American Samoa - Riding the Batman bus - Project Idea

Cheers

Do the taxpayers pay for police presence?

February 24, 2011

U must own a heck of a lot of tee-shirts!X

January 04, 2011

lol - reminds me a little of fil, who was only in the south pacific during wwII, so has therefor refused to take mil! No one can convince him that it's beautiful and no longer a war zone.

December 23, 2010

I love the photo with the ship in the background. Interesting about the bus!

December 23, 2010

American Samoa - Riding the Batman bus

Friday, October 8th – we woke up in Pago Pago, American Samoa! Bill had visited American Samoa in the past and was not impressed; however as the ship pulled into port he could see the changes. It was not at all like it was the last time he was there; it is now very nice and clean – a beautiful little tropical island. I don't think I have ever been to a country with friendlier people! It was even nicer since the official language is English and the currency is the American dollar. Since it is an American territory it even had American post offices and postage rates.

On nearly all these little islands there has been a “tent village” near the ship selling t-shirts, souvenirs, and other touristy items from temporary open tents. Bill bought me a really awesome muumuu (the lady selling it had made it). Bill almost always buys me a t-shirt in every port but before we found one for me we found one with a license plate on it so naturally, that one had Bill's name all over it!

Then for $1.00 each we got on a city bus. Their city buses are very small and wooden inside and out! The cabs are the front ends of old trucks. They are very old – kind of antiquey! Each has 6 rows of covered wooden seats which hold 2 small adults or one large adult, a small isle in the middle and one row across the back. The seat about 12-16 people (I'm estimating.) Each bus has a name – ours was “Batman” and it even had a picture of Batman on the side! Don't even think about air conditioning!

We rode the bus to the DMV. (In American Samoa it is the OMV – Office of Motor Vehicles.) I really didn't want to go to the OMV and deal with license plates but this was the only license plate stop on the entire trip so I decided to go with him. I am so glad I went!

I didn't realize that Bill had been to this OMV office before and they remembered him very well. In fact they had a huge framed display of American license plates for everyone to see and I found out that Bill had given them all those license plates. There were plenty of hugs all around like long lost friends! I do remember that some of the people from this OMV in American Samoa were guests at the license plate convention in Primm last spring and so I had met them before too. We were directed to the Director's office and I waited in his air conditioned office with him while Bill was allowed to go through license plates in another room and take any and all of the license plates he wanted. He selected 300 regular plates and 100 motorcycle plates. The Director also gave him an American Samoa Homeland Security t-shirt which is very unique! Score: Bill-2 American Samoan t-shirts. Henri-0.

While Bill was picking out plates, the Director asked me, “Would you like an American Samoan driver's license?” I said, “You can do that?” He said “I think so, let me check; he made a phone call, and said to me, “Yes, I can do that, but you will have to go to the court house to fill out a form authorizing them to do a background search to make sure you do not have a felony conviction or other criminal record.”

Bill came back and I told him I was getting an American Samoan driver's license; he said he was jealous and wanted one too so they arranged for him to also have one. We were fingerprinted, photographed and were issued a genuine American Samoa driver's licenses which are even good to drive with in Florida or anywhere in the United States! I think they are good for 3 years.

When we were ready to leave with our new licenses and 400 license plates and Bill's new t-shirt, the Director told us to wait, he would assign a police officer and official police car to take us where we needed to go. We thought it was really nice to be taken in a police car to run our errands!
First stop – We were taken to the court house to fill out the form for the criminal checks which the police officer took back to the OMV. The next place the officer took us was to the post office where Bill boxed the license plates and sent 6 boxes of them to Florida and 7th box to Hawaii for our customers there.