I arrived in Vanuatu around 2:30 pm and was greeted at the airport by a string band. Sadly, Matt had not hired them, they were just there to welcome people to Vanuatu. He also didn’t make a sign for my arrival. I started to worry that 9 years in Vanuatu had changed my dear friend for the worse.

We hugged and instantly I knew all was right with the world. We headed for the parking lot and made it about 20 feet before I was shaking hands with people. I had no idea how many hands I would shake over the next 10 days. After a quick driving tour through town, we headed to Matt’s apartment so I could get settled, which after 4+ months in hostels meant dropping my bag and I was ready to go. I do not unpack if I don’t have to. I texted my mom a picture of us to prove I had made it and then we headed out.

Matt still had to get a few things at the grocery store because up until I tagged him in my Facebook status that morning, he thought I wasn’t coming until the next day. He had been very ill for a few days before I showed up and cured him with my presence, so he gets a pass on not knowing what day I was arriving.

When we got back from the store, it was 5:00 aka kava time. We met up with his upstairs neighbor, Jamie from New Hampshire, and Jamie’s Papa John (no relation to the pizza papa) and we headed to my first Nakamal (kava bar). We were greeted by the chillest dog ever.

It was time to start my kava education.

Lesson #1: You cannot eat before drinking kava. Have a big lunch around 1 and you eat dinner after kava.

Lesson #2: Kava is not alcohol. You don’t sip it. You chug a shell, wait 10-15 minutes and then do another. Chug, wait, repeat.

Lesson #3: You spit after you drink. I didn’t get this at first, but by the 3rd shell I understood. Kava leaves a nasty aftertaste.

Lesson #4: Wasemaot (pronounced wash-em-out). Basically a chaser and can be pretty much anything: soda, ice cream, sausage, yam, chips. Really whatever food or drink you have handy. At Nakamals they sell all different kinds of wasemaot. It is not free even if they don’t have price signs up. I just thought they were very generous bar owners, haha.

Lesson #5: Not all kava is made equal. Some kava is stronger than other kava. Some kava is cleaner. Some kava tastes better. It’s all about the preparation. Some kava is such shit that the effect lasts 2 days, which Matt claims is miserable and I believe it.

 

We drank 2 shells at the Nakamal and then filled up a 1.5 liter plastic bottle and went back to Jamie’s apartment. We finished that plastic at Jamie’s, but he had another in the fridge. After a while, I suddenly realized how drunk I was.

Lesson #6: Kava drunk is not like alcohol drunk. To me it’s more like being really high. I would not have been okay in public that first night.

I stopped drinking and just sat quietly waiting to sober up some. So quiet, in fact, that at one point Jamie asked if what he was talking about was boring me. After an hour or 2 (I’m not really sure, time lost all meaning), I had sobered up some and we headed down to eat the pizza we had ordered earlier.

Lesson #7: The kava kicks back in when you eat after.

I had already been told this, but I was about to experience it. I ate half my pizza while talking to Matt and then thought about watching a movie before bed. Then the kava kicked. Apparently something to do with the digestion process triggers this effect. Suddenly I was more drunk than I had been all night, but this was like alcohol wastey faceness. I decided it was bedtime. I got up to go to the bathroom and could barely walk. Somehow I made it to the bathroom and back and then fell into bed and passed out.

I learned my lesson fast and from then on I ate less for dinner and immediately got in bed after.

I woke up around 2 am and felt like I had eaten a bowling ball. I had trouble going back to sleep for a while, which I guess is not uncommon after a night of kava drinking.

When we got ourselves together in the morning we headed to the downtown market. It was time to start trying new foods. I drank my first green coconut. Matt said it would help with my stomach, but I was unconvinced that anything was going to remove the bowling ball. Next Matt got me tuluk for breakfast. It was kind of like an unidentified meat burrito. It was good, but my stomach was not happy with the decision. We bought some fruit for the house and I met Matt’s mama, Rita, from Epau. She’s a Francophone and doesn’t speak much English.

We walked around town for a bit, got my phone sorted out and then went to Matt’s Fest ‘Nap committee meeting. It’s an annual, international music festival in Port Vila that Matt helps organize. We stayed about an hour and it was mostly in Bislama, so I found it riveting. The most exciting part was Aussie Vanessa who will be referred to as CashMoney$ from now on.

We left the meeting early and went to have Vietnamese Pho for lunch, whatever that is…….Oh, it’s soup, that should help my stomach. Finally the bowling ball was gone.

Next we met up with Matt’s friend, Nicky, and went to tour the Ekasup Kustom Village. They had left early and only a couple people were around, so Nicky gave a quick tour instead.

 

It was kava time when we got back to town and we went to a different Nakamal today. We drank kava for a while and I tried beef liver for a wasemaot. A little before 7 we went back to Matt’s to grab chairs and kava shells, got a plastic from White Light and went back to the field by the Nakamal for the Vanuatu vs. Venezuela under 20 World Cup Match. We couldn’t see the screen very well, so we only stayed a little while before heading back to Matt’s to drink more. When we left it was 1-0 Venezuela, but they went on to win 7-0. The Vanuatu team would return home a week later as heroes after losing 3-2 to Germany to bring their tournament record to 0-3. A late free kick goal by Vanuatu ended up eliminating Germany from the tournament because of goal differential. Vanuatu had never qualified for a World Cup tournament before.

