Have you ever visited an island? What is life like there?

I spent most of my summers as a kid on Fire Island, and I’ve been to St. Lucia. Life just seems more relaxed… the whole beach culture thing.

I’m sure I’ve been on one…

I have lived on peninsulas for the vast majority of my life and it’s pretty cool stuff. You can still drive anywhere in the country (or whatever) and have giant bodies of water near by.

Islands in the Caribbean and in the Bering Straits are two entirely different experiences.

So bloody hot, even in November. At least islands are in the Caribbean are hot. It’s too much for me.

I live on an island now, actually, as Brooklyn is geographically a part of Long Island. I’m a few blocks from New York Bay. It’s nice. The water is never far away. There’s always breezes, winter or summer, and I can take a ferry into the city on a nice day.

I love the idea of island living. I was in the Bahamas and the Greek islands. And I so want to go back and actually live there for a month, rent a house, etc.

In 2002, I spent two weeks living among Jamaicans in Jamaica. You’re right about “hot” and “relaxed,” in February it was 80°F in the daytime and that’s hot enough for me! People were also pretty laid back about timing. “Soon come” was a favorite phrase. When will the taxi arrive? Soon come. When will the lady selling vegetables make her rounds? Soon come. Relax.

We didn’t have electricity or hot water where we stayed, although there were flush toilets. There was mosquito netting around the bed, since there weren’t any screens in the windows. The food was out of this world, and it was very inexpensive (at least for us working class Americans, who were wealthy by Jamaican standards). As a fleshy woman, I was seen as beautiful, rich, and healthy – which was pretty awesome. And the people were as nice as could be.

My sister lived in Bermuda for three years. Drove her crazy after the romance of the situation wore off. You’re sitting on a rock in the middle of the Atlantic, and you cannot leave except by airplane or ship, and both are costly. It made her more than a little claustrophobic.

I live on the same one as @aprilsimnel yo yo yo just a little East. It’s busy, people are fast and I certainly don’t have any of that tropical weather-28 F right now. But I love the beach in the summer and fall. And NYC a stone’s throw away? Fugettabboutit who’s got it better than me.

It seems like most people are either poor or have little use for a lot of technology. In some ways it seems very nice! I just got back from the Dominican Republic and it was like that. They have a very rich culture and its very beautiful.

Ten years ago, my sister and her husband, in the mood for change and romance, built a charming and suitable house in Guadeloupe, on a hillside above the ocean.

When the house was finally finished, hurricane Hugo blew in and with a huff and a puff, he blew their house down.

Try to deal with banks, insurance people and the Garbage Pickup Association in French from 1400 miles away. (Les poubelles are trash cans.)

I live in Indonesia. Of course we have thousand of vacation islands around this tropical country. The situation vary from one island to another,take Bali as example,life seems so relax and adamant here despite it’s an overcrowded island and you tend to get sleepy more often from its beaches surrounding. Another island likes the Komodo island seems less populated than another islands,this place tends to get hotter most of the time. People here only to see the Komodo dragon anyway.

Barbados was beautiful (honeymoon). Guam sucked (military service away from my lady). All I saw of Oahu and Taiwan were airports. Diego Garcia is a lump of sand covered by warehouses.

@Doctor_D
I love the Komodo Dragon. Those things are awesome bacteria saliva infecting dinosaurs.

Santa Catalina off the coast of Ca…,long time ago it was pretty lively.
Guam was pretty much nothing happening
Japanese islands,some beautiful country, and some intense cities.
Hawaii is beautiful and a bit relaxed.
that’s all i can remember.

I’ve been to a lot of islands: Maui, Oahu, Naxos, various Bahamas islands, Tahiti, etc.

I love tropical islands. I’m not sure if I would want to live there all year long. It does tend to rain a lot and the temperatures range from 82–102 all year long. Very hot and humid. But a great place to visit. I tend to live for warm weather and the beach, so it’s the perfect thing for me.

Hot and lazy is a perfect characterization of it! I remember when I was in the Virgin Islands getting chastised by an elder lady store clerk who told me “slow down young man, we take our time down here on the island…no need to be in such a rush!!” Same mentality existed on all other islands I visited!

Tropical islands I have been to are just as most of you describe, warm, and relaxed.
Then there is Isle Royal, in Lake Superior, not warm, but still relaxed, unless there is a moose chasing you, (another story) or a wolf eyeballing you.

I lived on Guam for two years. Hot doesn’t begin to cover it. And nerve wracking. Guam is near the Marianas trench. The island itself is a plug of lava with the mountain eroded away. (shudder) So every time there was an earthquake, I pictured the plug just breaking across and the top half of it dropping down and on into the trench, never to be seen again….

I lived on an island for five years. I loved it! There was a bridge at the north end of the island (which was 50 plus miles long) and ferries that connected it to the mailand from the Southern end.

One thing that was a problem I did not anticipate when I moved there was the lack of emergency response. If you had a serious life-threatening illness, it took a minimum of 20 minutes for emergency response. If you needed to be airlifted to the mainland, that took an hour or more.

But the ambiance on the island was wonderful. It was so peaceful and relaxing to be there. The beaches were never crowded. The woods were wonderful. The silence at night was incredible. The lack of light pollution was thrilling.

Dominica is extraordinarily beautiful. They filmed parts of “Pirates of the Caribbean” there. If you drive around the coast, every cove is completely different—different color sand, different rock formations, different people…

Dominica has a medical school and tourism and farming. The people are poor and rather uneducated. They don’t have money for big infrastructure projects or for developing eco-tourism or much of anything else.

So they live their lives in their little towns, rife with internecine strife. The residents of one town will warn you never to go to the other town because there are bad people there. The residents of the other town say the same thing about the first town.

But it is sunny, and even if possession of ganga is punished severely, every time you walk past the ice cream shop, there are two or three rastas leaning against the wall, holding spliffs. The ice cream is good, though.

You have to fly in on a small plane that comes down the steep side of a mountain onto a small landing strip that if you miss, you end up crashing over a cliff into the ocean. Cruise ships will also get you there. Your world includes a few other islands near you, and maybe the US. Otherwise you are in a small world of small villages, some of which are incredibly poor.

It’s a wonderful place for a tourist. I think it’s all right for the residents, too, no matter how well off (or not) they are.

Independent island with no ties to other country’s laws. Women were slaves to any male that wanted them….

It was very different kind of place.

@billo: Please don’t shout. It is considered rude here.

Sure, many of them. My favorite one is Santorini.

I lived three years of my life on Kwajalein.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwajalein_Atoll

http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=Kwajalein&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

@billio
And this refers to island life how? You’re surrounded?

Islands differ dramatically. Hawaii is very different from Greenland, England (an island) is very different from Elephant Island in Antarctica, etc.