Tonga, Longoteme, Fanga

Early morning of the next day Sabine and me went to the Airport again where we returned our rental car, waited quite a while for the rest of us and checked in to Tonga. It was probably the most hilarious flight as one of the crew members was obviously a former comedian. Or have you ever heard a steward say: "Please be careful opening the overhead lockers. We all know: Shit happens...". So we arrived safely, enlighted and early at Tonga Airport on the main island. When we tried to pass customs and immigration, the customs officer just ran away and didn't return until fifteen minutes later. Funny. Finally we made it through, got our bags and met the father of Melana outside. The family structure of a Tongan family is sometimes more complicated than ours back in Europe, but I'll get into that later. We were driven to Longoteme a village in the island center where Nicole was staying and on to Fanga a suburb of the capital Nukualofa where Sabine and me were situated. We moved in to our wonderful bungalow next to the family home. Later that day we were collected by Meleana and Nicole and went to Nukualofa central. Quite a nice town close to the seafront. Lots of concrete and traffic but still a nice scenic capital. We did some planning and decided to go to Eua, an Island close by, both to have some beach holiday and to give Meleana some time with her family.

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