Already 3 months in Tahiti! (French Polynesia)
I’m going to do a quick check-in at the quarter mark of our Polynesian adventure to tell you what’s happening in Tahiti right now. Why do I say “quarter”? Because JB decided to extend by a few months our stay in Tahiti. Nine months (the initially planned duration) didn’t seem long enough to fully enjoy this paradise, so we’re staying two extra months.
In 3 months, we haven’t had much time to travel after all. On weekends, we stay in Tahiti; there was a little tour around the island, a round trip to Moorea , and 6 days of vacation. Since we already live in a vacation spot, just a few minutes on a scooter is enough to feel like we’re on holiday, so we don’t necessarily need to switch islands for that.
It’s been raining a lot since June, so weekends with warm, sunny weather are not that many. The water is often choppy, and JB can’t go snorkeling every morning like before.
We managed to snag the last available tickets for an evening at Heiva i Tahiti (traditional dance & singing competition), and this evening was postponed twice before finally happening on a rain-free night. It’s truly impressive; there are about a hundred dancers on stage, the music is live and beautiful. Groups are judged on various criteria, mainly cultural (lyrics, music, choreography…).
We’re entering the austral winter, and traditionally fishing was supposed to stop to let the small fish grow, so this is when traditional festivals like the Orange Festival, traditional games festival, etc. take place. But in reality, fishing continues, and I think in 30-40 years, there won’t be much left to fish. The corals are already all white here; frankly, in Asia, corals are much more colorful than this. However, since we’re in the middle of the ocean, we do have big fish like whales, dolphins, sharks, rays… that’s the advantage!
JB had a little health issue that required a visit to a specialist. We were able to contact our friend/doctor V. for a first opinion before booking an appointment with the right specialist. He told us that in Paris, we would have had to wait six months, but here, the appointment was made the day before (and without extra fees)!!! Luckily, we were quickly enrolled in the CPS, the Polynesian social security (the switch took two months, and as expected, it dragged on with the French social security). The reimbursement (75%) was fast, and the mutual insurance will cover the rest. No automatic transmission; it’s a care form you need to drop off at the CPS or a pharmacy.
I get the feeling that most health professionals are from metropolitan France (there’s no medical school in Polynesia). This can pose problems for local patients. I’ve read several reviews from Polynesians saying they feel uneasy about consulting someone from metropolitan France who might judge them and isn’t familiar with local customs and traditions.
I see illness as a wake up call and it’s a sign that JB needs to take it easy and rest a bit. I’ve made him resume weekly massages to drain the lymphatic system. We don’t know if it’s working, but at least he has less tension in his back and shoulders. Forced to rest, he’s also taking more time to read, which he really enjoys.
It’s a Thai massage salon I go to. The boss finds out I’m Vietnamese and introduces me to another Vietnamese woman from whom she orders banh cuon, nem… I contact the Vietnamese woman, and she introduces me to another Vietnamese woman who does a lot of cooking. She makes such incredible dishes that take a lot, lots of time to cook, that now I eat really well! Everything freezes well, so I buy in bulk and thaw when I can’t be bothered to cook. Long live the Vietnamese diaspora! Auchan, Carrefour, Vini Vini… sell quite a few ready-made dishes made the same day. When I can’t be bothered to cook, I also get those.
I also manage to delegate the cleaning. There’s a super professional home services company. The cleaners come by car, two of them. They bring all the necessary equipment: vacuum, broom, linens, products… and in one hour, they leave my apartment spotless for 5040 XPF (about €45). When they make the bed, it looks like a hotel bed!
So, thanks to delegation, I have a lot of free time, and all my attention is focused on my translation projects. I had a little stress/FOMO moment when I learned what you can do with AI and that I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to set up a subagent. So I dove in, tested different models at Deepseek, Anthropic (Claude Code), OpenAI (Codex)… Claude Code dropped a bomb: the model Fable 5 and the other competitors are in “OMG OMG we’ve got to do something”. As a user, I benefit from the competition and I got plenty of resets of usage quotas in a few days, allowing me to test the different models, complete all the projects I’d been dragging around for years, and complete projects I hadn’t planned to start. Then OpenAI tweeted something like: “we celebrate our 7 million active users”. WTF!
