Fiji People & Culture

Nadi is where the airport is located in Fiji. On the plane wear clothes with layers so you can take some off before disembarking as you will feel the heat as soon as you step off the plane (even at night!). All you will need is your bathing suit and a pair of jandals! Just like many citiies on the main land the sea is not as clear as it is on the outer islands so spend a couple of nights in the islands or take a day trip or island hopping as they call it! Learn their phrases, as the fijians are lovely friendly people and love to just say bula (hello) as your passing by and because they are such helpful people and great with children vinaka (thank you) is a must too!

At 30,000 feet, the stewardess on flight FJ910 to Fiji asked me if I would like the chicken or the lamb. I have absolutely no idea why she asked me this, because what I got on my tray didn't even begin to come close to either of them. I read once that McDonalds were being considered to take over the in-flight catering on British Airways flights, but I gather that nothing came of it.It's a shame, really - I quite like the idea of being asked by a stewardess with a little red and yellow hat if I would like the Big Mac in a red wine sauce or the Chicken McNuggets Parmesan. At least you wouldn't have to concern yourself too much with whether to eat in or take away. The flight from Australia to Fiji only takes about three hours, which is a lot less than I had been expecting - it almost seemed as though we were returning to the ground before even reaching cruising altitude, but perhaps that's because I've got used to some seriously long haul flights over the last three months and anything less than twelve hours seems like heaven. After showing a ridiculously unfunny film starring Leslie Nielson, a man who these days seems to get every comedy part going, we were forced to watch a short information film on the Fiji Islands. I say "forced", although I do admit that no actual guns were used or anything - it's just that, having been given headsets so that we could choose whether to listen to the film or not, we were given no option for turning off the soundtrack to the Fiji information film. Some of the passengers had clearly had long days and were not at all happy to be woken up mid-flight, and the old lady in the seat next to me was so startled that she stuck me with a pointy elbow as she twisted around in her seat. I learnt, courtesy of the information film, that Fiji has come a long way since the days when being invited over for lunch suggested you could expect to be eaten somewhere between the fish course and desert. This is always nice to know when arriving in a new country, although I think most of us had already taken it for granted before booking that we're no longer living in the days of cannibals and head-hunters. Unsurprisingly, Fiji doesn't much like being known around the world as The Cannibal Islands , although they clearly still find the time to remind everybody on the way in just in case any of us step out of line. I would like to say that Fiji has made a lot of effort to bring themselves into the modern world and put their past behind them, but the problem is that they seem to have stopped the modernisation process somewhere in the seventies. I remember thinking that if the haircuts on the people in the information film were anything to go by, everybody in Fiji must look like a member of the Jackson Five. This was seriously funny stuff - every man, woman and child in the film was proudly sporting a microphone haircut of the first order. I assumed, at least until leaving the plane on the Fijian Island of Viti Levu, that this information film had been made some time ago and they'd been showing it ever since - but No! Upon disembarking, I was met with the sight of a lounge full of seventies throwbacks. The land that time forgot. I wanted to go up to the nearest guy and ask if he knew Huggy Bear.You can read my full travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

It hadn't really occurred to me that it might be raining, but it was chucking it down. Fiji is slap in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, about as close to the equator as you can get without having to jump up and down going "Ow" on the hot ground all day - I had pretty much imagined I'd be walking around in a loin cloth for the next few days, but it looks as though it might actually be quite pleasant. I was met from the plane by a woman who stood out from the crowd straight away in that she was the only one without a seventies hairstyle, so I assumed her to be either the rep from my holiday company or a local who was trying to be dangerously unhip. She directed me to the small office of a company called Rosie Tours , where I sat in front of a small desk waiting for the bus that was to take me to my hotel and being chatted to with massive amounts of enthusiasm by somebody else with a microphone for a head. The bus, when it arrived, was empty - I had assumed it to be taking so long because they had to pick lots of other people up from somewhere on the way, but it turns out that everybody here is simply on "Island time". In other words, they'll get around to it when they feel like it. My sort of people. I fought the urge to swing myself into the vehicle through the window seventies style, and propped my tired eyes open for the duration of the journey so that I could take in what this island paradise had to offer. I know I've only just arrived, but so far I'm pretty impressed. Not only has Fiji not been motivated by the perceived need to cut down all the trees and build office blocks everywhere, but apart from the main city of Suva, 95% of the 333 islands that make up the Fiji chain are still covered in rainforest. We seemed to drive through endless countryside on the way to the resort, and the sun was setting as we drove. I've never seen anything so beautiful in my life - as the sun dropped out of sight, there was this sort of ethereal glow across the treetops. Fiji is claiming that it will be the first place in the world to witness the dawn of the next millennium, although to be honest introducing daylight savings time to the islands may have allowed them to cheat a little on this, and I can't really imagine at this moment anywhere I'd rather be on the 31st December this year. My hotel, The Naviti Beach Resort, is nestled in its own grounds one and a half hours away from the airport. It seems to be quite a relaxing place with palm trees growing everywhere and acres of gardens, beaches and forest land all to itself. There are two restaurants, and nightly entertainment such as fire-walking in the open sided Bar/Lounge. On arrival I was given a shell necklace to wear for the duration of my visit, and everybody here seems to be doing the same. Something tells me that this is going to be a very laid back week.

