Hi all
I have been poring through the Lonely Planet guidebook to
Tahiti but find little in there about how friendly or
otherwise the local inhabitants are.
Some friends of mine have suggested that Tahitians are rude
arrogant and snobbish.
What are people's experiences of Tahiti?
cheers Peter
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what more you whant?? they are FRECH
..........the people are very friendly.It's probably best to
get away from Papeete.
French they tend to look at you with a bit of resentment.
Also, people who have been into tourism for much too long
have a tendancy to be impatient and not very understanding.
like every other country in the world you get pleasant
people and un-pleasant people.on the whole once out of
papeete the people are more friendly and tend to speak to
in english when neccessary.you could help yourself alot if
you learn how to ask for directions,ferry tickets,food,beer
etc. in french as not all people speak english.you will get
good advice about transport options,accomodation and places
of interest at the tourist information in papeete
airport.the office normally opens for about 1 hour on the
arrival of an international flight.enjoy your journey if
you need anymore info them please e-mail me.
once out of papeete local people can and are more willing
to speak english and are generally more friendly when
approached by a tourist or backpacker.the best advice i can
give you is that you learn a bit of basic french so that if
you encounter non english speaking people then at least you
can ask for directions,beer,food,ferry tickets etc.the
tourist information office in papeete airport is open for
about 1 hour when international flights have landed(usually
in the middle of the night)and is quite informative and
friendly with regards to transport,accomodation and travel
to other islands.if you do land in the middle of the night
and you haven`t pre-booked your accomodation then the
airport bar is open until the first le truck starts at
about 7.00am (beer is approx us$3.50).accomodation on
papeete is more expensive than the other islands and when
travelling to other islands allow your itinerary to be
flexible as sometimes due to weather conditions ferries do
not always go to their final destination(this happenend to
me and an aussie guy in october 1999 we were told that the
ferry ono ono from bora bora was not going to papeete and
that we had to get off at huahine instead.this forced us to
call air new zealand at the last minute to re-arrange our
onward travel and organise air tahiti from huahine to
papeete as the ono ono would not be calling again for 2
more days.this was an unwanted additional cost).if you
require any more information then feel free to e-mail
me.enjoy your journey.
If you go to French Polynesia and head over to nearby Moorea, try to book a tour with Albert's Tours and ask for Blanc Blanc or Reggie. He is a 2nd or 3rd generation Swiss Tahitian. He looks all Swiss, but he is truly Tahitian. His tour was great, it took about 4 hours and he was a lot of fun and very informative. I stayed at Moorea Camping and had a wonderful time. A recent post has a different opinion, so you might want to ask around as to the current atmosphere.