Michael We are back! We had one week of vacation in Tahiti, and there's a lot to report, it's going to be great! We poor souls only have two weeks of vacation a year, so we really went all out: We stayed in a bungalow built on stilts over the turquoise waters of a lagoon (Figure 1). In the top left of the picture, you can see the edge of the lagoon, where the waves of the South Pacific are breaking. Tahiti is located just south of the equator and is two hours away from the International Date Line, where the mutiny on the Bounty broke out in 1789 (Figure 2).

Within the lagoon itself, the water is only about two meters deep, teeming with corals and tropical fish. Each of the over-water bungalows has a small staircase, allowing you to descend into the pleasantly warm (72 degrees Fahrenheit) water, equipped with flippers and a diving mask, and go snorkeling, which we did daily (Figure 3).

The non-stop flight from Oakland (on the other side of the San Francisco Bay) to Papeete in Tahiti took eight and a half hours. At the airport in Papeete, we were greeted with the flower garlands that we already knew from Hawaii. Five musicians played wonderful Tahitian music at four a clock in the morning, and then it was off to the immigration office: Tahiti is indeed a foreign country, not like Hawaii, which belongs to the USA, but to our very special friends, the French, who sometimes prefer not to speak English out of principle. And apparently, France near the International Date Line is no longer even part of the EU: there was a separate line for the French to show their passports, while the rest of the world had to queue in the other line. It's unbelievable what these fools get away with.

Then at five a clock, we took a boat to the neighboring island of Moorea, where our bungalow was waiting. We had to be a bit more patient than the others before we could move in, but we got the one right out in the ocean, yay (see arrow)! Most of the time, we just lounged around on the small terrace, where you could sit comfortably in the shade and read, with a gentle warm breeze constantly blowing (Figure 4).

And in the evening, we always went to the hotel for Happy Hour, where, sitting on the terrace with a "Mai Tai" or a "Pina Colada" in hand, we prepared for the end of the day.

English is indeed spoken everywhere in the touristy areas, but as soon as you venture off the beaten path, you might be met with a "Je ne parle pas Anglais!" We both studied French for at least five years in school, but to our dismay, we found that we couldn't string together a single complete sentence anymore. I myself was known for always getting a D with a tendency towards an F in French at school, so I didn't have high hopes from the start. But it went quite well anyway; with "Bonjour," "Merci," "Je voudrais..." and "L'addition s'il vous plait," we managed to get by. The whole way of life is quite un-American too; in the supermarket, you have to pack your purchases yourself, the shops take a one-and-a-half-hour lunch break, and whether you buy something or not is of no concern to the ladies and gentlemen down there, who mostly wrap themselves in sarongs and shuffle around in flip-flops.

One day, we were chatting in front of the hotel in German when a tour guide approached us. He was about our age, around 24, heh heh. It turned out he was from Oldenburg! We asked if it wasn't very expensive for the locals here, after all, six small bottles of beer cost almost 10 dollars there (also in America, by the way). He said that while things in the supermarket are expensive, nature offers everything else. You can go fishing with a harpoon anytime, and in half an hour, you have a free dinner. You can pick up and eat the coconuts that fall from the palm trees. And a house there consists only of a corrugated iron roof, which is accordingly cheap. The beach is for everyone (Figure 5), all with snow-white sand. We saw school classes having swimming lessons in the ocean -- even I would like to go back to school for that!

One day, we rented a car to explore the island. It was somewhat expensive ($180 for two days, whereas in America you might pay around $100), but when I saw the car, I almost burst out laughing: a Daewoo, a Korean car, with maybe 40 horsepower (see Figure 6), and every time I pressed the clutch, we were afraid it would fall apart.

But it held up! All the way around the island is only 40 miles, but we clocked several hundred miles on the car. The gas prices were truly European, about four times as expensive as in the USA. And with the funny money currency there (Polynesian Francs), you quickly end up paying three thousand Durka Durkas. Interestingly, you just have to divide the prices there by 100 to get the equivalent in American dollars, since 100 Polynesian Francs is roughly equal to one dollar.

On Moorea (the name means "yellow lizard" in the native language and refers to an old legend), there is a special type of pineapple that grows only in the fertile volcanic soil. It is smaller than the Hawaiian pineapple, very sweet, and we even passed by a plantation where no one was working. We were told that the Tahiti pineapple is not intended for export, only for local use (Figure 7).

An American in our group asked the tour guide who the fields belonged to, but only received evasive answers. He whispered to me, "One day, this will all be a big golf course!" Every morning for breakfast, there were a few slices of pineapple, papayas, guavas, and a special type of grapefruit that only grows on Moorea and tastes super sweet, delicious!

This could have gone on forever, but after a week we had to return to the USA, as work was waiting. It wasn't that simple, though, because unlike Angelika, I hadn't left the country for three years, and our visa had changed in the meantime because I had changed employers from Blaxxun to AOL. This wouldn't have been a big deal if it weren't for the immigration authority's questionable regulation that a visa stamp can only be placed in the passport outside the country, even if all the other paperwork is already done. Without a visa stamp, you can leave the country, but you can't re-enter. Since there is no American embassy in Tahiti (the nearest one is in Fiji), Angelika took my passport with her to Germany during her last visit there in the winter of this year, and the embassy in Frankfurt renewed the stamp--miraculously--even though the passport holder wasn't physically present: a stellar moment in visa technology. However, this was too much for the immigration officer in Oakland: someone coming from Tahiti with a visa renewed in Germany but no other US entry stamp in the passport--he asked, confused, and we began to tell the story of the visa renewal, with a huge line of returning vacationers behind us. Finally, the officer shook his head, stamped the passport, and we hurried on our way--phew! Entering the USA--always an adventure.

So much from Tahiti -- and to set the mood and as a world first in the history of newsletters, I am providing a Tahitian music piece on my website perlmeister.com, freshly from a CD that we bought there in a store from a heavily tattooed man (I hope he's not out shopping with my credit card number right now): http://perlmeister.com/tahiti.mp3 is the URL you need to enter in your browser -- it takes 10 minutes to download, then the player should start running. If playback doesn't work immediately, you can download the latest software for free at http://www.mp3.com . And one more thing from the internet world: You can now read the newsletter online at https://usarundbrief.com. But enough technobabble!

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	Taxes and social security in the USA
  	Freedom of Religion
  	Furniture
  	New TV Set
  	Gym Membership
  	Solution To the Quiz Question
  	Photography Hour
  	Mayoral Election In San Francisco