 

I woke up and Matt had gone out and gotten some cheesy, ham, croissant deliciousness for breakfast. There was no bowling ball today.

We drove out to Melee and took a dingy ferry over to Hide Away Island and went snorkeling for a couple hours on the reef. I was there for sea turtles, but we would come up empty in that respect. We saw lots of fish, including Nemo hiding in his anemone home. We also saw a very deadly, black and white sea snake swimming in the corals. They are non-aggressive and have small mouths, but if you basically forced it to bite you, you’d die. Three months in Australia and this was my first wild, poisonous snake encounter. Way to go Vanuatu!!! I also swam through the world’s first underwater mailbox. They sell waterproof postcards at the shop on the island. Sorry family, I didn’t send any.

We took the ferry back and ate lunch at Melee Beach Bar where I had my first Tusker beer, the local Vanuatu brew.

That afternoon we went with Latham for a tour of the museum. A Vanuatu local named Edgar did some sand drawing and played a couple songs on some local instruments.

As we were walking around and Latham was explaining some things, Edgar joined us to tell us about a couple things including the origin of bungy jumping. It doesn’t happen much anymore, but on one of the islands, they would build a big tower on a hill. They would churn up the ground on the downslope to soften it and the men would jump with a vine attached to their ankles. If done right, their head would just barely touch the ground. When done wrong they’d end up paralyzed or dead. It’s fucking crazy if you ask me and I love adrenaline stuff.

After the tour, it was kava time. We went to the Nakamal, had a few shells and filled a plastic. We went back to the field where the soccer game had been televised and watched the Namatan Film Festival that Nicky had entered. Matt had helped Nicky with his film. We watched the 8 short films and then went backstage for the prize announcements. Nicky’s film Cultural Exchange won first place!! It was in Bislama, so I had no idea what happened in it, but it got a lot of laughs. Once they had handed out the prizes, Matt performed a song with Krasrut Star, a local rapper. Mr. Wick is alive and well!!!

 

The rest of the night was spent back at Matt’s celebrating Nicky’s big win!!

I’m writing a separate post for our time in Epau, so there’s going to be a disconnect in the time space continuum here….We returned from Epau and went back to Matt’s for a nap. When we got up we went to Jill’s American Cafe for a late lunch. I had a breakfast burrito and we split an order of cheesy fries. My stomach was happy with some greasy, American food.

After lunch we went back to Matt’s, relaxed and played FIFA for a bit. The day was to be my only spell day (when they don’t drink kava, it’s called “spelling”). Literally, it was on Matt’s itinerary as my only day off from kava. Around 5, we went to a different Nakamal that also served beer. After 1 beer and some college reminiscing at the very dark and unsociable Nakamal, we decided to get beers at the store and drink at Matt’s until it was time to go out.

Not many people drink beer in Vanuatu because it is way more expensive than kava, so they pretty much only sell full cases and singles. We got 8 singles and went back to Matt’s to play FIFA and drink. Matt’s FIFA skills suffer when he drinks, but I hit a nice zone where I play better for a while, so I stole a few games from him. Latham came over and proceeded to kick my ass. I had left the beer buzz zone.

We went out to a club called Lava Lounge. We hungout with some of the people I had met already and I met a new rapper who told me that “Matt is the Bislama Shakespeare, but he has a shit singing voice.” I love backhanded compliments. Build them up before you break them down.

 

There was a twerk competition that night that I believe has damaged reputations on the island. They had a few heats and the winners of the heats advanced to the finals. Somehow the finals ended up being 2 guys and a girl that Matt knew named Jamie. Only one person on that stage had the necessary twerking “ass”ets (<–see what I did there), but in what can only be called the greatest injustice since Tom Brady’s Deflategate suspension, one of the guys won.

Fast forward past another day in Epau……

I slept in and when I woke up, Matt had made breakfast. There was bacon. Real bacon. Not rasher bacon. Crispy, delicious bacon. I played some FIFA and did some writing while Matt started preparing to make Tanna soup (curry with coconut milk, lobster, chicken and island cabbage). He showed me how to open a coconut with a machete and then scratch the pulp out with a coconut scratcher. He did the first half of the coconut and I did the other 1 1/2 coconuts. I was earning island badges left and right.

When the soup was done we brought it upstairs and ate lunch with Jamie. We saved the leftovers for our post-kava dinner.

We had a relaxing afternoon of FIFA and laundry until it was kava time. We went down to White Light with Jamie and had a couple shells before filling up a couple plastics and heading back to Jamie’s to drink the rest of the night.

