Tuvalu up close: devotion time, an honour-system prison, and life on the runway

Tuvalu's character is not in big sights, it has almost none, but in a handful of small customs that tell you exactly where you are.

Take devotion time. For about fifteen minutes each evening, between a quarter to seven and seven, the island pauses for prayer, and you are not meant to be out walking. We found this out when the police gently stopped us mid-stroll. It felt less like a rule than a single breath the whole country takes together.

Or the prison, which has one of the smallest populations on earth and barely a fence. When we looked in there was a single inmate, in for a drunken fight, more or less serving his own sentence. On an island this small, where everyone knows everyone and the next country is days away by boat, there is simply nowhere to disappear to.

And then the runway. A third of the island is an airstrip that sees a couple of planes a week, so the rest of the time it belongs to everyone: children play on it, families walk it, and at sunset the whole island drifts down to sit beside it. Even the president's house is next door. Everything in Tuvalu, it turns out, is next to the runway.

These are the things you remember from Tuvalu, long after the beaches blur into one.

Skip the checklist. In a place this small, the customs are the sights.