PF 2023 (2/10) – Tahiti: Papeete and Faa’a

After an easy 9-hour hop from SFO, we landed in Tahiti’s Papeete / Faa’a airport (PPT). This was our family’s first time visiting the southern hemisphere, and first time flying so far west without crossing the International Date Line.

French Polynesia is part of Polynesia, and at the same time unmistakably French. It’s a European-owned territory on the other end of Earth; a reminder that France hasn’t let go of its 19th-century ambitions and still holds onto one of the world’s largest empires. There’s something funny about French citizens and other Europeans having unrestricted access to French Polynesia, but not being able to fly here from Paris without connecting through another country.

The Papeete airport was quite small and without any jet bridge, so we walked off the plane into the tropical sun before entering immigration. Seeing that we had children, the airport staff directed us to use the priority line. What a family-friendly place!

Papeete (north) and Faa’a (south) are two cities on the western coast of Tahiti where the majority of French Polynesians live. An overnight stay here is unavoidable en route to Bora Bora due to flight schedules, and many travel bloggers stick to the bare minimum at an airport hotel. We thought it’d be fun to embrace this island and booked two nights at a resort instead.

The first thing I noticed about Tahiti was that it felt a bit like Costa Rica – in the sense that the people definitely spoke a different language, and yet just about everyone we came in contact with spoke English quite well.

Island Life

I hear the term being thrown around here and there, most recently in the context of a coworker describing it as her preferred choice between continuing down an ambitious career path and returning to her family in Hawaii. On the conceptual level, I can project my memories of the Appalachian days onto a tropical setting and rationalize the appeal of a slow-paced, anti-materialistic way of life. Emotionally, though, I get anxious thinking about an environment that imposes calm on people. Hong still has New Jersey in her blood and refers to San Francisco as slow paced, so we’re on the same page here.

In the case of Tahiti, it was clear that long work days wasn’t a trending topic. When we first got to downtown Papeete on Saturday evening, most stores and restaurants were closed. The same was true during our layover on the return trip late Friday afternoon. Then there was Sunday – our full day on this island – when most businesses did not open and the mega store Carrefour closed at 1pm. That was great for the workers, I suppose, but it felt so odd going into town three times and multiple street blocks never even had a light on.

Place Vai’ete Roulottes (and McDonald’s)

The top tourist destination in Tahiti is the evening gathering of food trucks at this downtown park. We went there a couple times and ordered from three vendors. The experience was excellent, but I do take issue with how this scene is often described.

It was not as mobile as one might imagine a food truck party to be. There were only six truck-based but semi-permanent restaurants when we went, and no space for many more. Each vendor was plugged into a power source integral to the park’s grounds, and set up shop with up to a dozen tables
Despite the multiple trucks, options were more limiting than it initially appeared. Except for one vendor that sold burgers, all of them offered similar combinations of grilled fish and “Chinese” food such as fried noodles
Bloggers described this place as authentic “real Polynesia”, but every single patron we saw was an obvious tourist from the US or Europe. The servers also spoke English super fluently. It was more like a Pier 39 than a Lower West Side in terms of local food authenticity, if I were to guess

With that said, we did fully enjoy the experience. We were served French(ish) bread to start, followed by fried noodles that tasted somewhere between the Americanized chow mien and the Japanese yakisoba, and then a whole slab of grilled swordfish. The evening air by the sea port was comfortable. The atmosphere was relaxing, with the vendors only slightly pushy. The home-styled food was affordable and actually delicious – way tastier than what the resorts served us, in fact.

These hearty plates of food were $15-20 each, which were not cheap compared to Bay Area norms. However, a light meal at the nearby McDonald’s set us back $40. In comparison, the food trucks were a steal.

This McDonald’s in Papeete served a few menu items not found in the US, such as “The Boss” and “CBO” (Chicken Bacon Onion), though they were merely a repackaging and branding of common ingredients at the chain. What was very special, however, was the beef. The patties here had a significantly pronounced beefy flavor that I don’t experience with burgers back home. It was lovely, and I’d happily pay a premium for it if available back home.

Ting feeling bummed with a hamburger that looked like only buns

Shopping

We rushed to get breakfast out of the way on Sunday, in order to squeeze in Papeete Market (closing at 10am) and Carrefour (closing at 1pm). That laid back island life was rushing us!

Papeete Market was definitely worth a visit, though we had no use for groceries and just bought some vanilla beans as souvenir. It felt similar to the traditional markets in Mexico City and Taipei, just more spacious and slower paced. Many shops were closing or already gone by 9:30.

A Carrefour anchored a small mall directly across from our hotel. We went there to buy a bunch of snacks because, well, we weren’t sure if we could afford to eat at the hotel. It was fascinating how certain items were similar to what we were used to pay, while other prices were completely abhorrent. A pile of PS5 on the floor looked like a warehouse sale, until I saw the price tags for $800 digital / $1,000 disc editions. A huge shelf of liquor bottles was also reminiscent of BevMo, but a Bombay Sapphire went for $68 and Tanqueray #10 $115. If you need a few of those things, it would be literally cheaper to buy a round trip flight to SFO, purchase them in one of the most expensive American cities, and bring them back here.