Lonely Planet™ · Thorn Tree Forum · 2020

Village stays - Vanuatu or Solomon Islands

Country forums / Pacific Islands & Papua New Guinea

We live in Queensland Australia and have 5 growing grand daughters. We would like to take each of them individually to experience a village stay with us in a Pacific Island country such as Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji or the any other so they could experience village life and meet, interact and have fun with children in the village, see how village lives differ from their own, and perhaps take part in village activities which the villagers feel is appropriate. We plan on taking each of our grand daughters on this experience when they are about 8 or 9 or 10 years old. Our stay would be for about a week or so. We would like commence the first of these visits during 2012.

We would like to hear from you if are aware of villages which offer this sort of experience, contact details, experiences you may have had or know about, and any other information which you think could be useful for us.

You could do this in any of the 3 countries you listed, and whileproper homestays are also a possibility, you'd probably prefer staying in some local-owned, village-located bungalow operation that would give you a bit more privacy and comfort than the villagers' very homes yet would still let you interact with them.
My favourite out of those 3 countries is Vanuatu.
Check the range of possibilities on this site: http://www.positiveearth.org/bungalows/

Fiji would however have the advantage of being malaria-free.

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Check this one out. The guest house is on a separate island connected by a bridge, giving the privacy you need, and the family have 4 children and lots of nieces and nephews. I go there regularly. If you are interested, I will send contact details.
Incidentally, there is no malaria on the artificial islands, as the mosquitos cannot fly across the salt water between the mainland and the islands.

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