A Big World from a Small Island

26/06/2021 In July 2018, after our trip to Taiwan and Singapore, I visited Macao with my mom. I had only ever heard of Macao, or the “Asian Las Vegas”, from movies. It was exactly like it had been depicted to me, from the huge hotels and casinos to the replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. It seemed that everything was inspired by Italy, Portugal and France. The city’s occidental touch dates back to the sixteenth century, when it was a Portuguese colony and the oldest European colony in Asia. Macao has switch hands quite a few times between China and Portugal. After the Opium war in 1887, China handed Macao back to Portugal under the condition that they helped Hongkongers smuggle opium from India into China. During WWII, Macao’s inhabitants supplied fuel to Japanese planes. When the US found out, they decided to raid the city, but after protests, had to repay 20,000,000 USD to the Portuguese government. On December 1st 1999, Macao was proclaimed a Special Administrati...

  16/06/2021 Hiva Oa Nuku Hiva          In July 2017, my family and I visited the wild Marquesas islands which has a total population of about 9 346 over 13 islands.    It is best to visit French Polynesia during the cool season between July and September. (Nuku Hiva, Hiva Oa, Ua Pou, Ua Huka, Tahuata and Fatu Hiva are the main islands) These islands are 1 418km east of Tahiti.  Our flight to Hiva Oa was three hours and thirty minutes long and there were only 42 seats in the plane so you felt like a part of it. Before we took off the crew asked us to weigh ourselves to make sure that the weight was evenly distributed in the aircraft for security measures. The Marquesans do not speak Tahitian, they speak Marquesan. They are very proud of their differences from Tahitians. In Hiva Oa, we had at first, been surprised by the locals' customs, they would hunt mountain goats and wild boars. Since these animals are wild the Marquisieans are allow...

07/06/2021 Moorea is an island of French Polynesia. It is a fifty minute boat ride away from Tahiti, French Polynesia's main island, where I've lived with my family for the past six years. I have a friend from Moorea who takes the boat each morning at 5h30 to make it to school by 7h15. Moorea is home to about 17 000 people, its population has more than tripled in the past 45 years. The word "Moorea" means yellow lizard.  Long ago, on the small island of Maiao a woman gave birth to an egg. When it hatched, a yellow lizard came out. Its parents called it Moorea. But one day the lizard became too big for them to take care of so they decided to abandon him on a canoe.  The lizard waited for its parents, however, seeing that they weren’t coming back, he understood that he had been abandoned.                                                       ...