Where to get spaka in Honiara: Bula bar; TopTen; Paradise; Flamingos…

Honiara is a tiny place, and to avoid the suffocation that can start to build up over time, I always try to get away every few weekends, spending at least a night on another isle or further up the coast. Last weekend F and I skitted over Iron Bottom Sound to the simple but beautiful island resort of Maravagi, where two nights was not nearly long enough but was nonetheless a delicious treat. The ease and pleasure of such weekend escapades always reminds me how lucky I am to have got a job on an island in the Pacific. Especially when the sun explodes across the sky first thing in the morning, like it did the day we left (see photo).

For an urban lad like myself, the Honiara nightlife will never be able to match up to the beauty and fascination of the timeless rural areas. But that doesn’t mean Honiara’s got nothing to offer in the way of shaking a leg or two. In fact I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the jokes to be had hitting the various ‘nightclubs’, one or two of which are invariably kicking.

The first club I sampled, in my second week here, was Paradise, a predictably inappropriate name for the grimiest, darkest and most drunken of all the clubs that I’ve been to. I can’t imagine a bigger contrast with the overdone glamour of the places I used to go out to in Jordan, where everyone is impeccably dressed, not a hair out of place and too busy looking good to dance. At Paradise, bare feet, flip-flops, ripped t-shirts and a heady stench of BO are the order of the day. Definitely the kind of place you’ve got to arrive at battered. Which I think it is safe to assume that I did, as arriving in the Central Bank vehicle (that I was driving for my first month here) with a couple of colleagues and my next door neighbour Lakoa, I managed to lock the doors with the keys inside, the headlights on, and best of all with the engine still running. Whoops. Not too big a problem as it turned out, for straight away one of the spaka rascals loitering around the front of the club stepped forward with a bit of wire and had the door open in 15 seconds. I found it amusing that after a quick thanks we then didn’t hesitate to march straight into the club, leaving the fella, his bit of wire and the car outside – a happy threesome.

I haven’t been back to Paradise since, tending instead to frequent the slightly less grimy venues of Top Ten, Flamingos and the Bola Bar. The first of these consists of what is basically a big empty shed, with a raised dance floor in the middle. This is surrounded by barriers, I suppose to keep heaving and unsteady dancers from toppling off the edge, but which gives it the distinct feel of a boxing ring. At times it can certainly feel like this. Top Ten is a relatively young crowd (by which I mean mostly 20-somethings) but also full of spakaman. Dancing ‘close’ in public is a big no-no, a result of Christianity rather than traditional customs, and in general people hardly touch their dancing partner (only the very drunkest will venture on to the dancefloor without a dancing partner/friend). At Top Ten though, the dance floor is so small and the venue so big that you emerge from the heaving mass of sweaty and wrestling bodies and limbs relieved to be gulping in the fresh air. There is a lot of going back and forth from the dancefloor by the way, since as soon as a song finishes it is the custom for everyone to immediately rush off, only to promptly surge back on when the next song begins.

Flamingos is a little club connected to the Honiara Hotel and is cleaner, but far less fun, than Top Ten. It’s also full of waku (Solomon Islands Chinese) and also tends to be frequented by dugong (prostitutes) – which unfortunately are not unrelated phenomena. However, the DJ is good (which for me means he plays ‘Island’ music not American RnB) and it’s the only place you feel happy dancing in bare feet (except for Kawaore, but that’s for altogether different reasons).

The place I seem to end up going to most these days, however, is Bola Bar. This is a huge leaf hut situated down by the airport and since you’ve got to have access to a vehicle or be willing to cough up the $60 cab fare (about £4) it tends to get a cleaner and slightly less spaka crowd (only slightly less spaka though – the other sum in the equation is: more money = more alcohol). It also opens till 4 or 5am which is later than everywhere else (except for Kawaore – but again that’s another story) and has a VIP area on a balcony upstairs where you can play free pool and watch live football (e.g. a very boring English F.A cup final not so long ago). Finally, it also sells Strongbow, which makes a nice change from the vicious sweetness of the various pre-mix drinks and which always leave me with a teeth-gritting hangover.

Drinks? The local beer Solbrew is practically the country’s national drink and is pretty nice (perhaps because it’s brewed by a German company). Despite this, it is beginning to be superseded by the newish stronger version from the same factory called SB, which all self-respecting spakaman will only ever drink. The pre-mixes are sickly and strong but drinkable. One particularly lethal variety called Saratoga is made locally by Solbrew and sold in little plastic bottles with yellow screw-on caps. Finally there is a drink I haven’t yet sampled, partly for fear of going blind and partly because a big crackdown since RAMSI arrived has limited availability. You always know when someone has been drinking the local moonshine known as Kwaso, because it is usually 5 in the afternoon and the fella is stumbling along with tangled legs, eyelids half shut, and muttering incoherently while occasionally letting out strangled shouts that seem to me like cries of anguish.

(A note on Kawaore – I have only been a few times, and would like to tell you more, but unfortunately can remember nothing. It is the place everyone goes when everywhere else has closed and it would be fascinating seeing it in the daytime sometime, as I have no idea what it’s like. All I know is that when I wake up from a Kawaore night, my feet – and consequently sheets – are always black with mud, and my keys are usually still in the lock. Some things, such as oysters and fine cigars, are meant to be relished only sporadically. Kawaore can be added to this list).