The islands of the Kingdom of Tonga, the only surviving monarchy in the Pacific, are tropical, but not quite a paradise. The largest people in the world live there, and they eat a lot of Spam.

Tafahi is a tiny outpost of this chain that is famous for two things: the quality of the vanilla grown there and the fact that it is the nearest inhabited land to the western side of the International Date Line. (The Republic of Kiribati tried to shift the line to make itself the closest in 1999, but the attempt was widely seen as illegal.)

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