Oceania
Oceania - (sometimes Oceanica) is a geographical, often geopolitical, region consisting of numerous lands - mostly islands but usually including Australia - in the Pacific Ocean and vicinity. The exact scope of Oceania is defined variously, with interpretations including Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and various islands of the Malay Archipelago.
Oceania includes a huge variety of possibilities. If you are a SCUBA diver, a deep sea fisherman, a bikini watcher or nude beach aficionado, a wide eyed tourist that gets off on Tahitian rhythms and the swish shish of grass skirts or a student or researcher of Darwinian forces constantly in flux, a genetic scientist with studies about genetic regressive traits of rats and how they develop a symbiosis with the Riki Tiki Tavi mongoose - or perhaps you are an archaeologist of the ancient Polynesian sea kings and want to explore the ancient temples of Mamadale - or maybe someone who wants to retrace history of the Mutiny on the Bounty - these are all quite different than the standard tourist trip to Hawaii or New Zealand where package tours and orchestrated events are listed in Japanese and English. Take a "puddle-jumper" Air Micronesia from Hawaii to Guam and bounce from one small island to the next tracing the movements of the GI's during WW2 and the musical South Pacific.
Get into the culture and songs and the art of the navigator in the Bishop museum. Trace the energetic yet fateful results of the missionaries’ throuout Oceania as they tried to save the Polynesian peoples from themselves. Find out the impact of Hanson’s disease to these beautiful people - the leper colonies - the scourge of weak immune symptoms - ride the burro train down the clifts of Molokai into the old leper colony and see third generation children of the lepers themselves and seek the joy and love and gentleness in their eyes. Oceania was a place of cannibalism on certain islands as a means of evening out population size and seeking an ecological balance in times of great stress. Oceania was a place of great sea wars fought in the air, on the sea and beneath the waves - it is a place of sunken ships and great coral reefs, it was a place abandoned in parts after the last world war and used as platforms to test atomic and nuclear bombs - when you talk with the island people you can't fail to immediately notice a certain comfort with a slower passage of time, taking the money from the tourist, a throw-away culture in its worst sense, and a certain fatalism when the seas rise and the typhoon comes.
The best way to approach an exotic vacation or experience in Oceania - whether it is exploring the Galapagos Islands in their fascinating displays of rare species or watching Tahitian dancers rotating their hips and swaying their bodies like palm trees in the wind - take a theme and run with it - take time and find local hospitality where you can - use local guides rather than syndicated guides, get into the spirit of the islands - you'll never want to come back.