You can read my full travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

My room at the Naviti is amazing. The glass doors open around two entire sides, and I have a view out onto the mountains across the hotel gardens. I can sit out on my own patio and chat to the neighbours, or I can hand feed the strange little birds that come hopping across the lawn from every direction at the slightest smell of food. They stand at my feet, look up at me and make the feathers on their neck stand up like a mane. Then they warble until I feed them. It's really cool - except that if they were several feet taller I'd run like crap because they'd look almost entirely like the raptors from Jurassic Park. On the other side of the corridor, the rooms look out onto a long white sandy beach lined with palm trees and lines of vines laid down to the sea. There is even a little grounded boat to one end of the beach, to give the resort that "deserted island" look. The hotel has a big pool in the gardens, although the closeness of the sea makes it a bit redundant. For youngsters, there is a huge adventure playground out in the grounds, and the bars have family entertainment every night which ensures that there is never any chance of getting bored here. In fact, there is very little reason to leave the resort except to go to the shops - and there are shops on site so you could probably get away with not even doing that. The people here are incredibly friendly, too, almost to the point of overkill. Every single member of staff - Receptionists, Barmen, Clerks and Gardeners, Guards and Cleaners - constantly stop whatever they are doing and greet me with a friendly "Bula" and an extended hand wherever I go. The barman, who sees himself as a self elected tour guide for the resort, explained all the facilities to me, told me when happy hour is in the bar, and when the nightly show starts. He even gave me a big dopey looking yellow flower to stick behind my left ear. Apparently, this is a local custom - a flower behind your left ear means "I'm single - please come and get me", and a flower behind the right ear means "I'm married. Hand's off." Presumably, a flower in both ears means "I'm seriously confused or looking for a bit on the side!" I like this tradition - I can imagine it going down well in Nightclubs back home! Another thing I appreciate about the Naviti is the fact that everything I do gets charged back to my room - even at the bar. In fact, it is impossible to buy anything with cash in the resort except in the shop, so there's no need to carry any. The Naviti is part of the Warwick Hotel chain and also has a sister hotel called The Warwick, and I can even go there on the free shuttle bus and use the facilities and charge it all back to my room here. Life should always be this easy!

