Arriving in the South Pacific tropical paradise of Samoa after California is a bit of a culture shock. No more newfangled conveniences such as malls, deep-fried sushi, bedrooms with walls...

Yep, everyone in Samoa lives and sleeps in wall-less huts called fales. This is great for catching the breeze (no need for air-con) and getting the rustic Samoan experience, but doesn't provide much in the way of privacy. Though with more 'modern' fales, the beautiful blue tarpaulin has been employed to help with this.

Maybe because they live their lives entirely on view, Samoans don't have any concept of privacy, or indeed personal space. It's quite common for total strangers to walk into your fale to say "hello", or to put an arm round you or a hand on your leg. One notable example was Geoffrey. Not to cast aspersions, but Geoffrey may have been drunk when he decided that Celia was the girl for him (that didn't come out quite right...). Anyway, the presense of a beefy and fearsome husband (oh yes) wasn't enough to deter our 25-stone friend, who was apparently a policeman, from stroking Celia's hair. But don't worry, Daniel had his fair share of being groped too, though not by any law enforcement officers.

Our first stop after the capital was a tiny island called Namua (which we later discovered means "place of the mosquitos" - they don't tell you that on the way in, oh no!). We were the only guests on the island, and were treated a bit like royalty. This included having one of the family stand over our food with a leaf, fanning away the flies, which felt uncomfortably colonial.

After this we moved to a much more lively spot, called Lalomanu. It was full of peace corps workers, whose chat up line of choice is: "hey, do you want to go and discuss the peace process?". No, really. Saturday night was Fiafia night, where the Samoan men dance frenetically, and the women dance incredibly gracefully. Which was impressive, considering... did we mention Samoa is the fattest nation on Earth? Afterwards the Westerners got to dance, which after lots of local beer, was neither frenetic nor graceful.