have an appetite for new-comers, a door that will be closing slowly as the turmoil in the Nordstrom Hemisphere drives more of the wary off-shore in ever increasing numbers.

“What’s it like to live there?” is the question most asked by those who have seen my ads in the Tonga real estate section of www.escapeartist.com. The answer is complex, but in short; it is like living in an earlier time, in an epic movie with soap operas every few minutes instead of commercials.”

Yes, it is paradise with the classic island backdrop, like the Microsoft screen display choice of “Azul.”

(Use that for temporary relief) Palm trees sticking out of islands, azure seas, blue skies and the white sand beaches. Throw in a bunch of fruit trees and we are back in Eden - complete with a new beginning and new apples. Now, people tend to repeat mistakes, it matters not what garden they are in. This article is about moving to paradise with a little peek inside.

For those who are dreaming about living outside the cubical, like an island castaway (with a new car and speedboat) in a safe and idyllic environment, it is actually a lot easier to accomplish than it might appear. Most people would never consider it; same as most cows wouldn’t walk over a “cattle guard,” even the ones just painted on the road. Conditioned, programmed or just plain stuck in a mindset that prevents the body from moving over the imaginary line can keep us in bondage. The same mind that, from dirt water and air, created cars, airplanes and spaceships (bombs and bullets too) can’t seem to put it together to move out of harms way, even when we now know that the light at the end of the tunnel is a train coming straight for us. If it is only paint between us and where we want to be, know that you can get free with a little paint remover.

Where do you get that kind of paint remover? The answer is; same place you got the paint - in the mind. It is all in the mind. Just change your mind, paint your wagon and come along. Just do what your ancestors did, sell out and move out, if you are so inclined.

If your life depended on it, you would find a way; something to ponder in light of the recent turmoil. In today’s world, you are only 12 hours away from“home”(North America)by air.Twelve hours and $1,200.00 USD later you can be out here or back there, round trip either way. So it is not like you drop off the earth, flat as it is.

Living in these islands is physically much like how you see in photos of the south Pacific, movies and magazines. A beautiful setting of crystalline waters, emerald islands and white sand beaches, palms and native island culture, complete with outrigger canoes.

The air is balmy, pure and healthy. The natives are friendly and the pace is slow and full of grace. In Tonga, everyone counts, everyone is important and has a say in what happens. Town meetings will take you back in time. When you come to these islands, you be transformed from a number to a person; you will become a larger being. For some, those with a deflated ego, that can be quite a boost, for others, hiding the larger personage, it is difficult. So, you don’t come here to hide, to escape mayhem maybe, but to hide you will have to find an uninhabited island in this lovely little island group (we have them too). This phenomenon of becoming bigger, like the big fish in a little pond, is one of the potential pitfalls for both the newly arrived and the community that has endured.

“Every refuge has its price; nothing is perfect; every story has two sides,” are some of the sayings that apply to most everything, including living in paradise. It would be unfair to use the paint we removed that was holding you there to repaint you out here without hearing “the rest of the story.”

We are here because we want to be… and because they let us stay. That’s one point to consider; you could get booted out. It would take quite a bit of nonsense to provoke that, but it could happen. Speaking of nonsense, that larger being I mentioned makes for an interesting observation and study of human nature. When your integer drops from one in 250 million (US) to, one in 18,000 (Vava’u) and then to one in 100 (Expats here), you become a more significant percentage of the population of the group you are a part of. What you say suddenly has impact. This can be like being promoted from janitor to vice president in a single move. So one needs be a little careful about what one says and does with this new voice. The freedom to be your unrestricted self is certainly here, but you may be wearing it around for a while. The results can be amusing (sometimes annoying) and part of what makes the soap opera more interesting. Like in a movie, you don’t introduce a character unless they are going to be significant in the film. Here, most everyone is playing a leading role and we do have some characters. Fortunately our mix of expatriates is a pretty good representation of largely kind and gentle folks from around the world. A scene from “Paint your Wagon” indeed.

Alice in Wonderland noted that things got smaller in her world, but in Tonga, it is quite the opposite. The magnifying glass effect is what I call it. Everything is a bigger deal in a smaller place. If someone breaks their arm, we all know about it and are in some way drawn into dealing with it. Feuding between any two effects us all, but worse, the parties to it can suffer in more ways out here than back there. Imagine not getting along with the only electronics repair guy in town. There goes your TV and appliances. Anyway, the only TV we watch are DVD movies now and then. The prime time shows are the real life episodes. Reality TV is boring once you find this channel.

