The Wild Frontier Of P-Ng

People in P-NG who are still exercising their minds as to whether the Territory is yet ready for a tourist industry shouldn’t have to look further than the lavatories at Port Moresby and Lae airports to decide that it is not. . , . , Both are like something you would expect in an underprivileged Middle Eastern country—except that Middle Eastern countries mostly have vast, air-conditioned palaces, all tiles and hygiene, masquerading as 6 port Moresby’s “Ladies” is a grubby wasteland of cobwebs, broken door catches and suspicious wet patches. Lae’s two-women affair is dark, dank and hideous and after the daily Southern plane gets in, seethes with women sponging children, changing their clothes and even doing the laundry in the hand basins. ...

In both Port Moresby and Lae the same strange brown tide, the stains, and the old cigarette butts eddy around in the bottom of the WC’s, month after month. In an era devoted to the creation of cuter and cuter ’ plastic lavatory brushes and the manufacture of newer and more fascinating detergents, Papua-New Guinea is, indeed, the last wild, un touched frontier. —J.T.