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Matilda - Wonderful Vavau - and one of the most surreal nights we have ever had.



Vava'u is truly living up to being part of the Friendly Islands. Everybody always appears to be smiling, and bearing in mind that most people do not have a lot here, it makes you wonder what we are doing wrong in the 'first world'.

The rest of the fleet are all here safely and it has been great catching up with some of the guys we haven't seen since Tahiti or even before. This has led to some great evenings, but I think last night had to top the lot. After the skippers briefing we decided to have dinner and then go to a bar that had the Lei Girls performing.

How to describe? Basically the Lei Girls are cross-dressing men (which appears to be quite common in Polynesia) who during the day run a local hair salon but at night are transformed into the most seriously glamorous women performing a range of dances incorporating the traditional to the downright sexy (but not X rated). In appreciation you are expected (which I found quite uncomfortable) to show your appreciation by pinning/sticking notes about their person. Apparently this is an acceptable thing to do for any performer in this part of the world, not just the Lei Girls, and both local men and women were carrying this out as being perfectly natural.

I think my abiding memory of the evening will be of David from Peat Smoke trying to place some money on a 6 foot+ bespeckled dancing diva who in real life one might have thought was a well built accountant, if one overlooked the gold sequined off the shoulder mini dress being nearly worn complete with fishnet stockings and kick-ass stillettos. Ahh the memory


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