French Polynesia Travel Guide

Polynesia - Travel tips

Tahitian, once forbidden in the school system on the islands, is now an officially recognized French-speaking area. Tahiti's main reserve is the French Pacific Dollar (XPF). Travellers cheques, especially in euros or US dollar, are the most advisable way to get currencies to the Isle.

Papeete's authorised hoteliers, airports and large banking institutions include most of Tahiti's foreign exchange operations. Cash machines are more convenient in Tahiti than on the smaller nearby isles. We accept all important internacional payment transfers in Tahiti. A number of Tahiti ants opened on Saturday mornings. The Tahiti timezone is the same as Hawaii, 10hrs behind GMT (GMT -10) and twohrs behind Pacific Standard Times.

The Tahiti summer season is observed between the end of April and October. Tahiti's standard power setting is 220V and 60Hz, but some of our accommodations also have 110-120V power setting for our US-customers. Nevertheless, it is imperative that the Americans take connector adapters and power transformation equipment with them to Tahiti. Two-pin round or shallow -bladed connectors can be used with standard power sockets.

There are +689 area codes for Tahiti and the remainder of French Polynesia, and all Tahiti postal services have coin-operated mobile numbers that accepts calling card names named Telécartes instead of tokens. Tahiti residents can use their own Global System for Mobiles (GSM) mobile in Tahiti as long as their home operators have mobile telephony contracts with one of Tahiti's two largest mobile operators, Vini or Mara Telecom.

Dialing into the Web can be sluggish and costly in most Tahitians' hostels and online-casinos. Tahiti's biggest of the few duty-free stores is located on the banks of the Centre Vaima, but there are also two smaller duty-free stores in the departure hall of Fa'a'Fa'a International Airport. One of Tahiti's best duty-free special offers, up to 250 millilitres of toilet water or 50 g of fragrance can be brought duty-free to French Polynesia.

Alcoholic limit values are up to two litres of still wines or spirit drinks with an alcoholic strength of less than 22 per cent or one litre of spirit drinks with an alcoholic strength of more than 22 per cent.