You can read my full travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

The Naviti Resort has its own tour office, and I booked a trip today to the capital city of Suva on the other side of the island, leaving at 10 this morning. I figured that I may as well see the big city early in my stay, and then I can do what I came here to do - relax. They serve breakfast here until 11.00 and I can't tell you how good it is not to have to get up at the crack of dawn to eat or get on a tour bus. In Australia, they tend to finish serving breakfast at all the hotels about 8.30 to 9.00, and who the hell is up at that time on holiday? Suva was not at all what I had expected. It was a large concrete jungle of small shops, although everything was crowded together and organised around large market squares on which crowds of salesmen were sitting cross-legged with their goods arranged hap-hazardly around them in the road. Suva is a bit of a dichotomy - on the one hand there is clearly a flourishing trade in souvenirs and tourism, and yet the buildings all look as though they haven't been repaired for a hundred years and are in danger of falling down. Local trading seems to take place mainly from market stalls in the centre of town under a large tent structure, where you can buy anything from fruit and veg to cheap watches. Stray and hungry looking dogs were everywhere, even in the markets sniffing at the food, but nobody seemed to be bothered by this. Everywhere you look people are sitting around on the streets, and it's never quite obvious whether they are beggars or if that's just what you do here. Clearly, the traders will do anything to part you from your money - the wages are so low that they all depend on tourists for their money and this makes it virtually impossible to walk any distance without somebody stopping you and giving you a hard luck story. Taxi drivers will happily take you wherever you want to go, and spend the entire journey trying to convince you that you should call them for all of your travel arrangements during your stay so that they can give you a much better deal than the tour offices. In the streets, every shop has a pack of workers outside to drag tourists inside. They'll follow you around the shop telling you why you should buy everything, and then attempt to sweet-talk you into giving them a tip which is normally more than you paid for whatever you bought. In one shop, I bought a beautiful wooden carving to take home as a souvenir and the shopkeeper followed me out of the shop and all the way down the road trying to talk me into going back for more. I joined up with a bunch of other guys from the bus - Vivienne and Nora from Australia, John and Dave from New Zealand, and an older couple from Canada - and we went exploring in Suva. Nora and Vivienne went shopping for clothes in the flea market and the rest of us did a bit of browsing, bought a few things and ended up running for the nearest café with shop owners in pursuit touting for more business. The average weekly wage in Fiji is the equivalent of about £25, so it's hardly surprising that there seems to be a really startling level of confidence trickery and overcharging going on in the shops and at the street stalls. It was even an exercise in advanced negotiation to get hold of a film for my camera - the whole group chipped in and bargained for some time to try to get a fair price, and we came away thinking we'd done a pretty good job between us. Five minutes later, we found the same film in the Kodak shop down the road for about a third of the price we'd paid. The specialist handicraft shops, licensed by the government, are another matter entirely. Its like I mentioned back in Thailand, you can find things in handicraft shops that are being sold in the markets at hugely inflated prices - you just have to look for places that look as though they're run by a big company rather than a local merchant. We managed to use up our 3 hours in the city easily enough - mainly searching for souvenir shops that looked slightly respectable. In one, I was busy looking through the displays of reproduction cannibal equipment and reading the little plaques explaining how they had been used in earlier times to cut peoples heads off and scoop out their brains, when Vivienne came running down the stairs and summoned us all up to the second floor. Upstairs the walls were lined with elaborate wooden carvings, and display cases were filled with charms and pendants and shell necklaces - but Vivienne was pointing open mouthed at the centrepiece of the room, which was a life-size wooden fertility statue of a man, complete with thirty inch erect phallus. This, as you can imagine, was something of a talking point over dinner tonight for the girls. The rest of us just sat there and felt inadequate

You can read my full travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Visit the Fiji Museum in central Suva lcated in the Thurston Gardens. Great overview of Fijian culture and history.

Last night after watching the sunset, I went to the bar to get myself a drink before calling it a night. There I met three great girls from Sydney - Cathy, Jackie and Bronwyn. We all got on really well straight away, and made arrangements to catch a local bus this morning into the local town of Sigatoka. This, in itself, turned out to be something of a culture trip. We met down in the lobby early this morning and walked down the long drive that connects the complex to the main road. I really am right in the middle of nowhere here - at the end of the drive, the main road simply stretches away as far as the eye can see in both directions. The bus, when it appeared, was simply a dot on the horizon which got slowly bigger until it screeched to a halt beside us. It was a rickety old thing, driven by another rickety old thing, and once on board we bounced along the dirt road on our way to Sigatoka, chickens clucking around on the roof and women in dirty shawls huddled in the corner with baskets of god-knows-what. Sigatoka was much like a smaller version of Suva, and all four of us spent much of our time fighting off vendors who had obviously seen us coming. In the flea market the stall holders were willing to do virtually anything to prevent us from leaving, so we came up with the idea that one of us would go in and look around while the others stood outside to avoid being pounced on as a group of tourists. This didn't work at all, as those of us waiting outside were simply approached from every direction by vendors who had seen us across the street and wanted to see if we needed any phallic shaped fertility charms. "Just come and look at my stall", said one, "No harm in looking, yes?" Once you go and look, of course, the hard sell begins and you become trapped. The next stallholder over will stop you on the way past and say "You looked at my friends stall, it isn't fair that you don't look at mine." To get you through the door many store owners will give you some trinket free if you look, usually a brooch or necklace with a value of probably less than nothing. I tried without success to explain to the girls that they would get a much better deal if they bought souvenirs from the Baravi Handicraft Centre which we would be passing on the way back to the Naviti, but sometimes it's just impossible to resist the pull of some exotic looking wooden cannibal fork offered by a local merchant along with the serious-faced promise that "we don't use them any more".

