What a difference five months makes.I was last in Apia in April - on the Foreign Minister Murray McCully's joint Pacific mission with the European Union.We visited what was then a sports stadium and to put it bluntly it looked a long way from being anywhere near ready for the UN Small Islands Developing Nations conference which is being held this week. A very long way.The bulldozers were hard at work, there were piles of earth, in short, it was a construction site.Five months later the site houses the biggest building in Samoa a stadium and sports track, there is also a huge conference hall complete with translation booths, a food hall powered solely by solar energy and a media building with editing booths, news conference room, a media working room and more.The grounds are landscaped, there's free wifi, an outside trade fair and nobody goes in or out of the grounds without going through security. I'm a cynic at heart and have covered more conferences in my journalist career than had hot breakfasts but it has to be said it's totally impressive.Imagine more than three thousand delegates wanting to go from the conference centre to their hotels at different times. There are buses and mini vans lined up outside the venue and dozens of government workers escorting visitors and getting them to where they need to be. It's a slick operation.When we arrived at the airport on Sunday our volunteer had us in a bus with our luggage within minutes, took us to our hotel check in, then took us to the Conference Centre to collect our accreditation, back to the hotel and arranged to pick us up for the Opening Ceremony.AdvertisementShe usually works for the Environment Ministry and had no qualms about working the Sunday - she merely shrugged her shoulders and said she was pleased to be part of it all. She was a class act.It's also hard to go past the villages who seem to be vying for putting on the best welcome. There are flags fluttering with welcome signs swinging across the road - my favourite are the piles of coconuts which have been spray painted in different colours.The villages got no money from the Government for their decorations - any costs have come out of their own pocket. In town there are events…today it's an agriculture show and yesterday there was a stage set up along the waterfront where we could hear laughter ringing out as we drove to our next interview.In the harbor two traditional vaka from Hawaii stand proud, a remarkable sight.It's fair to say the Samoans are a little smug - and with good reason. They've swatted away the criticism and simply ignored any doubts the country would be ready to host the conference and just got on and done it.It's Samoa at its best - Fa'a Samoa - the way things are done along with an intense pride and absolute belief in their country.Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi