Bula From Fiji

02/12/10

Bula From Fiji!

Hello all, I am writing this sitting on the porch area of our hotel room in Lautoka, Fiji. I always thought I would write a blog from home that would be dry and witty and all that you want from a blog but have found that I never have the time or that when I do I have nothing to say. Anyhow I figure I can use this blog I created to keep my lovely friends informed as to what me and my girly have been up to.

I have discovered I am not very good at being on holiday, when I am not freaking out about a) the horrible hostel we were in b) the horrible staff c) the cost of this holiday d)being so far from home e) being a young woman who most days feels she is still too young to travel by herself without her mother dearest. I am bored. What does one do on holiday? We can go into Lautoka town just a two minute walk from our hotel but I do feel like a tiny white woman last time the two men who seemed far too nice tried to sell us carved wooden daggers with our names carved into them I stoped mine just in time, I don’t just feel harassed when it happens I actually feel scared which i know is silly but there you go, an irrational fear. When we are not in town we can swim in the pool, which is stunning if a little empty, There are people here, although most seem to be from conferances from other parts of Fiji or families, not youngins.

Lautoka is a town which is seen as the second capital, it is the main producer of sugar in the pacific and the air is thick with the smell of sugar cane, there is a small train that runs by the side of the road and carries the sugar cane to the mill near our hotel and then it is loaded onto the ships that sit at the huge dock about 300 metres from our hotel. As such the beautiful beach view we have seems to be just it seems it is not really what people swim in so it’s the pool for us. There are lots of feral cats and dogs in the town at least they arnt in hotel as they were in the hostel we were staying in but it does make me a little sad when see the skinny little things. All the people smell of coconut and palm oil and are always calling out Bula! A hello of sorts. There seems to be a large Hidu population here with many of the cap drivers sporting woodern icons of ganesha and woman with beautiful bindis on their heads. Tomorrow we will have lunch in the town which will be alot cheaper but I think we may also get slighty harressed to buy trinkets. A cab driver told us to tell people that we visit oftern and that we are travelling with friends to avoid being pestered too much which seems to have helped. Now we just have to find a balance of being nice and not so nice that they have time to sell us something, lucky they find my name so hard or I am sure i would have a woodern carved sword sitting on my bed right now!

Our first night in Fiji wasn’t exactly what we wanted and I was being a big sook but after we booked alternate accomadation for the next week I relaxed. We went down to the beach chairs with our books and read, me in bikini’s and a light top only problem is having not slept at all on our crampt flight over I was totally exhausted i was soon slumbering, as was ma girl the waves gently lapping at the beach edge, and as the sun moved up the beach I was slowly roasted on the one side i was showing, my left leg looks ridculas red and mildly swollen with white bloches where my hand was, and my right leg has a very red shin gaurd. Look very silly but totally deserve it as it didn’t occur to me to slip slop slap. When I woke with a arm cramp it seemed that a huge yellow cross and flag had been placed down 3 metres from me. Then I realised that very shortly some one would be landing via parachute after sky diving from a plane we waited along the beach with a crowd and then sure enough two yellow blips appeared above us. They grew larger and there where two tandum jumpers. They both looked happy with themselves girly and I were both imperessed and a little green at the thought of it all. You get 60 seconds of freefall! Yeah! No thanks I like my feet on the ground for the most part!

The good thing about our old hostel was that is was next to a wonderful one called the sumglers cove hostel. They were so nice to us even though we were not staying with them as they were booked out. We ate at their restraint twice and watched their provided entertainment, we got to see hula dancing and other wonderful pacfic islander dancing at night with the beach behind us the sun setting behind us and a pinacolda in my hand it was spectacular. We also got to see men do fire twirling and dancing, a old drunk Fijian woman wondered up and started haggling, telling them and us that fire twirling was not Fijian, it was Polynesian, she said she knew where she came from and she wasn’t ashamed. My girly and I had a discussion afterwards about authenticity of culture when travelling to tourist areas like Fiji, I said I couldn’t help but feel I was a western imperial person who had come to see how the savages live, Girly said that Fiji is now a tourist country, much of its economy is from tourist dollars and that much of cultural practises are still being performed and learnt because people will pay for a ‘cultural experience’.

It is odd though, now we are staying in such a lovely hotel for very little and we get so much for it, I am constantly reminded of my privilege, as I should be. We have two double beds in our room and a TV that has BBC world news , the cartoon network, a movie channel that plays obscure movies and a bollywood channel, it is pretty great, between that and reading or playing cards that is pretty much all we do. The internet in the hotel costs 8 FJ dollars an hour which isn’t a huge amount but it isn’t cheap either.I guess I have to get into what they call ‘Fiji Time’ which basically means take it slow...all the same my brain is finding it hard to relax. I am going to get a massage this week I think, and girly and I plan on going to a island called beachcomer island to snorkel and play watersports like kayaking which girly is a big fan of and paragliding which I am thinking of doing...bet I chicken out though. I don’t really know what I will do with myself for the week....anyhoo I think I will go for a swim now or check the movie channel....

Bula!