aaaaaaaah...Tahiti, the Temptress : A willing victim returns to be seduced again by the heart-stopping natural beauty of crystal blue lagoons, intense green peaks and colorful characters of Bora Bora, Moorea and other idyllic islands of French Ploynesia.

Move over, James Michener, while I weave a tale of my own return to the South Pacific--a tale that involves nomads and islands and myna birds that sing me awake here each soft and sunlit morning.

I awoke this new day at Chez Pauline, a nondescript pension facing Bora Bora’s lovely lagoon. Lying in bed, I studied the room: four walls, a door and a sheet snapping at the window. A sheet, mind you, not a curtain. There was nothing more. No closet. Not even a chair. With a shared shower, the room is bid at $50 a night. On Bora Bora, that’s cheap, especially when a Diet Coke costs $2.50, cigarettes are $5 a pack and suntan lotion sells for $12 a bottle.

Humble though it is, Chez Pauline possesses a certain happy mood. Somerset Maugham, I’m sure, would have been charmed by Pauline’s, listening to waves crashing on a distant reef, breathing the fragrance of ginger and frangipani.

Later in my tale, I will drift off to other islands in French Polynesia--Moorea, Tahiti and Huahine--to revisit old friends. This morning, though, I joined Pauline Foster, the innkeeper at Chez Pauline, for breakfast. Like the late and legendary Aggie Grey of Western Samoa, Foster, who is part Tahitian and part English, became an innkeeper by chance rather than choice, launching Chez Pauline six years ago when young backpackers were shooed off Matira Beach next door and pleaded with Foster to let them camp in her garden. Why yes, said Pauline, of course. And so the backpackers sent out word on the Coconut Wireless that they’d found a new Eden. Less than a month later, nearly three dozen campers from the United States, New Zealand and Australia had pitched their tents on Foster’s property.

By now, Chez Pauline is an institution. Besides space for backpackers, Foster provides shelter in a scattering of beach cabins, several motel-like rooms, a couple of dormitories and five bungalows. An old Tahitian calls daily, peddling groceries to Foster’s guests. And for the camper who doesn’t cook, Foster turns out first-rate dinners for $8, tops.

Still, it is not for everyone. For the traveler seeking hot showers and cold martinis, try the slick Moana Beach Parkroyal with its 30 bungalows over water, or Hotel Bora Bora, which also features over-water units. At the spiffy Parkroyal, where breakfast is delivered to bungalows by outrigger canoes and maids scatter flower petals through the rooms, the units have decks for sunbathers and big bedrooms for honeymooners.

The Hotel Bora Bora, the oldest luxury resort on the island, remains one of the most talked-about shelters in the South Seas, with guests rating it at the top of the heap. Immaculately maintained, Hotel Bora Bora gives the impression that it opened only yesterday. On my first visit in 1961, then-manager Alec Bougerie dispatched outrigger canoes to meet our flying boat as it landed in the lagoon. Today, guests are delivered by motor launch from an airport subsequently built on an islet in the lagoon. James Michener had described Bora Bora as “the most beautiful island in the world.” (For reasons to be defined in the windup of this tale of the South Seas, I personally favor Moorea, that idyllic island a dozen miles across the Sea of the Moon from Tahiti.)

It was Michener and the U.S. military during World War II that brought Bora Bora to the attention of travelers. Seated at the Hotel Bora Bora bar a few months ago, Michener repeated to hotel manager Monte Brown his earlier words: “It’s still the world’s most beautiful island.”

The first time I came to Bora Bora, there were no cars or telephones. Now visitors direct-dial anywhere in the world. And instead of kerosene lamps, villages are lit by electricity. Meanwhile, vacationers take their meals at Bloody Mary’s and the highly regarded Bamboo House, both only a short stroll from Hotel Bora Bora.

In many ways, though, Bora Bora hasn’t changed all that much. Chickens still run freely alongside the road. Dogs snooze by thatched shacks. Hibiscus and frangipani choke the jungle, and distant waves collide with the reef in an on-going symphony of muted thunder. Surrounding the island is a lagoon, a liquid rainbow of incredible beauty. It was the lagoon, I suspect, rather than the island itself that mesmerized Michener--a lagoon unlike any on Earth.

Recently, I retraced my earlier steps. Puddles of dust rose as a small terrier jogged beside me. Tahitians were napping, for it was that hour of the afternoon. The sea which made whispering noises washing against outriggers tied at a weather-beaten pier. I passed the same country grocery, piled ceiling-high with lanterns, garden hoses, nail polish, French bread, jars of truffles, cans of chestnuts and onion soup.

Still, time is catching up. A new Club Med is scheduled to replace the old Club Med that was severely damaged after a hurricane last December. And Japanese developers are busy building a resort on Motu Toopua, an islet in the lagoon that will feature 50 over-water bungalows. This angers Pauline Foster of Chez Pauline.

