Geography lesson

So in the past, there may have been a bit of swagger about glamorous Pacific work trips where I breakfast by the pool with honeymooners and tidy my notes at happy hour from a sunlounge on the beach, but even my travel agent gave me a blank look when I mentioned my next destination. So it looks like I’ll be a long way from the cabana bar this time.

What you don't really need to know about Tarawa Atoll

This Micronesian island in Kiribati (pronounced Kiri-bass) is home to approximately 40,000 people on just 15.76 square kms of sandy coral mass.

The International Date Line does a big dogleg to keep the island nation on our side of time, despite it’s being due south of Hawaii.

Over 30% of our Cost of Living basket is unavailable. I’ll be pricing 85 items at just 7 outlets, including the garage and the post office. There is no pharmacy on Tarawa.

Expats on Tarawa receive the same ‘hardship’ premium as those in Addis Ababa, Port Moresby, Harare and Kolkata. While personal security scores fairly low (ie, low level of risk) just about everything else we assess is near the maximum. Except air pollution.

They get two planes a week, which is how I'll be getting in and out, overnighting in Nadi each way.

There is one hotel, the government run Otintaai hotel, described independently as “hopelessly dilapidated” where the “reception looked as though it had been the scene of a gunbattle”. This is where I’ll be enjoying 5 night’s sleep and many meals of fish.



Or maybe I’ll take a sleeping bag and a box of muesli bars down to the Parliament building instead:

Tourists sites are limited to a scattering of old Japanese artillery, relics from a famously bloody US victory in WWII.

An American journalist won the 1944 Pulitzer prize for this photo of the aftermath:

Although Lonely Planet doesn’t cover Tarawa, Wikitravel recommends "The Sex Lives of Cannibals" by J Maarten Troost for pre-travel reading.

Despite the lack of Pina Coladas, I think Tarawa shall make a refreshing change from the office.