Money&Costs

 Currency: Cour de Franc Pacifique (CFP)

  Meals

Budget: US$8-10Mid-range: US$10-20        Top end: US$20 and upwards

    Lodging

Budget: US$30-100Moderate: US$100-160   Top-end: $160 and upwards

The cost of living in French Polynesia is about as expensive as it gets anywhere in the world. There are no taxes levied on personal income, but indirect taxes and import duties are high and, given that almost anything that you can buy is imported (and subject to duties of up to 200% of the product's value!), it's understandable that nothing's going be cheap. There are, however, cheaper accommodation options with some dorms in the larger towns and family-run pensions in the outer areas, and it's also possible to eat relatively cheaply in the snack bars that abound.

If you eat at the cheap snack bars, stay in bottom-end accommodation, catch le truck and fill your days with snorkelling and exploring the archaeological sites and island interiors on foot, you'll probably get by on US$80-100 a day. If, however, you want to eat in restaurants, stay in comfortable rooms, hire a car or scuba equipment, take a tour and dabble in the nightlife, you can easily multiply these numbers by three or four.

The banks are pretty mean when changing currency or travellers' cheques and generally you can   expect to loose about 5% with each transaction, although exchange rates and fees vary from bank to bank. There are plenty of automatic teller machines on Tahiti, and other touristy islands will have at least one or two. Your Visa or MasterCard will get you around most of the heavily touristed parts of French Polynesia, but once you go to the smaller motus or out-of-the-way places it's strictly cash.

Tipping is not the usual practice in French Polynesia and you won't be expected pay more for goods and services than the listed price. But neither can you expect to pay less than the listed price - nowhere in the Pacific is bargaining accepted and a vendor would regard it as demeaning for a customer to haggle. Black pearls and expensive jewellery, however, do have some margin for 'discounting'.