“Soon the beauty of the lagoon will be totally destroyed,” she complains. Yet one can still be alone on a deserted beach on Bora Bora.

While bicycling around the island, I passed a country store, a rickety place where customers gathered on its sagging stoops, drinking the local beer, Hinano, and exchanging bits of gossip. The road wound past thatched cottages with TV antennas. Occasionally, a truck snorted along the highway, kicking up dust that settled on mango trees and little houses that rose like shanties in a tale by Robert Louis Stevenson.

It was after this that I stopped to visit with Greg Claytor, an ex-Angeleno who operated Hotel Oa Oa. But he’d disappeared. Business was bad and one day about a year ago, while he was drinking with a fisherman, Claytor tossed the fisherman the keys, telling him: “It’s all yours.” Just like that--Claytor gave away his resort and left Bora Bora. The fisherman continued to operate the hotel for a few days, but then the bar ran out of booze and so he gave up, too. The result: No more Hotel Oa Oa. I remembered Claytor’s parting words on an earlier visit: “If I ever leave here, I’ll go some place where there are other islands and warm, warm weather.” He had no intention, he said, of returning to the crime and grime of Los Angeles.

So now tourists and locals hang out at Bloody Mary’s with its white-sand floor, ceiling fans, butcher blocks and tree stumps that serve as chairs. Alas, though, Polish baron Georges von Dangel, who built Bloody Mary’s single-handedly, using little more than a shovel and a wheelbarrow, has taken leave of the island.

I found him in Papeete, on the island of Tahiti. After a career as a commercial airline pilot, restaurateur and sometime medical student, the bald, debonair, middle-aged baron is now serving as a pastor and faith-healer. “At last I have found my calling,” he said with a sigh over a drink at the Beachcomber Parkroyal near the Papeete airport.

The baron obviously isn’t your run-of-the-mill pastor. Indeed, he has always enjoyed a good time. He recalled one afternoon, at a favorite watering hole in Papeete, when he was distracted by a strange noise. “I looked up and through the door came a fellow we call Crazy George who was riding a lawn mower. It was propelled by a motor. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Riding on Crazy George’s head was a monkey, and they zipped around the room-- whoosh!-- like they were on a race track and then-- poof! --out the door they disappeared while everyone at the bar applauded.”

The baron took another sip of his drink. “Ah, those were the days. I was young then. All of Tahiti was a flower, the whole, lovely, bloody island.

“Shall I leave Tahiti one day?” The baron paused. “Perhaps someday I may wake up and say, ‘I am going.’ I’ll tell myself, ‘I’m tired of it.’ Then perhaps I’ll look across at the sunset over Moorea and I’ll be hooked again. Who knows?”

Henry Rittmeister, who leads tours on Tahiti, likewise arrived years ago as an adventure-seeking lad from Germany. Only his timing was poor: Shortly after Rittmeister came ashore, Hitler invaded France and, in the comic episode that followed, the Tahitians declared Rittmeister their sole prisoner of war, fond though they were of him. Later, Rittmeister turned to tourism. Now if you visit Tahiti, you will see him strolling down Boulevard Pomare in Papeete--the big fellow in a planter’s hat, leading a flock of tourists.

In the minds of travelers the world over, Tahiti and her neighbor islands of Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea and Bora Bora remain a special Bali Hai--a destination composed of rainbows and waterfalls, verdant valleys and towering peaks. Although 31 years have passed since the first commercial jet arrived on these shores, much of old French Polynesia endures beyond the noisy avenues of Papeete. On tours that circle Tahiti, scenes reminiscent of those set down on canvas by Gauguin appear with startling reality: deserted islets . . . locals peering from thatched-roof cottages . . . gardens with tropical blooms.

In Papeete, I also stopped to visit with Jeff Stone, an American who’d sailed to Tahiti from San Francisco aboard a 39-foot ketch named for his wife, Dawn. After only eight days on Tahiti, he was preparing to sail across the channel to Moorea. He was turned off by Papeete’s traffic snarls and exhaust fumes and the wall-to-wall shops lining Boulevard Pomare.

Tahiti’s outlying islands continue to draw adventurers seeking escape from a troubled world. On Huahine, which is 110 miles northwest, the locals don’t give a damn what day it is. Thursday or Monday or whatever, it makes no difference. Like other Tahitians, they pay no income tax, no property tax, to the French government; the lagoon is loaded with fish and the jungle is ripe with fruit. Trade winds fan the island, and frequent rains turn it a shocking green.

Huahine is one of those color-poster dreams a lifetime removed from the pace of Papeete. Until recently, commercial boats rarely called, and the airplane hadn’t yet arrived. Villagers washed their clothing in rivers that pour from the mountains. Islanders still fish with nets and tend chickens and pigs. The main village, Fare, which is only two blocks long, is lined with Chinese grocery stores, a couple of restaurants and a pool hall.