Movies and life are related, maybe more than what we think. As you pick your movie, you can pick your life. If a change is in order, you will feel it. If you feel it and don’t get it taken care of, it may fester into an illness. Overcoming the resistance to seeing the doctor, breaking the ties and stepping over the barriers that are just painted seem to be necessary sometimes to live life more fully. I don’t know what we paid to get in this life, but I want my money’s worth. If islands, freedom, safety, healthy environment, adventure, funny people and situations turn you on, go for it.

Not long ago Mr. Z was a nobody in his home country, today he owns a small resort on an island and is in heaven. He and his wife sold out, converting their house in the Northern Hemisphere into a few native style rental units. Now they can live happily ever after, entertaining their guests with stories of how they stepped over that painted barrier to freedom. You have to live somewhere, might as well be in paradise. Paint your wagon, and come along."

Want to read more of Robert's stories? Click here.

Trouble in Paradise

Some of the islands in the Kingdom of Tonga are so heart-achingly beautiful, they take your breath away. Small wonder they attract all sorts of expatriate floatsam and jetsam. A recent resident of these happy isles, Robert Bryce, has a particular way with words to describe them:

"Tonga is a wonderful mix of culture and humor. Humor prevails in Tonga. Like a theme park, Tonga has all the characters. Living here is challenging, elusive and most interesting. Orderly chaos might describe its internal functions. Like a beehive, the closer in you get the more confusion and disorder you see, but somehow critters that aren’t meant to fly do and things get done, problems get solved or just go away - this is Tonga. If the plane does not fly today, it may tomorrow and that gives you another day to enjoy your stay. Friendly is what Captain Cook called these islands - though he was almost roasted on his visit to Tonga. The people are friendly, gracious, helpful and generous with everything they have. There are four different groups of islands that make up Tonga, each with their own expression of the Tongan creed. If you are looking for adventure but do not want to risk your life, Tonga is probably the choice, be it for your holiday or a better place to live.

Tonga is politically and functionally independent; no country owns or presides over Tonga. The King has wisely not sold out to, or aligned himself with, any larger country outside the region. Sometimes it feels as though the Tongans know something about life that the rest of the world is in the dark about.

Tongans take life as it unfolds and they make the best of it, good or bad. Tonga sits on the International Dateline so the travel brochures promote it as the land “where time begins.” It is also where time doesn’t matter. Stress-free and loose schedules are a way of life on the islands, unlike the more punctual Northern Hemisphere.

It is interesting to consider that each day on this planet begins in Tonga. Not exclusively, but regardless of who you are, your official calendar day starts here.

We live it first and by the time the Stock Exchange opens in New York, it is tomorrow in Tonga.

So, where is elusive Tonga? Somewhere in Africa?… is where most guess who have not heard of the islands.

There are even a few stories around about people sending mail or freight from the USA to Tonga and having had their freight end up in Africa, and sometimes that is where it stays. I guess most people in the world don't really know where their day begins. Tonga is located in the middle of the South Pacific (tell your postman) about 20 degrees south of the equator and 180 degrees west latitude. It was one of the last group of islands in the South Seas to be discovered by the European explorers. Tonga continues to be discovered today by pleasantly surprised travelers and tourists. Though on the map most vistors to the South Sea islands fly right over Tonga on their way to more popular tourist destinations like Fiji. French Polynesia is to the east and Fiji just to the west. New Zealand is to the south about 1,500 miles away, and American and Western Samoa just to the north about 400 miles away.

Modern sailors have no problem finding Tonga, for the Vava’u Island Group, the crown jewel of the Kingdom of Tonga, has long been a popular port of call for yachts cruising the South Pacific. Vava’u, once spelled Vavaoo, which is closer in spelling to the pronunciation, is home to our family.

We too, arrived by sailboat about 4 years ago, checked in at the main port of Vava’u and we are still here. The “Port of Refuge,” the main harbor of Vava’u is very well protected, as is the entire island group. A huge reef system which forms up to 60 emerald islands, shields the islands from the relentless ocean tides that pound the walls of coral and volcanic rock. Even a tsunami would spend its force on the walls around Vava’u.

Within the protected islands, white sand beaches, caves, coves, and blue water lagoons decorate each island. Small boats can safely navigate the relatively calm inter-island waterways making this island group unique. There are a few small resorts on the many islands, all of which offer the vistor a true Robinson Crusoe island experience, but with all the amenities. The islands are perfect for charter yacht sailors - no big waves, gentle trade winds and lots of beautiful anchorages.