You can read my full travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

try and learn the language and hang out with local people so you can learn about their amazing culture and leave fiji with more than just a tan

Took the ferry out ou lautoka to the outher eastern islands! Spent one day in Lautoka visiting a music festival.....great place to mengle with locals and experience the local lifestyle....

lovely island. everything u want there! go for the snorkeling trips that musket cove resort offer. they r awsum!

Go to Kuata Isalnd and swim with the friendly reefsharks!!! John the guide is amazing and the trip is really worth the 20 Dollars. Also take your own snorkeling gear with you, it gets expensive to borrow it each time...

No children under 12. Great place to watch sunsets. Awesome snorkeling just off the front beach.

At 30,000 feet, the stewardess on flight FJ910 to Fiji asked me if I would like the chicken or the lamb. I have absolutely no idea why she asked me this, because what I got on my tray didn't even begin to come close to either of them. I read once that McDonalds were being considered to take over the in-flight catering on British Airways flights, but I gather that nothing came of it.It's a shame, really - I quite like the idea of being asked by a stewardess with a little red and yellow hat if I would like the Big Mac in a red wine sauce or the Chicken McNuggets Parmesan. At least you wouldn't have to concern yourself too much with whether to eat in or take away. The flight from Australia to Fiji only takes about three hours, which is a lot less than I had been expecting - it almost seemed as though we were returning to the ground before even reaching cruising altitude, but perhaps that's because I've got used to some seriously long haul flights over the last three months and anything less than twelve hours seems like heaven. After showing a ridiculously unfunny film starring Leslie Nielson, a man who these days seems to get every comedy part going, we were forced to watch a short information film on the Fiji Islands. I say "forced", although I do admit that no actual guns were used or anything - it's just that, having been given headsets so that we could choose whether to listen to the film or not, we were given no option for turning off the soundtrack to the Fiji information film. Some of the passengers had clearly had long days and were not at all happy to be woken up mid-flight, and the old lady in the seat next to me was so startled that she stuck me with a pointy elbow as she twisted around in her seat. I learnt, courtesy of the information film, that Fiji has come a long way since the days when being invited over for lunch suggested you could expect to be eaten somewhere between the fish course and desert. This is always nice to know when arriving in a new country, although I think most of us had already taken it for granted before booking that we're no longer living in the days of cannibals and head-hunters. Unsurprisingly, Fiji doesn't much like being known around the world as The Cannibal Islands , although they clearly still find the time to remind everybody on the way in just in case any of us step out of line. I would like to say that Fiji has made a lot of effort to bring themselves into the modern world and put their past behind them, but the problem is that they seem to have stopped the modernisation process somewhere in the seventies. I remember thinking that if the haircuts on the people in the information film were anything to go by, everybody in Fiji must look like a member of the Jackson Five. This was seriously funny stuff - every man, woman and child in the film was proudly sporting a microphone haircut of the first order. I assumed, at least until leaving the plane on the Fijian Island of Viti Levu, that this information film had been made some time ago and they'd been showing it ever since - but No! Upon disembarking, I was met with the sight of a lounge full of seventies throwbacks. The land that time forgot. I wanted to go up to the nearest guy and ask if he knew Huggy Bear.You can read my full travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

A great place for snorkelling and water activities with friendly natives who are extremly laid back my style.It is warm but not so bad but can be deceiving I was severely sunburned even though I put on sun lotion and the sky was full of clouds so be careful slap on plenty of sunblock.If you cut your feet be careful swimming in the water you get could get some nasty type of coral that could grow in your foot and cause a bad infection ,I had a big blister that was on my foot and had to refrain from water activities it sucked but at least I didnt lose my foot.Dont be too trusting of the natives the majority are good honest people but there are a few bad eggs as in all parts of the world so dont take free rides off people you dont know or get dragged into shops to buy stuff its all common sense though.A guy we know got ripped off major paying over the amount for souvenirs but he did get his money back later .Be careful about what boat tours you take to the islands as some of these guys tend to scrimp on safety jackets not good if you get caught in the unexpected storms of fiji.Dont go to the big resort type islands they are not as much fun as the small islands and you pay more ,stick to a smaller island you will have a blast and staff are nicer .Tip the locals if possible they desrve it they make hardly no money and work rediculous hours and they really do alot for the tourists and put up with alot and are genuine unlike some places in Thailand .One guy we paid drove us out to this fantastic beach picked up ice and beers waited while we were there an even came out and played some soccer with us and was good fun and very friendly he did alot that we didnt ask for and was more like a tour guide than a driver .Fiji is a good place to go for beach an sun and water activities .

lovely island. everything u want there! go for the snorkeling trips that musket cove resort offer. they r awsum!

born and bred here, got suva in the bone. avoid the city if you are a tourist, full of dirt and dust and is unbearable in the sunny season and less so in the wet season. singh's curry is the best restaurant in town. some good night spots - avoid purple haze.

great place but don't stay there long there are so many islands to see and so much diving to do get out there and enjoy fiji islands. island life!!!

