The men beckon. I take off my shoes, which is mannerly in Tonga, and come and sit cross-legged opposite the leader. He fills a coconut bowl with kava. I nod. He passes it around the circle to me. (Tongans drink one at a time, in a performance as stylized as a Japanese tea ceremony.) I clap my hands once, to show assent, and then, to their surprise and my own, drain the bowl of slightly bitter tasting liquid. There are times when national honor hangs in the balance, after all. Afterward, I feel not drunk but warmly relaxed, as if I've swallowed Valium dissolved in hot chicken soup. This may be the reputed narcotic effect of kava, or may be simply the result of the heat mixed with great stretches of what's known as Tongan time.

On the drive back to the hotel, I pass what strikes me as the most expressive Tongan scene of all: a cemetery, where the graves are framed by posts from which hang pale pink and blue banners with biblical pictures or inscriptions painted on them, looking to me as if the graves were stalls in a country fair. It occurs to me that the Tongans assume that the dead, too, must be having a wonderful time.

It's too bad that most tourists spend their first nights, sometimes their only nights, in Nukualofa, which has no luxury hotel by American standards, much less a resort. I've booked at the International Dateline Hotel (Tonga lies almost on the date line), which, with 76 rooms, is by far the biggest in the country. The air-conditioner in my room doesn't work, and the room has two small windows and no cross-ventilation, so that it turns into an oven. There's no chance of a shower, since no water is running in the bathroom. After I complain, the water is turned on, but all I get is hot water.

Next morning I'm on my way to the Royal Sunset Island Resort, a 50-minute ride on board the Royal Sunset's power launch. Seven miles from Nukualofa, the hotel shares a small beach-fringed island with about 200 Tongan villagers and their community-owned coconut plantation. The hotel's dining hall, built like a native fale, looks like a giant coconut husk turned upside down among the palms, except that the ridgepole is some 45 feet above the ground. Along the beach lie a string of 13 guest fales (the hotel is new, and eventually there will be double that number), each with a bedroom, a living room, a kitchenette and its own palm grove, beyond which gleams the Pacific Ocean.

At the far end of the beach is a proa, an outrigger canoe like those that the Tongans have sailed or paddled around these islands for nearly 3,000 years. Beyond the proa, smoke rises from a pit where the villagers will roast a pig tonight. At the hotel's end of the beach, a couple of catamarans, Windsurfers and kayaks are drawn up on the sand. A sport fishing launch lies at anchor for those who want to scuba dive or to fish for marlin, sailfish and other big game attracted to the nearby Tongan Trench, which is the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean.

''Don't be worried if you hear footsteps and snuffling around your bungalow tonight,'' the hotel owner, David Hunt from New Zealand, tell me. ''It's only the local pigs, trying to get down to the beach.''

In the evenings there's music at the Royal Sunset, but no one knows how many musicians will show up or what they'll do. On my first night, three men play guitars and harmonize in song while the guests eat dinner. The next night, David has scheduled a dance performance, which is usually held on Saturdays, and this time a dozen musicians turn up along with seven or eight adult dancers and two children, young performers in training. (All schoolchildren in Tonga learn traditional dances as part of their formal education.) The dancers' arms and legs shine; they've been rubbed with coconut oil. On their arms, the women wear bangles and ribbons decorated with shells; they wear dresses of velvet trimmed with beads, feathers, yarn, leaves. Holding their torsos still as palm trunks, they flex their wrists and ankles, showing more kinship to Javanese dancers than to the Hawaiian hip slingers.