Humpback whales have made Tonga their holiday destination as well. Each year the Humpback whales migrate here, probably because they don’t need a “Transit Visa". Here they breed and bear their young, schooling them for their big trip back to Antarctica in October. Tourists that somehow find Tonga may attend classes with the whales, swimming with whales is an incredible experience. This is the only country in the world in which you can swim with whales.

Governments are like magnets, attracting some and repelling others. Thank God we can still move around the planet. And, it is nice to be free without having to be brave.

Government is usually where things break down in most countries, but Tonga is blessed with a stable constitutional monarchy, successfully in business since 1860. A Kingdom with a real King and a Royal family that are benevolent in their rule. But like with any bureaucracy, a little political wrangling probably keeps everyone busy and, merrily, most of us feel like we are in a classroom with no teacher. Freedom is having fun without someone being there with a gun; and guns are something they don’t have in our little haven from crime and punishment. The police are armed with smiles and respect the populace. Crime in most of Tonga is very minor. They tell me the prison in Vava’u used to have a sign on it that said: “Not in by 9 PM, you'll be locked out” Things have toughened up some lately. Now they have to be in by 6 PM. It’s true, during the day you are basically free, but better get back on time or you will miss out on the Kava party. No one fears getting shot at McDonalds on Tonga … anyway there are no McDonalds.

Life is good in Tonga. The bugs and animals mirror the harmless populace. There are no harmful bugs, except for one species of centipede, no malaria, no snakes, no critters lying in the weeds waiting to harm you. In fact, there aren’t many wild animals at all. If this were Disneyland, we would be on the little kids ride where a child walks safely through the jungle. We do have pigs so, ‘good fences make good neighbors.’

Peace of mind has to be mentioned as a part of the appeal of these islands. You take it for granted after awhile. Peace of mind creeps up on you quite naturally, due in part to the fact that you can rid yourself of the “bad news” addiction you've acquired from watching too much evening television in the States. We have TV, but it is not very popular. Real life is so much more interesting in this Land of Oz than any soap opera and we certainly have no bad news to report. Most of the bad news generated in the big countries has nothing to do with us, anyway. Folks returning from the “civilized world” after a two-week visit, arrive in Tonga exhausted and depressed, but very happy to be back home in their island paradise. Watching all that crime and propaganda everyday is a huge pill to take for a cleansed soul that is not used to any more trouble than some spilt milk - milk being mostly imported.

No traffic lights, is how I answer the question; “Why did you choose Tonga?” Well, that is part of it. I also enjoy my new freedom of not having to keep one eye on the rear-view mirror. A police officer on every corner may create more crime than it prevents, as evidenced by the success of the law enforcement system in Tonga where you rarely see an officer. Common sense and mutual concern rule. You find you don’t break the rules, written or otherwise, out of concern for others, and not because some uniform might arrest you: concern replaces fear in Tonga. Policing yourself is the key to real freedom.

Discovery TV is boring compared to the discoveries one makes in Tonga, particularly in the Vava’u Island Group. Vava’u is like an oasis in the ocean. The huge ring of protective reefs combined with islands strung like emerald pearls results in a sea within a sea, with the pattern of islands resembling an ink spatter on an azure canvas. The islands come in all shapes and sizes and some come as round as a silver dollar. You see colors, hues and views that even a $5,000 camera can’t get right. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the real thing is worth a million. The ambiance is all encompassing. You are surrounded by pure nature and all your senses are activated and enhanced. The air is pure, oxygen laden, with hints of floral scents and exempt of any pollutants. The sea is clear, clean with all the iridescent hues of blue. What you cannot see you can feel and the combination of it all is the appeal. For a delightful experience, put Tonga on your map."

And there is more of the same in his article ‘Thinking of Leaving the Rat-Race?:

"One hundred thousand of us out of over 7-billion people on this planet are living free and secure here in Paradise. 100,000 is the entire Tongan population which includes a growing expat community from all over the world. “We found it,” is the message, the ultimate place to live.

This is an invitation for you to join us. We have room for just a few more, and you will be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to get a residency visa. Investing in your own or any business of just $298,000 USD earns you a business visa. A retirement (non-working) visa requires only $5800 USD in annual assured income to qualify. Where in the world is it easier than Tonga? Like the foot soldier that made it to the safe bunker, we are home-free, or free from home, as it might more accurately be restated. We are now in full control over our lives here in paradise. We are self-sufficient. We don’t rely on any system in the hands of others that might fail us. We provide our own electric power, water and can even provide our own food and lots of it. We are insulated from the worst that might come to pass and yet, in the event of the best of all of what the world might actually render up, we would still chose this paradise to live and prosper.

