This was probably the first time I was taken aback and in a sense it was kind of a culture shock. I understand that they are just trying to make ends meet and it's not everyday that a cruise ship docks at port villa but it was kind of intense. We kind of kept walking but they would just follow you. We had one guy try and charge us $120 to drive us around for the day, one guy wanted to charge us $5 per person to go into the city so it would cost us $25. We found a guy that would take us there for $10 so he got the job! It was about a 5 minute ride into the city centre. We got dropped off and he agreed to pick us up later. We decided to only stay there for an hour as it was a little too hot to walk around. I kind of did my own thing in Port Villa, I bought some sun tan oil as we were running out of sunscreen and with 2 days left on the ship I plan to just work on my tan. I also found an ATM so decided to check my bank balance but it was in Vanuatu Dollars which really didn't mean anything to me.
From memory though I think $1 AUD is about 85 Vanuatu dollars. I also took this opportunity to take out some Vanuatu money to do some shopping. I walked into a few stores but didn't see anything that caught my eye. I went to go walk along the water. The view was absolutely amazing! The water was beautiful, and the landscape was spectacular. There were some markets along the water so I checked them out, there were a lot of stalls but many of them just had the same things. I also walked by a fruit market, they had some pretty weird looking fruit there, their bananas were huge! I had to try one and it was delicious! They were also having some kind of ritual in the middle of the market, it was very crowded and I could hear a lot of cheering. After the fruit market it was time to meet up with the rest of my family.
Tonight was Island night, there was a big island party at the pool deck and also a barbecue dinner. After dinner me and my sisters went to go watch a show called Let Me Entertain You, it was basically like that tv show Don't Forget The Lyrics. The contestants were chosen from a pool of people that put in their names for the show. One person had a chance to win a 3 day cruise. Unfortunately the guy didn't win, to be honest he was kind of a dull game show contestant, he wasn't very energetic and gave boring answers when the host was trying to interact with him. After the show I went out to see the island party, they had a short show by the pacific entertainers and pacific cirque. The pacific cirque guys did a fire routine and the entertainers did a mash up of Kyle Minogue's On A Night Like This and Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger. After the shows I stayed for a little bit and then decided to go back to my cabin and get some resting. Who knew laying around all day tanning could be so tiring. I look forward to the next 2 days at sea working on my tan.
Until next time sexy people,
Ray