Nightlife in Palikir

Palikir is, first and foremost, a government town. It exists because the FSM needed a capital, and the compound of low-slung federal buildings set into the Pohnpei hillside serves that purpose admirably. After dark, Palikir itself goes quiet in the way that government districts everywhere tend to go quiet, the civil servants head home, the offices lock up, and the jungle reasserts itself. Anyone expecting a buzzing strip of bars within walking distance of the national government complex is going to be disappointed, and it's worth saying so plainly. The real social life on Pohnpei, the island that Palikir sits on, concentrates in Kolonia, the main town roughly ten kilometres from the capital precinct. That's where you'll find the island's bars, its handful of restaurants with evening hours, and the low-key but warm social scene that Pohnpeians have built around a few lasting institutions. The drive is short. Roads are navigable. Taxis operate in the evenings without much fuss. What makes a night out on Pohnpei distinct from anything you'd find in Southeast Asia or the Pacific's more tourist-heavy islands is the centrality of sakau. This is the local preparation of the pepper plant Piper methysticum, related to kava but squeezed fresh through hibiscus fibre rather than dried and powdered, and sharing a coconut shell of it with locals at a nahs (a traditional open-sided meeting house) is, for many visitors, the most memorable thing they do on the island. It's earthy. It numbs the mouth. It produces a calm, sociable state that fits well with the pace Pohnpei moves at after dark. Sakau markets operate in the evenings and are as much a nightlife institution here as any bar.