CRUISE AROUND THE WORLD: 19Feb Pago Pago, American Samoa

Village is full of smoke as their Sunday tradition starts with indoor BBQ. Pilot boat is leading us into the port.

Pago Pago, (it is pronounced as Pango Pango) small town of eastern Samoa is the port where the ship docked today.
Western Samoa, meanwhile, is independent country now called Samoa as their eastern neighbor decided to be part of the US territory and became American Samoa.

This Polynesian island was very quiet as it is Sunday morning.
The islanders, mostly Christians and Catholics, were in church services.
It was not even 10am but I could feel it as if I was in sauna.
Greg and I first walked off the ship and strolled around the small town and we did it within half an hour.
Only business and retails opened on Sunday are run by Koreans and Chinese.

Colorfully painted local bus. Just hail the bus as there are no bus stops in town.

Wood carving monument.

We bumped into Martha and Pam in town and agreed to hire a taxi to go around the other side of island.
I was happy that it was four wheel drive taxi with air conditioner.
Taxi driver’s name is Laki and pronounced and meant as is lucky.
It would take about 6 hours to drive around the whole island but we only wanted taxi for a couple of hours as the ship leaves at 1pm.
Soon, we spotted a mini island called Fatumafuti.
It looks like a flower pot and standing tall just about 10 meters off the coral coast.
Laki explained that every back number plates of vehicles have a picture of this cute island on them.
We also have spotted numerous churches nicely painted in different colors on white.
Every church goer dressed up nicely with their traditional dress and hat.
Coconut trees and tropical fruit trees are everywhere.
It is really peaceful and quiet place with whole population of 60,000.
There is no city as the island is surrounded by continuous of small towns.
We stopped at small local grocery shop and found whole buffet set up for take away foods as well.
They are taro dish, ham dish, pasta dish and coconut fish…
I was glad to see how they cook and present bread fruit dish with coconut.
Later we dropped by a big supermarket run by Korean.
I could see a lot of frozen foods directly imported from Korea.
We bought a packet of chips made of bread fruit that tastes just like potato chips only nicer.
Korean kimchee and cucumber kimchee were there for me also. ^^
Pam and Martha were also fascinated by some of local designed home ware and crafts.
We finally left the place with few more packets of chips and kimchee containers.
It is so interesting to see a Samoan man in traditional dress came to the market and bought few containers of kimchee.
Funny to hear that Laki’s favorite food is Korean, too.

We drove off to place called Leone in western coast.
This place was wiped away when tsunami ripped through the whole town all the way up to mountain and valley in 2009.
Ruined houses still remain as villagers still carry on their quiet lives.

These easy going people love everybody with welcome arms.
So much of love to give away.
Polynesian way of life I guessed.
God bless islanders!