It is on Huahine that a wealthy American, Tom Kurth, who made his fortune in the malt beer business in Wisconsin, is completing a new resort that is unique in all French Polynesia. Although he opened briefly this summer amid some fanfare and a press tour, he closed the resort a few weeks ago due to refinancing problems, and the reopening date is uncertain.

Kurth calls it Hana Iti, a cluster of 25 cliff-hanging fares (FAH-rays), or bungalows, surrounded by jungle and overlooking the lagoon and a white-sand beach. Jacuzzis are hidden in gardens, and guests will bathe in showers facing a tangle of jungle. Giant shells make do as sinks, and pandanus leaves line the walls. One unit, called the Control Tower, rises above the others, featuring a toilet set in a peacock chair. And there’s a shower built into lava with water provided by shell faucets. Kurth, who claims so far to have spent $14 million on the 70-acre resort, purchased the property from singer Julio Iglesias, who had intended it as a hideaway only to find it too remote for his taste.

When and if it reopens, Hana Iti will not be for the budget traveler. It is designed for an upscale crowd that can afford the proposed $700-a-day tab, which will include meals, liquor and all activities. But fighting the ever-encroaching jungle promises to be an ongoing nightmare, just as roads leading to bungalows will. To appreciate Hana Iti, a guest will have to possess the agility of a mountain goat.

The 58-year-old Kurth, whose 23-year-old bride is an ex-Miss Huahine, plans to add 15 over-water bungalows to complete his dream. “It will be like no other resort on Earth,” promises the tall, muscular fellow, who sailed the South Seas for years before putting in at Huahine.

Earlier I alluded to my love affair with Moorea. Even Michener, who is hung up on Bora Bora, is devoted to Moorea. “It is a monument to the prodigal beauty of nature,” he told me, “with two spectacular bays (Cook’s and Opunohu on the north shore) whose beauty is absolutely indescribable.”

It was on Moorea that movie producer Dino de Laurentiis filmed “The Bounty.” Needle-like peaks pierce billowing white clouds, and waterfalls spill into verdant valleys. Indeed, all Moorea is intensely green, with a lagoon bluer than the heaven it mirrors. Twice as old as Tahiti, Moorea is blessed with the loveliest beaches on any island in French Polynesia.

During my recent visit, on a rain-fresh morning, I traveled to the Belvedere, a plateau rising above both Cook’s and Opunohu bays. I could see the surf breaking across a distant reef, and mountains were lost in swirling mists, a scene that Herman Melville in 1842 described as “valleys and peaks that can never be forgotten.”

I have hiked the interior of Moorea, alone save for jungle birds that cry out, their voices startling as a sudden clap of thunder. One goes to Moorea in search of tranquillity, for it is an island that slumbers in the South Seas sun without a single town.

It was on Moorea that the legendary Bali Hai Boys arrived, more than 30 years ago. Attorney Hugh Kelley, stockbroker Jay Carlisle and salesman Muk McCallum, all from Newport Beach, took a six-room inn, added units and turned it into a storied resort they call the Bali Hai. Vacationing singles, young marrieds and flight crews on Pacific runs made it their South Seas headquarters. As the legend grew, the Bali Hai became a runaway hit. Besides the resort, they operated a poultry farm, supplying eggs for all of French Polynesia.

During those promising, hell-raising early years, the Bali Hai Boys frequented a seamy bar in Papeete, and on Moorea they were regulars at the One Chicken Inn, a landmark bar and restaurant operated by an old Tahitian, Papa Teiho. At the One Chicken, emptybeer cases made do as chairs and locals guzzled beer from early morning till the moon vanished over Moorea. Papa Teiho, who played Tahitian melodies on his squeeze box, was joined by patrons with homemade ukuleles. The Bali Hai Boys would bring ice and extra booze, which Papa Teiho happily accepted--and immediately sold back to them whenever they ordered another drink.

Practically every tourist who ever visited Moorea wound up at the One Chicken, which got its name after Papa Teiho cooked a meal one evening for a dozen guests, using a single chicken. But the One Chicken is history. Since my last visit, it disappeared in a hurricane. As the gale swept through the waters of Cook’s Bay, the One Chicken took off like a flying saucer. Alas, another legend gone with the wind.

As for the Bali Hai Boys, well, they’ve become famous from Papeete to Pasadena. Still, time catches up. McCallum has returned to Newport Beach and visits only on rare occasions. Kelley and Carlisle are thinking of selling their resort. They simply aren’t the young lads they were. With 10 youngsters and 25 grandchildren, Kelley wants to spend more time with his family; Carlisle intends to downshift as well.