The next morning we went to the Secret Gardens. Matt had filmed some of the footage for one of his music videos at the gardens. We took a tour led by a local from one of the other islands. We saw coconut crabs, but mostly I just got mauled by mosquitoes to the point where Matt was laughing at the visible bites on my legs. I have yet to show any signs of Dengue Fever, which is a miracle.

They also had a cage with 3 snakes. I wanted to pick one up. In many custom stories, snakes represent evil spirits so the guide was afraid to handle them, which meant I had to go in the cage and get the snake myself. The guide told me the little python liked to bite, so I grabbed the big diamond headed python closest to me. It squirmed a lot as I tried to get him off the hanging log he was on and I accidentally dropped him on his head. I got him out of the cage and he played nice for a couple pictures. All I kept thinking about was, Kaa, the snake from The Jungle Book and I was waiting for the snake to say something to me in that evil, hissing voice. I put him back in the cage and we moved on to the next part of the tour.

 

A few minutes later, the only other person on the tour, a lady from New Zealand, asked if we could go back so she could hold the snake. She explained to us that she just turned 65 and wanted to experience new things. We thought she wanted to experience the tour guide.

We went back to the snake cage and the guide told me to go get the snake. When I bent down to walk into the cage, the fucker had positioned himself on the log, facing the door and he tried to bite me in the face. Sorry lady, you’re on your own.

The Kiwi lady asked a million questions, so after some amusing pictures, we politely excused ourselves from the tour.

 

We drove back into town and I had Indian food for the first time. Curry is delicious, but I wish it didn’t smell so awful.

Around kava time we went to the movies to see “Life.” The Vanuatu Cinema was surprisingly fancy. We went to the VIP section and sat in leather recliners. For the price of just 2 tickets, we rented out the whole theater. The movie was not very good, especially since Calvin…..ok, fine, I won’t ruin it.

After the movie, we went over to the house that Latham was staying at in Beverly Hills (nope, not kidding).

They chewed and prepared kava and we started drinking. Matt mentioned the movie and this guy Richard started a conversation about the possibility of alien life and some other stuff that was way too deep for kava drinking. After a couple hours, we left, picked up some kava at White Light and went up to Jamie’s to drink the rest of the night.

We woke up on my last full day in Vanuatu and Matt made breakfast. Our mission today was to find a live chicken at a market for me to kill, clean and roast for my going away party that night. We didn’t have any luck, so we went and got sushi for lunch and then went to the store and bought a bunch of meat.

We went back to Matt’s and played some FIFA. This was my last chance to end Matt’s undefeated run with Portugal. I had come close with Spain a few times, even leading 3-1, 4-3, and 5-4 in one game, but the older Spanish team got tired and Ronaldo tied the game in the last 2 minutes of regulation and again in the last minute of overtime before Matt put me away in penalty kicks.

Julen Lopetegui walked into the locker room that day and did his best Herb Brooks impression. “I’m sick and tired of hearing about how great Christiano Ronaldo and that Portugal team are. If we played them 10 times (in this case 12), they’d probably beat us 9 (or 11), but not today…..”

It’s been a great year for Ronaldo, but this black cloud will haunt him forever. Don’t be fooled. There was nothing friendly about this international match. I did a victory dance on Matt’s bed after the final horn. I felt like I had liberated Vanuatu from the wrath of Matt and Portugal.

It was time for party prep. We had bought firewood at the market earlier and had to split some of it into smaller pieces. We took machetes, struck them into the wood and then banged them through with another piece of wood. While splitting wood, the machete glanced off the edge of the wood and hit me on the wrist/hand that was holding the wood steady. I immediately thanked Matt for his dull blades. He thought I was joking about it being hard to split the wood. Ten minutes later he realized I had actually struck my own hand.

By the grace of the island gods, machete sharpening is not a skill that Matt has gotten very good at otherwise I would have been taking a trip to the hospital across the street. The dull machete barely even drew blood.

Matt started the fire while I picked and washed island cabbage from his garden because CashMoney$ is a vegetarian. We put the cabbage on the stove to boil, threw the grill grate on top of the fire and Matt left me to cook while he went and filled 5 plastics.

 

Jamie, Rob, Darren, Meto, Stan and CashMoney$ showed up and the party started. Nicky had disappeared after our last trip to Epau and Latham had gone back to his island. Rob had brought a 6th plastic and we all sat, drank kava and storied.

When the 6 plastics were gone someone went and filled 3 more. I’m not sure what plastic we were on, maybe the 8th, but I started to see double and each new shell started to fight back a little harder while going down, so I decided I should stop drinking. We sat and talked until the kava was gone and then it was time for bed. You ain’t gotta go home, but you can’t stay here!!!

The next day we had bacon burgers at Jill’s and then I went back to Matt’s to pack. We squeezed in a couple games of FIFA and he got his redemption with Portugal. I should have left well enough alone.

It was time to head to the airport. We said our goodbyes before security and I was back to life as a solo backpacker.

Matthew Thomas, it was great seeing you again!!! It had been far too long since we had had adventures together. Let’s not wait another 10 years. Massachusetts misses you!!! Thanks for everything, tawi bastard!!!