We lack nothing that was vital or important back home. We have stores, building supplies, restaurants, hotels and even a mini shopping mall. Some of us have been here for many years and would never think of 'going back to Kansas' (so to speak). Even back when the world was a better place; this was still the best place. In our paradise, not much has changed. We live a life that is depicted as what Heaven is like. Fruit, none forbidden, with gardens of free food, tropical forests, blue skies, azure seas and white sandy beaches, and just like in Heaven, no serpents, snakes, wild animals nor any critters that can harm us.

We have no snakes, dragons or deadly anything in our Heavenly haven. Not many places in the world can boast of being able to allow an unattended child to roam freely about and never fear anything will harm child or adult, for there is nigh or nothing so inclined in this paradise.

We are like you, some of us from near and some from far, from Canada, London, Malibu, New York, California and Austria, Germany, Italy, AU, NZ and Norway, Mexico and even South America. The reasons why we live in this remarkable place run very deep and might take many pages to thoroughly explain, but for the sake of those who have little time or penchant, I will recap the driving forces. We live in the Kingdom of Tonga which is comprised of four island groups. Tonga wins in about every category that people use to chose a new place to live on the planet.

Let’s start with the air. You can’t see it, which can be scary at first since it doesn’t appear to be there. No soot, smog, dust nor chemical pollutants to remind you it is at hand. So you breathe deeper naturally and, remarkably, the body responds.

The water is as soft and pure as rainwater falling through clean air; for that is where we get our most potable essence of life, from the see-through, blue sky. The grass is truly greener. The earth is naturally rich and has not been depleted nor artificially recharged with chemicals that synthetically stimulate what results in fake food. When you eat a home grown tomato from Tonga, you taste it and feel it working like Popeye did his spinach. Real food is a wholly another study and how that is part of what is having us loving it here.

Fish - imagine the kind that aren’t running on oil or eating it so we can too. Clean, unpolluted and vital are the expected in these crystalline waters where you can see 100 feet deep. This is just another thing to get used to when you come from the polluted bays where you can’t see anything but the surface of the water. I remember feeling a sensation akin to a fear of heights when I first looked down into the water while stepping from the boat to the deep water dock. I could see to the bottom as clearly as through the air. It was like living in an artificial world, but it was real.

Anything this beautiful back home would have had to been fake - something from a theme park. In Ha'apai we live in nature’s own naturally made theme park. The entire island group is like a huge resort, the world’s largest perhaps, within find numerous restaurants, hotels, accommodation choices and supplies to build your own resort or home as you might see fit.

So what about building a home here and living happily ever after? Got to live somewhere; might as well be in Paradise.

During the whale season, pods of Humpbacks swim through Ha'apai and frolic right off the beach. The huge but docile Humpbacks put on their show of spy hopping by leaping high into the air and hang there with their massive tail flukes treading water till they fall back into the sea with a huge splash. This is how they look around and over waves.

It is in these waters that the Humpback whales migrate each year to bear their young. A mother and child sight to behold, and you can even swim with them. Imagine that. These islands are the magnificent Humpback’s safe haven choice too. When in doubt, do what the whales do. As ever, Robert Bryce"

Robert used to run a laundry and internet café in Vava'u when he wasn't foisting real estate onto unsuspecting foreigners.

A guaranteed unPHOTOSHOPped picture of Robert's laundry ☺

However, there was trouble brewing in paradise already then which is why he relocated to Fiji. Some of this trouble can now be read about at www.tongascams.com, a website which was created quite recently although it doesn't say by whom.

There are enough incorrect 'recieve' spellings, 'than' in lieu of 'then' usage, plural-forming apostrophes and homophonetic 'there' instead of 'their' and 'you're' instead of 'your' in this blog to identify it as the handiwork of Trevor Jefferson (unless he has an ungrammatical Doppelgänger) who dabbled in Tongan real estate for the past seven years via www.investintonga.com but has since published his 'swan-song' and returned to the US of A with his wife and nine children.

How did you get out, Trevor? Did you charter your own plane or did the Marines come and get you? I mean, I had to do a lot of hand-wringing and arm-twisting just to get one seat on the plane out of Vava'u but eleven? Anyway, Tonga must seem quite depopulated now!

Much of what's on the scam website has to do with real estate scams of which I already reported on my own blog after travelling through Tonga in 2006. At that time I met far too many expatriates who had settled there for no other reason than that they were financially so destitute that Tonga was the only place they could afford to live in. And I concluded, "Tonga deserves better than that!"

P.S. If, after reading Robert's stories, you feel like rushing out and buying your own place in the sun, here is my advice which is free, abundant and probably totally useless: read my Investinginpair-a-dice blog.

