Papua New Guinea

Harry travelled the highlands in 2025 — Mount Hagen and three tribal communities — with friends and a guide arranged through Young Pioneer Tours.

Observations

From I Joined a Tribe in Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬

• Diversity: over 700 tribes and 850 languages — the most culturally and linguistically diverse country in the world, a product of mountainous terrain and no long-ruling empire. Tok Pisin, an English-based creole, is the shared language.
• Betel nut culture: chewed daily nationwide and the default gift; the full ritual mixes the nut with slaked lime and a “mustard” plant, turning the mouth red. About 1 kina per nut; heavy chewers get through 15–20 a day.
• Tribal life: ceremonial dress and dances are reserved for weddings, celebrations, and (increasingly) performances, but elders actively preserve traditions like bride price. Tribes differ completely from one valley to the next — bird spirit guardians, skeleton dancers, insect hunters. Spirit beliefs coexist with missionary-brought Christianity.
• History: shell money circulated until the Australian administration introduced currency roughly 40 years ago (from video – unverified); cannibalism and the killing of the first missionaries are acknowledged as the distant past, from when locals had never seen white skin.
• Safety and logistics: markets are safe by day, risky at night; planning independently is hard — Harry recommends a tour operator (see travel with a local guide). Some tribal visits come with hired armed protection. No road connects the highlands to Port Moresby: it’s a day bus to Lae plus a ferry, or a flight.
• Tourism: so few visitors come that the cultural experiences remain strikingly authentic — Harry believed he was the first long-form creator to film the bird spirit tribe.
• Money and costs: eggs 1 kina, live chickens ~35–40 kina (about £7/$10), betel nut 1 kina per nut.

From How Dangerous is Papua New Guinea Really? 🇵🇬

The capital rather than the highlands, and the country’s reputation taken head on. The detail is on the Port Moresby page; what belongs here is the country-level part.

• The theory the video tests: that the violence is tribal — directed at other tribes over specific grievances — and that a foreigner is not a target. A passenger states the same rule back to him unprompted: seeing a rival tribe in the city starts nothing by itself; theft or an insult does.
• The exception he does not argue with. He states on camera that 50% of women in the country have been raped and that 65% of men have admitted to gang rape (from video – unverified — no source is given), and says women should not come. It is the one point where his answer to the title is that the reputation is deserved.
• Reciprocity is the social rule, not a courtesy: if someone helps you or takes you somewhere, giving nothing back is rude. Cigarettes and betel nut are the currency — see bring gifts for hosts.
• Kinship terms are used with strangers — mother, father, brother, sister, by age rather than by relation.
• Five to seven languages per person is ordinary, and the reason given is marrying into different villages.
• Diet: a stated preference for ground food — bananas, coconut, sweet potato — over rice and noodles, which people say leave them unsatisfied.
• History as Harry gives it, and he hedges it heavily himself: Papua from a word for frizzy hair, New Guinea from an explorer who thought the people resembled those of Guinea in Africa; British and German halves; Australian administration; independence 1975 (from video – unverified).
• Wages: figures that contradict each other in the same conversation — 350 kina a month, foreign employers at 2.50 an hour, sometimes 50 toea (from video – unverified).

From I Visited the World’s Newest Country (Coming Soon: Bougainville)

The autonomous region of Bougainville, which has its own page — what belongs here is what the trip says about the country it is still part of.

• Papua New Guinea is one of the most expensive countries Harry has travelled, and he says so repeatedly: hotel and taxi prices comparable to the UK. His explanation is the absence of tourism infrastructure rather than tourist pricing — everyone pays the same, there is simply no supply — and he asks on camera where the money actually goes.
• The country stands to lose a resource-rich province. Bougainville voted 98% for independence in 2019, and the sticking point is that the result must be ratified by a majority in the PNG parliament. Harry’s reading is that the copper and gold are why that vote has not happened.
• Bougainvilleans do not describe themselves as Papua New Guinean. Everyone Harry asks says Bougainvillean, and several volunteer that they don’t like the mainland government.
• Betel nut and machetes are national, not regional — the same chewing culture as the highlands, and the same explanation for the machetes everyone carries: inter-tribal disputes, not foreigners.
• English is universal, and Tok Pisin is the everyday register — Harry gets a reaction all day from one phrase of it.
• Roads and transport: dirt roads, old Toyotas, and shared vehicles that leave only when every seat has been sold, so the alternative to waiting is hiring the whole vehicle.