Vanuatu is a country in the South Pacific Ocean, sitting east of Australia and north-east of New Caledonia. It is not one island but a chain of about eighty islands, most of them made by volcanoes, and some of those volcanoes are still active — on Tanna island you can walk up to the edge of one and look down into the fire. The capital is Port Vila. About 300,000 people live there, which is smaller than many single districts of Taipei.

A few things worth knowing. Before 1980 it was not called Vanuatu — it was the New Hebrides, and strangely it was run by Britain and France at the same time, which meant two sets of police, two school systems, two courts. When the country became independent in 1980 it chose its own name. Vanuatu is a member of the British Commonwealth.

People there speak Bislama, a language built out of English words with a Pacific grammar, and you can sometimes half-read it — "tank yu tumas" is thank you very much. English and French are also official.

Writing note: always a capital V, and no "the" in front of it. You go to Vanuatu, not to the Vanuatu. Someone from there is a Ni-Vanuatu.