Rooms are bright and airy with the compulsory ceiling fan backed up by the practical air conditioner laconically swishing in the

Rooms are bright and airy, with the compulsory ceiling fan (backed up by the practical air conditioner) laconically swishing in the hibiscus-scented air. Many of the staff are tattooed from waist to mid-thigh.The road north from Apia, through the centre of the island - past waterfalls, rolling hills and Vailima, the house (now a museum) where Robert Louis Stevenson died while making mayonnaise - arrives at a white-sand, swaying- palm-tree, South Sea idyll. The Coconut Beach Club, owned and run by two Americans who understand luxury, is a bar, restaurant, motel and a clutch of detached, sumptuously appointed cabins. All with Jacuzzi and private beach access, of course.Jacuzzi by Jacuzzi, air-con by air-con, Samoa is changing, with all the good and the bad that modernising implies. But, for a few more years, at least, the Fa'a Samoa will cocoon the country in its past - and for the time being, at any rate, it will remain a place where old women take strangers by the hand and teach them how to dance..On the cusp of tomorrow in KiribatiThe Republic of Kiribati (formerly the "Gilbert" of the Gilbert and Ellis Islands) is still shuffling and shifting, trying to get comfortable in its new chair of nationhood.It became independent only in 1979; one side of its story of British rule was told in the school classic A Pattern of Islands, by Arthur Grimble. This has been (and to some extent continues to be) an area of geographical awkwardness.

Kiribati's 33 islands, almost all coral atolls, are scattered over 3.5 million square kilometres of the Pacific, and at Independence these straddled both the equator and the International Date Line.The Date Line was particularly irksome. With half the country 23 hours ahead of the other half, there were only three working days in each week when the entire nation could be expected to be in the office Slack, even by the standards of a south seas paradise. So, in 1994, in a move initially not much noticed outside Kiribati, President Teburoro Tito unilaterally shifted the International Date Line to the country's eastern extremity. The entire country now lives on the cusp of tomorrow, with Caroline Island getting the best view of what's to come.Hidden away in the Southern Line Islands, Caroline is a 10-kilometre- by-1-kilometre atoll, made up of more than 20 tiny islets. It bustled with 27 citizens in 1868, but since then numbers have dwindled. The shores, lined with coconut trees, have seen few people this century, though roving colonisers occasionally stopped off long enough to rename the place.

Over the years, the atoll has been variously called Hirst, Clark, Carolina, Independence and Thornton.Party-goers wishing to get to the island before the year 2000 may want to leave soon. There is no good anchorage or proper airstrip at Caroline Island. And, at the last count, Kiribati's domestic airline had only one (mostly) functioning plane (a 10-seater with such an unreliable schedule that flights are generally announced only on Radio Kiribati and usually never more than 24 hours before departure). In fact, with pristine beaches, aquamarine lagoons, tropical-fish-encrusted coral reefs, deserted equatorial islands and largely pre-cash and pre-electricity economy, the outer atolls of Kiribati may well be the best place in the world to forget the new millennium.Cleo PascalKiribati Visitors Bureau, PO Box 261, Bikenibeu, Tarawa, (00 686 28287)Dawn over Nicobar's silver sandsThe Andaman and Nicobar Islands straggle languidly across the ocean far to the east of the Indian mainland, to which they are technically joined.

For years the authorities in Delhi have kept a tight grip on all developments, for political reasons. The islands are close to Burma, with whose government India has uneasy relations. In addition, Indian efforts to absorb the native peoples has resulted in the importation of thousands of Bengali settlers, who now form the bulk of the population of 280,000. The only native group to survive and thrive are the Nicobarese, in the southern islands that are still largely out of bounds to foreigners.