ERRATA:

I emailed this blog to Trevor who replied, inter alia, as follows:

"Hey Peter, it's nice to hear from you even if you are trying to be sneaky :-) If you want to believe or even spread about the internet that I created the site, that's your prerogative, however to say that it must have been created by me because "receive" is spelled "recieve" which is a typo I very rarely make, yet one that many people make, or that "than" and "then" are switched at times which I admit I do do at times, yet many, many others do as well ... is well, silly. In regards to you stating that the website was created "just recently", you're right and I would think that is all the more proof that I didn't create it. Why in the world would I wait 2.5 + years (I left Tonga in June of 2010) to create such a website when I could have always been posting blog posts or the like on my investintonga.com site? You also stated that I dabbled in Tongan real estate for the past 7 years ... Peter I started the investintonga.com site in 2007 and left Tonga in mid-2010 ... that's almost exactly HALF of 7 years buddy. I suppose you could say that I've continued to "dabble" in Tongan real estate "from afar" since leaving Tonga in June 2010 as I have closed various deals since then, but even if such time were included, it still would not come close to "7 years" but merely around 5.5 years. You also stated that I flew out of Tonga with my wife and 9 children. That is not true. We flew out of Tonga in June of 2010 and Hilary gave birth to baby #8 a short time later. Hilary is now due to have baby #9 shortly. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by stating inaccuracies concerning my family. Please do not involve my wife as she has NEVER done anything but good in Tonga and in relation to Tonga.
P.S. You're "guaranteed unPHOTOSHOPPED" pic of Robert's old business ... hmmm ... I remember the place well and that is certainly it but I don't remember the word "Money" being painted above the hung laundry sign? Strange."

To which I replied, "Lighten up, buddy! I just think that this whole thing has been hilarious and, of course, a storm in a teacup in a tinpot country that few people have even heard of. Don't take yourself too seriously, Trevor! It's just a good story, no more, no less. And, hey, I am not writing a documentary, so a bit of poetic license is quite all right. As for the money-laundry photo, Richard thought it was absolutely hilarious and sent it to all his friends."

However, for the record I have now published Trevor's corrections and also removed the word 'wife' from the sentence, '... and returned to the US of A with his wife and nine children' and replaced it with, '... and returned to the US of A with a female person of unknown marital status and seven children'. That should square things away, Trevor, and I'd love to receive a signed copy of your Tongan memoirs when they're published. What are you going to call them? "Take my Hand, I'm a Straggler in Paradise" ? I'd love to do another story on you because you're so typical of what people do when they get to Paradise: they bloody well stuff it up! They always do!

And yet it could be so paradisical! I mean, where else do they offer fresh lobster and close on the day it is being served ...

... or have the wheels fall off a Police pursuit car?

Even the attendant in the local library rather sleeps than reads ......

... and the porter at the best hotel in town was sound asleep on the pool table when I arrived ...

... and I almost had to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the receptionist before I could get the key to my room.

The whole of Tonga is in a stupor and you want to start a storm in a teacup, Pastor Jefferson?

Don't bash your Bible; read it: Book of Proverbs (26:17)

Forget about Tonga, Trevor; enjoy Pennsylvania; take a hike in the Appalachian Mountains or paddle down the Lackawanna River - just move on!!! If it helps to take your mind off Tonga, turn your baseball team into a cricket eleven ☺

Receptionist position for "Riverbend" Cottage

It's been a busy few weeks at "Riverbend" Cottage and already we have another booking for February. If this keeps up, we may have to employ a receptionist.

Barely had I mentioned this when an old Canadian friend from my days on the Bougainville Copper Project put up his manicured hand (more to the point, pushed out his ample chest) and even enclosed a recent photo to support his application.

You're well abreast with other applicants, Chris, and we'll get back to you shortly.

P.S. Did we mention that the job requires you to be familiar with PHOTOSHOP ?

Who is Thomas Sowell?

Government stimulus

Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at Government House. One is from Cabramatta, another is from Marrickville, and the third is from Lane Cove. All three go with an official to examine the fence.

The Cabramatta contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $900. That's $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me."

The Marrickville contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, "I can do this job for $700. That's $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me."

The Lane Cove contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the government official and whispers, "$2,700."

The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys. How did you come up with such a high figure?"

The Lane Cove contractor whispers back, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Marrickville to fix the fence."

"Done!" replies the government official.

And that, my fellow taxpayers, is how a Government Stimulus plan works.

The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are now outnumbered by those who vote for a living.