JB and I had done a back-of-the-envelope calculation to estimate how many users we had, we thought we were at 18 million, others estimate 40 million. In the end, people like us are a drop in the ocean. Using Claude Code or Codex in 2026 is like having started using the Internet in 1992! I have FOMO because I’m in a circle of acquaintances where everyone knows what an subagent is, but it’s a bubble, 99% of humanity doesn’t know, and when they find out, it’ll be too late. That’s it, the first layoffs due to AI have arrived in France. I think that when there’s a clear technological breakthrough, most people prefer to bury their heads in the sand and miss “the world before” and the clever ones become early adopters. The more I work with AI, the more I see how to develop human capabilities to combat it. We tend to delegate information storage to AI, but on the contrary, we should continue to work on your memory, your concentration, and then your intuition. A Vietnamese medium tried to train AI to read his clients’ Bazi, but after 9 months he failed and realized that reading Bazi required intuition, not rules “if… then”. I’ve talked about this here before.
Our scooter, which we affectionately call Tanktino, has scared us several times. The first time, it suffered a loss of power while we were on the expressway. After a trip to the mechanic, it ran 30 kilometers before stopping as we were about to merge onto the expressway. We witnessed the kindness of Polynesians. A couple of Polynesians saw us from their apartment, they took their car and stayed with us until a tow truck arrived. It was a Sunday. The tow truck driver told us he could keep it at his place and drop it off at the mechanic’s on Monday morning, saving us from having to first take the scooter home and then bring it back to the mechanic the next day. We even gave him the key to the scooter – the level of trust you could have in Polynesia! (He’s not just anyone either, he knows the couple who came to our rescue). Then that couple drove us home because there was no bus on Sunday. Really, what kindness!
Having a scooter makes our life much easier because without a means of transport, you can’t do anything here. Buses don’t run often or late. When Tanktino was in the shop, we thought we wouldn’t get it back for our vacation to Moorea, we almost shortened our vacation by a day (and missed the dolphins) because on Sunday there are very few buses and taxis are exorbitant. We’ll take Tanktino with us on our next island vacation. The trip is by ferry, so it’s very easy for us to take it with us everywhere. Imagine if you go to an island and have to pay 30€ for every trip, or wait 45 minutes for each bus. That’s not a vacation anymore!
Having a scooter also means avoiding traffic jams as much as possible. Given that there’s onlyone main road on the island and most economic activity is in Papeete, traffic jams can be impressive and it’s not uncommon to have commutes lasting two or three hours during rush hour! JB is still on unlimited remote work, he comes to Papeete 1-2 times a week to be with his colleagues, but it’s not essential.
Shopping / delivery spot. In Polynesia, homes don’t have individual mailboxes; you have to get a PO box at the post office to receive mail. Amazon doesn’t exist here. However, AliExpress does deliver (but shipping costs seem high). We’ve also been able to try delivery via FedEx. When the package arrives, you get a call to handle customs clearance. In our case, it was a gift, but you might have to pay customs fees otherwise. Once the paperwork was done, I got a call from the delivery driver asking if I wanted to pick it up at a branch or have it delivered to my door, very convenient! The package was shipped from China and arrived at our place in about a week.
Every week, I do a facial treatment. I think at my age, regular facials make a difference. Asians don’t suffer from wrinkles, but from pigmentation spots. I have a treatment called Bloomea Fontaine, it’s a machine that boosts cell regeneration. However, when new cells form, they need to be free of pigmentation spots, so during the treatment, you also need to take anti-spot supplements. It’s the same principle as when I did BBL laser; during the treatment period, I had to apply hydroquinone. Except in Polynesia, hydroquinone is a no-go, too risky. I’ve only had this Fontaine treatment three times so far, and the effects are great, but we’ll have to see what it gives long-term.
My favorite addresses:
- The best bakery on the island: Le Fournil Hautbois
- High-tech facial treatment: Elo Esthetique
- Thai massage: Anong Massage