Still, on Moorea, the boys found their Bali Hai--a dream others the world over permit themselves to consider in quiet moments, this idea of stealing off to the South Seas and leaving behind the daily travails. Well, good for the Bali Hai Boys; they did it while they were young, while the blood still boiled and there were all those tomorrows to look forward to--and youth, it seemed, would serve them always.

GUIDEBOOK

Polynesian Paradise

Getting there: Air France, AOM French Airlines, Air New Zealand and Qantas all fly from LAX to Papeete. Lowest (restricted) fare: $696. (No U.S. carriers fly from the mainland.)

Polynesian packages: Vacationing on Tahiti and her neighbor islands of Moorea, Bora Bora, Huahine and Raiatea (as well as others in French Polynesia) can be expensive. Look for a package that includes air fare and accommodations. Some examples:

Tahiti Vacations offers one week on Tahiti/Moorea for $849; call (800) 553-3477. Islands in the Sun has a similar package for $899; call (800) 854-3413. Discover Wholesale Travel is selling an upgraded Tahiti/Moorea package (Hotel Bali Hai) for $939; (800) 576-7770. Others with similar packages: Brendan Tours (800-421-8446), Tahiti Nui (800-359-4359), Jet About (800-641-8772).

Where to stay:

On Tahiti: The Tahiti Beachcomber Parkroyal resembles a small Tahitian village with 183 rooms, 17 over-water bungalows (soon to be 32) scattered over 30 acres near Papeete’s airport. Good restaurants. Rates $255-$340 per room, double occupancy (ask about the $198 “down under” rate); call (800) 835-7742.

Rooms at the Hyatt Regency Tahiti are terraced down a hillside outside Papeete, with views of Tahiti’s lagoon and the island of Moorea. A new swimming pool with grottoes/waterfalls. $199-$329; (800) 228-9000.

Hotel Maeva Sofitel is Tahiti’s tallest building (7 stories) with 224 rooms, three restaurants. $179-$365; (800) 221-4542. Hotel Tahiti is one of Tahiti’s older hotels, about a five-minute cab ride from downtown Papeete. $70-$95; (800) 252-0211. In downtown Papeete, the Papeete Hotel has rooms for $80-$110; (800) 252-0211.

On Moorea: The Bali Hai was the first hotel in French Polynesia with over-water bungalows. $90-$245; (800) 282-1402. Club Bali Hai is the site of the old Aimeo Hotel (faces Cook’s Bay). $90-$225; (800) 282-1402.

The Beachcomber Parkroyal is newly refurbished, with choices of over-water or beach/garden bungalows and rooms in the main building; an excellent beach. $260-$360; (800) 835-7742.

Sofitel Ia Ora features thatch-roof bungalows, a fine beach and a great view of Tahiti across the Sea of the Moon. $207-$480; (800) 221-4542.

Club Mediterranee has a private island in the lagoon. Ask about air-land packages (prices change regularly, sometimes month-to-month); (800) 258-2633.

Residence Les Tipaniers also has thatch bungalows, an excellent restaurant, snorkeling, volleyball. $82-$130; (800) 521-7242.

Motel Albert is one of the island’s best buys. Its 19 housekeeping cottages have kitchenettes. $30 for a one-bedroom unit, $60 for two bedrooms; ask overseas operator for 56-10-02 or write Motel Albert, Pao Pao, Box 77, Temae, Cook’s Bay, French Polynesia.

On Huahine: Sofitel Heiva has both land/over-water bungalows. $210-$483; (800) 221-4542.

Relais Mahana is a small, family-operated resort on a splendid beach. $142 (add $39 per person for breakfast/dinner); ask international operator for 68-81-54.

Huahine Beach Club has bungalows on the beach. $170-$250; ask operator for 43-08-29.

Hotel Huahine is an old two-story shanty with nine rooms (shared baths) in the village of Fare. $25-$35 per day starting rate; ask operator for 68-82-69 or write Hotel Huahine, Fare, Huahine, French Polynesia.

On Bora Bora: Hotel Bora Bora, a favorite of James Michener, has recently renovated bungalows on the beach or over the water. $280-$600; (800) 421-1490.

Sofitel Marara also has beach/over-water accommodations. $248/$450; (800) 221-4542. Moana Beach Parkroyal has similar luxury units for $368-$522; (800) 835-7742. Bora Bora Bungalows have two-bedroom hillside/over-water units with kitchens but no maid service for $150-$190; (310) 652-6420.

For campers, Chez Pauline has $10 campsites, $17-per-night dormitory rooms, $40/$50 rooms/cabins; $90 for bungalows with private baths, kitchens. Write P.O. Box 215, Bora Bora, French Polynesia.

For more information: Contact the Tahiti Tourist Board, 6151 W. Century Blvd., Suite 1024, Los Angeles 90045, (310) 649-2884.