National Museum of Vanuatu

The National Museum sits inside the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, just south of Independence Park. The collection is small but well-curated: outrigger canoes, the carved tam-tam slit drums from Ambrym, ceremonial masks, and exhibits on John Frum and the cargo cults of Tanna.

A separate ethnographic gallery covers Vanuatu's eighty-plus languages and the kastom systems that bind the islands together. Visit before heading out to the outer islands — it makes the rest of the country make far more sense. Closed Sundays.

things to do museum
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If you are lucky, a curator will demonstrate sand drawing — an intricate pre-literate writing tradition from northern Vanuatu in which a finger traces a single unbroken line through a geometric pattern in the sand. UNESCO listed it as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2008.