first time away

hi there,
we,re leaving on a round the world trip, in six months time, and are already scared to death by the thought of it. we've decided to fly right through america as the thought of it is way too scary, 20000 murders a year, no way jose. so our first port of call will be the pacific islands, so we're looking for advice on which islands, a) hold absolutely no danger of muggings, mad dogs, poisonous snakes or fish, no shark attack hot spots, b) english must be spoken, c) excellent internet connection, as i am addicted and must spend at least 4 hours a day on it, i am not kidding!!! d) decent food, lots of english options, i dont mind foreign food once or twice a week, but i prefer normal food.
look forward to your advice
cheers!

If you are serious ----- STAY HOME!

look mr cuppa, i'm sure u weren't scared the first u went away but i am! i regret using the phrase "normal food" but apart from that i am only worried about mad dog, shark attacks, muggings etc from reading this web site. i also feel sure i will get shot the moment i stepout of the plane in america, don't balme me, blame the media. if anyone has some useful advice please i would be most appreciative. i also know u all also spend at least 4 hrs on the internet each day, at least i admit to it. many thanks to anyone sending useful info

intrepidtavellers- firstly i'd like to say that i have travelled alot of places and i too was scared. i avoided america for many years believing i too would get shot in a dark alley, or perhaps in the loos at the ariport. secondly u must ignore some of the show offs here, but people do give some very good advice when they down off their high horses. now my advice - i was mugged in fiji and hospitalised, my boy friend was bitten twice in french polynesia, once by a very poisonous centipede on his ummm...well his danglies (if anyone is in tahiti staying at the ti miti pension, tahiti u can hear the gory details). i got food poisoning in the cook islands, stay away from the seafood, seriously don't eat anything u haven't cooked yourself. if u have any further questions i would be happy to answer them

If you must have a fast internet connection and "normal" food, the only possible Pacific Islands are Australia and New Zealand.
Having said that, any of the island countries would be safer from muggings etc than any developed country - just respect their culture and their relatively conservative values.

i.m not sure about that ozziegiraffe. i got the crap kicked out of me in a bar in sydney and also nearly drowned at a beach in manly.

thanks for this serious advice. it conforms alot of what i expected happens on these trips. i've been looking at my round the world ticket and it says it is 85% non-refundable. does anybody know a way round this as it cost me 1200 pounds

sorry intrepid travellers, although all these things did happen, it doesn't mean they will happen to u. i'm sure u will have a great trip. just be careful about the seafood, because Oh My God..your guts after a bad prawn! thousands of people go travelling a year and only a few hundred die, mostly in road accidents so be careful on the buses. especially in fiji, they drive like maniacs. happy travels

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<hr>and are already scared to death by the thought of it.<hr></blockquote>

And you will be terrified the whole time you are on your trip as well.

This is one of the stupidest posts I have ever read in my life.

PS---What is really ironic is the name you chose to post under, "intrepidtravellers".

According to the dictionary, "intrepid" is defined as : "Resolutely courageous; fearless"

You don't appear to be either.

PPS---just to give you a starting point if you aren't pissed off by all of our responses:

For English-speaking countries, consider the Cooks, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Solomon's, and few others. Tahiti and New Caledonia are French-speaking. Almost all the countries have internet access, at least in the main towns, but it can get expensive if you want to be on it four hours a day. In the Cooks it might be about US$4-6/hour or so. Dogs are a problem everywhere, but actual dog bites of tourists are rare. Centipede bites hurt, like a wasp sting, but are not deadly, nor even serious, and are actually pretty rare. You can get "Western" foods in most of the main centers of each country. As far as seafood, I ate it probably twice a week in the Cooks for about 15 years, and never got sick once from it.

No wonder hostel use in the USA has been way down since the 9/11 terrorist attack! Everybody is scared of being bombed or shot in America. Yes, terrible statistics but most of the murders are gang and drug related.....so outside of the inner city bad spots travel is as safe in the USA as in any country. However it does sound like the poster needs to stay in the more "comfortable " zones.

