Tonight I got dragged to the hotel where the Manu Samoa rugby team is staying. It was a serious pain in the ass, but I'm sure the girls will be jealous.

Earlier in the day, I was at the library and I ran into my host cousin, Tavau. He's one of the physiotherapists for the team and he wanted me to come down to the hotel with him and take a few pics of him with the players.

I did it sort of relucantly, and I felt like an ass standing around the hotel waiting for the these guys to finish dinner or whatever the fuck they were doing so that Tavau could stand with them and have his snapshot taken with these gargantuan men.

There were a couple of players around with wicked tattoos and I got decent shots of them although the lighting was a bit unforgiving in the corridors of the hotel. It sort of made standing around there for an over hour worth it.

The first guy, Mark Luafalealo, who is out injured, had was looked like a Samoan Va'a tattoo on the inside of his forearm, but as the tat moved around the back, it merged into these geometric shapes of green and red. It's very modern take on the traditional tattoo. It was probably done in New Zealand because I've never seen anything like it here.

The next guy, Lome Fa'atau, the dude with the serious abs, had a full Pe'a. This tattoo starts from just above the knees and continues up to where you see it on his midsection covering everything in between. Early European explorers who viewed Samoans from the safety of their boats thought the natives were wearing "smart" britches. It wasn't until the braved a landing and went onshore that they realized that men were covered in tattoos.

It's a serious test of courage to get a full Pe'a and not everyone is up to it, even in Samoa where tolerances for pain are off the scale.

The game against Ireland is tomorrow at 3:30. It's going to be one of the biggest sporting events of the year in Samoa. Ireland is a tough team. They play in the 6-Nations against top competition in Europe. It should be an incredible experience.

Because of the World up later this year in Australia, this will be only game Manu Samoa will play at home this year. Usually they at least play Fiji and Tonga, but I'll have to wait until next year to catch those teams in action.