Try and get an air conditioned room if you can. The air is very stuffy. The water is fantastic for swimming. Much nicer beaches than on the mainland. But, be aware that there is really no option for any shopping!

It is a lovely place but good to know before you go that food and booze are really expensive.

The Naviti Resort has its own tour office, and I booked a trip today to the capital city of Suva on the other side of the island, leaving at 10 this morning. I figured that I may as well see the big city early in my stay, and then I can do what I came here to do - relax. They serve breakfast here until 11.00 and I can't tell you how good it is not to have to get up at the crack of dawn to eat or get on a tour bus. In Australia, they tend to finish serving breakfast at all the hotels about 8.30 to 9.00, and who the hell is up at that time on holiday? Suva was not at all what I had expected. It was a large concrete jungle of small shops, although everything was crowded together and organised around large market squares on which crowds of salesmen were sitting cross-legged with their goods arranged hap-hazardly around them in the road. Suva is a bit of a dichotomy - on the one hand there is clearly a flourishing trade in souvenirs and tourism, and yet the buildings all look as though they haven't been repaired for a hundred years and are in danger of falling down. Local trading seems to take place mainly from market stalls in the centre of town under a large tent structure, where you can buy anything from fruit and veg to cheap watches. Stray and hungry looking dogs were everywhere, even in the markets sniffing at the food, but nobody seemed to be bothered by this. Everywhere you look people are sitting around on the streets, and it's never quite obvious whether they are beggars or if that's just what you do here. Clearly, the traders will do anything to part you from your money - the wages are so low that they all depend on tourists for their money and this makes it virtually impossible to walk any distance without somebody stopping you and giving you a hard luck story. Taxi drivers will happily take you wherever you want to go, and spend the entire journey trying to convince you that you should call them for all of your travel arrangements during your stay so that they can give you a much better deal than the tour offices. In the streets, every shop has a pack of workers outside to drag tourists inside. They'll follow you around the shop telling you why you should buy everything, and then attempt to sweet-talk you into giving them a tip which is normally more than you paid for whatever you bought. In one shop, I bought a beautiful wooden carving to take home as a souvenir and the shopkeeper followed me out of the shop and all the way down the road trying to talk me into going back for more. I joined up with a bunch of other guys from the bus - Vivienne and Nora from Australia, John and Dave from New Zealand, and an older couple from Canada - and we went exploring in Suva. Nora and Vivienne went shopping for clothes in the flea market and the rest of us did a bit of browsing, bought a few things and ended up running for the nearest café with shop owners in pursuit touting for more business. The average weekly wage in Fiji is the equivalent of about £25, so it's hardly surprising that there seems to be a really startling level of confidence trickery and overcharging going on in the shops and at the street stalls. It was even an exercise in advanced negotiation to get hold of a film for my camera - the whole group chipped in and bargained for some time to try to get a fair price, and we came away thinking we'd done a pretty good job between us. Five minutes later, we found the same film in the Kodak shop down the road for about a third of the price we'd paid. The specialist handicraft shops, licensed by the government, are another matter entirely. Its like I mentioned back in Thailand, you can find things in handicraft shops that are being sold in the markets at hugely inflated prices - you just have to look for places that look as though they're run by a big company rather than a local merchant. We managed to use up our 3 hours in the city easily enough - mainly searching for souvenir shops that looked slightly respectable. In one, I was busy looking through the displays of reproduction cannibal equipment and reading the little plaques explaining how they had been used in earlier times to cut peoples heads off and scoop out their brains, when Vivienne came running down the stairs and summoned us all up to the second floor. Upstairs the walls were lined with elaborate wooden carvings, and display cases were filled with charms and pendants and shell necklaces - but Vivienne was pointing open mouthed at the centrepiece of the room, which was a life-size wooden fertility statue of a man, complete with thirty inch erect phallus. This, as you can imagine, was something of a talking point over dinner tonight for the girls. The rest of us just sat there and felt inadequate

You can read my full travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2