You need to know too that every traveller has the "what ifs" anxiety before they go on the trip. I can guarantee that it will dissapear as soon as you get on the plane and start the trip. From then on you are to busy navigating and being amazed by the new. Maybe you will even be too busy to even need a 4 hour daily fix of the internet. You made your plan for a round the world trip.....DO IT. Raro has given you lots of good advice to help. Aloha

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<hr>i prefer normal food.<hr></blockquote>

is that - toad in the hole? bubble n squeak?yorkshire pudding? Black shudder sausages????

I wouldnt call English "cuisine" normal !!!

Are you starting in England? And there are none of these things here? I seriously would suggest that you either decide to stay home and tune into webcams (see Pete's Pond- National Geographics watering home in Botswana, the Hawaii beach webcams, etc) or you go and find yourself a decent therapist who can help you get over these fears. With these anxieties, are you able to go down town? I'm not being nasty, but really concerned.

I would definately suggest that if you do decide to travel, and it is well worth it, that you consider places like Club Meds. These will give the the opportunity to hide out when things get too rough- as far as 4 hours daily on the internet- I would suggest you go cold turkey. There is so much more to life than this.

But I do smell a troll.......

The Pacific Islands troll, a creature so rare that most are unable to spot him.

I do suspect that this may one of the first sightings in some time.

Hehehehe - I was smack dab in the middle of Central London when those bombs went off a couple of years ago but I don't have to worry about such things in the SP.

I have to side with islandboi and Raro on this rather ridiculous post.

Have you ever heard of Bikini Island?

quick change your blog name before you get pinched for misrepresentation and stay home and just watch the discovery channel, otherwise strap yourself in, open your mind and get ready to discover the real world, you'll love it! Enjoy.

#19 - good point, and of course I've heard of the tests on Bikini, as well as the British nuclear tests off the coast of Australia and Christmas Island around the same time, and the last set of French nuclear bombings in the FP not too many years ago, but all these were foreign government acts of destructioin disguised as tests, not acts of random violence against foreigners as bombings tend to be these days. But you're right, one does tend to forget what happened years ago as opposed to the 'now'.

Is it all over? Has anyone been to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands lately? One of my Solomon Islander friends went there, and was appalled.

What was it that appalled him?

Kwajalein is supposed to be very nice. I applied for a job there. You can only go there if you work there or are invited as a guest. You have to go through a formal U.S. background check/security clearance process.

I have stopped at Kwaj several times, but never off the plane. It's pretty odd coming across this Kansas town in the middle of the Pacific. And even funnier to read things like Lonely Planet on the lagoon. Shark infested nasty place, compared with the wonderful things they say about most lagoons. Of course most lagoons don't have IBM's landing in the middle of them periodically (not armed mostly), sent from California. What is supposed to be nice about it?

And Watsoff- might i remind you of Bali? Not so long ago, and not a foreign gov. And wasn't there a bomb going off in Mauritius or some other island starting with an M just a week or so ago?

Oh- and I think that there is still a local population that lives on a slightly outer island of Kwaj- horrible poverty and all put rushed of Kwaj itself in blindfold. Well, maybe a bit of an exaggeration but it is pretty awful if memory serves.

Hi 5Waldos: of course Bali ... but that's not the South Pacific (although I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't eventually spread to West Papua as the now-banned Islamic fundamentalists have taken refuge there).

I guess I would agree that at this point, groups of tourists are not targeted as are groups of civilians in some places in the west at the moment. Although the Phillipines? Also not south pacific in fact (well, neither is Bikini for that matter). There are generally not the terrorists that we are becoming wary of on most of the islands. Although I have certainly seen my fair share of violence against tourists. And if we go back far enough, there were some very nasty interactions between natives and early visitors. But this is a bogus posting, and certainly home is every bit as dangerous as other places in the world. You are more apt to die of an accident near home (is it something like 1/2 mile?), and if you are a child, more apt to be abducted and brutalized by a family member or friends, and most apt to be murdered at any age by someone you know. So, the moral here is- get out and away from anyone you know as quickly as possible- they are all out to get you!

Uh- why isn't Bali, a part of the Spice Islands of fable and fantasy, part of the South Pacific? It is south. It is more or less in the Pacific. Probably in a sea or two- is it already the Indian Ocean by then? Just wondering.

I think as it's part of Indonesia it's not considered the South Pacific (or at least not the South Pacific as we refer to these days; Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia). Melanesian West Papua, although also part of Indonesia, is considered SP because of the native Papuans (who are now well-outnumbered by transmigrated Indonesians). But I could be totally of my head on this one.

