Nuku'alofa market

 At the market at Nuku'alofa things sold are specific to Tonga. There may be some fruit and veg but the thing you see most, and which you won't see anywhere else, are mats. The are called ta'ovala and are to be worn during special occasions (you can see them in my other entry, Tongan attire). For example to church, or at a funeral, or at a concert for a crew of an American ship that came to the key. Women can sometimes wear a smaller thing called kiekie.

Normally they are only worn at special occasions but one can see a kiekie seller wearing one, just to show what it looks like.

One can buy ta'ovala and kiekie, but also other things made of reed (as I assume, I am not quite sure what they are made from), like fans (with the name of Tonga written on it, so they are probably for tourists who sometimes come here).

La Boqueriya

 A few pictures from a market in Barcelona known as La Boqueriya. Apparently it is one of the main tourist attractions in the city. Quite a few customers must be foreign, if the writing is in English.

Mats in Vanuatu

 Here are the mats seen on Pentecost Island (part of Vanuatu).  They seem to be similar to the mats used in Tonga as sign of respect, but in Vanuatu the mats are only used during traditional ceremonies. The first five pictures are from a ceremony of becoming a chief, where the chief to be has to prove he can kill, so he dances with an axe in his hand and every so often knocks a pig (tied to a post) on a head. It also involves dancers dressed in mats. The last three pictures are from a wedding, part of which is traditional and also involves dance in mats, but the more modern part of the same wedding, in a church, is without mats.

Tongan attire

 In Tonga people wear mats around their waist at any official situations, like going to church for example. Women sometimes wear smaller decorative things called kiye kiye, also plaited, but men always mats. Whenever I asked what was the reason for this, I was always told that this is to show respect.

I have never seen the use of mats this way either in Samoa or Fiji, which are quite close and of similar culture. I have seen similar mats being used in Vanuatu but only during traditional ceremonies. For example during a traditional part of a wedding, where similar mats were used like money, to pay for the bride (some pigs were apparently used for the same purpose). However, nobody used mats during the church part of the same wedding.

It is also interesting to note that in Tonga men seem to be more conservative in the way they dress than women. In most countries it is the other way around, women are more likely to put on traditional attire whereas men wear trousers and T-shirts. In Tonga women seem to wear western dresses while men come to church in a traditional skirt-like lava lava.

Antonio Gaudi's design

 Here are some chimneys on one of the houses he designed. The house is called Casa Mila, or La Pedrera. On the last picture you can see his most famous structure (still unfinished).

Inside the Sagrada Familia

 Have you ever wandered what Sagrada Familia looks like inside? I myself have seen many pictures from the outside, but none inside. So I didn't know what to expect. Anyway, I did go in and I saw. Here is a few pictures from that visit (if you ever wandered what it looks like inside).

By the way, the entry is not so simple. It is a church, but not just like any church, you have to buy a ticket for twenty something euro to get in and a queue is a few days. When you finally are about to enter, you have an airport-like security check, with taking the belt out of your trousers included.

London in the 1980s

 These were the times when one could see punks with a green Mohican, or cigarette adverts (silk with a plaster on it is an advert for 'silk cut' cigarettes and golden edges for 'Benson and hedges'). In those days a telephone was an apparatus that people had at home and a call overseas cost an arm and a leg, so a company that provided cheaper connections advertised it like cigarettes. There was no Banksy but there was Rob, who left his quickly drawn heads in prominent places in the centre of London, always on temporary surfaces. And of course the lone protester who seemed to be always somewhere on one of the central streets of the West End.