I guess I'm lucky, though, as I've not encountered any violence against tourists in any of the SP nations I've been to (other than a bit of pilfering in Samoa & Solomons), but I have seen violence against each other, as it were. Even in Solomons during, and right after, the "troubles," visitors were not targets. But then street crime raised it's head and everyone, regardless of where they came from, became targets of - mostly - house break-ins (so again, not really a tourist thing either).

Had to laugh at the last line of your #28 post ... but it's sad that some people do seem to think that way.

But Micronesia is in fact the North Pacific. I think maybe that South Pacific is more a ideal than a place on the globe. Some enchanted evening and all.

I saw outsiders targeted- not tourists as such I guess. More ex-pats. Except for the petty kinds of crimes- theft and such. But I have seen some of the violence against the not-us.

Sounds like we should all stay at home, lock all doors and windows, avoid friends and relatives (who may be secretly plotting to do us harm), avoid answering the door or the phone or e-mails if they are from strangers (they may also be secretly plotting to do us harm), never answer Spam e-mails, snail mail, or smoke signals from unknown hills in the distance, and generally spend all our time just watching sports on TV. Sounds fine to me!

Says he, communicating with strangers who probably are lurking outside your door, or inside your monitor. Ever wonder who it is that makes your mouse scroll about sometimes when your hand isn't touching it? We know Raro- tis THEM.

(Actually, at work it sometimes does- our IT folks are given to getting on remotely and doing things you wish they wouldn't on your computer. It is really odd to suddenly have the mouse which was obediantly following your commands take off and do wierd things apparently independantly.)

Wow... It's almost sounds like mark "what's his name" is back.

There hasn't been a good banter like this one since Raro and him...

Waldos, this actually sounds like a JoeyRamone post... I thought he just picked and trolled Canadians?

Maybe he is branching out in anticipation of soemthing happening in a week or two. And I rarely recognize anyone trolling about- although trolls are not usually too hard to figure out after an exhange or two.

By the by- the Intrepid family was a short lived phenomena- just there 3 postings then I guess they scared themselves so much that they returned to their hidey hole.

islandboi- you mean "workman"?

oops- I mean their.

Yes, workman... It was Mark Workman, right?

Something like workman123, I think. I t was an interesting time. He was actually right in what he said about living full time in fiji and getting into a business, but he was a hypocrite and all-around jerk as well. And as he was illiterate and a lawyer, that was embarrassing to our "second-oldest" profession!

Maybe I'll post a troll, just for the fun of it. look for it in the near future!

face it Islandboy, Joeyramone is in your head!!!

Reply to nos 23-26:
My Solomon Islander friend who visited Kwajalein is a woman. What horrified her was the way the locals were treated - they aren't even allowed to use the US shops because they aren't military personnel. Their fishing and gardening grounds have been taken, and all they have left are poor quality imported food, while the Americans get fresh fruit and veg by plane.
Wouldn't you be apalled?

Actually the US leases the area for their bases on Kwajalein. I understand that the local landowners are unhappy. I believe that the US pays them $15 million a year and they want $19.1 million.

As for shopping on US military bases, it is restricted everywhere (even here in the States). Marshall Islanders who work there do have access. From what I have read the shops are nothing to write home about, basic supplies for those living in the middle of the Pacific. Sometimes they run out of items like toothpaste.

I'm sure they do sometimes run out of toothpaste- but compared to what is available in the local stores, and for the price, those stores are more than something to write home about. However, it is true that they are always restricted access.

I believe that although the US leases it from the local landowners, this was not much of an option they were ever given. And the base has destroyed forever their islands= the lagoon is full of bombs and god only knows what else. We did something rather similar to the Bikini islanders- but they had to leave entirely. It isn't really fair to come in and bribe people this way- lots of money yes, but what price can be put on destroying a life? I'm not sure how the ethics would play out here.

Thanks for the comment, 5Waldos. I agree 100% I was part of a teacher-training forum a number of years ago in Solomon Islands where we were shown a video of what had been forced on the Marshall Islanders. This was never shown in Australia - probably not in the US either.
My friend who visited there was part of a delegation of Pacific women.