Saturday, September 10, 2005

Sometime in late August...


I've been back home for about three weeks now and I've had so much time on my hands, I don't know what to do with myself. School doesn't start for another few weeks and I haven't been able to get a job, but that hasn't stopped me from hopelessly applying for a bunch. I've been watching tons of movies, doing a bit of reading, eventless hanging out with friends, and much staring at the wall. Did I mention that I've been looking at tons of internet porn? I probably should have left that part out.
In case you're interested, here's a summary of how the rest of my travels turned out in Fiji: From the moment I stepped off the airplane I felt like I was getting royally hustled. My flight out of Melbourne had been delayed a day and I hadn't been able to get in touch with Dan and Chris. I was greeted at the airport by a bearded Fijian woman who mysteriously knew me by name. She swept me away to her office and I found out she had been the travel agent for my friends. She told me I owed her $67 cash for an up-front deposit and was supposed to meet Dan and Chris on some island the following morning. I was forced to pay in cash, there was no receipt, I had no way of getting in contact with the guys, and my ATM card miraculously stopped working. Meanwhile, some girl that I had just met on the flight over named Anna was waiting for me while I tried to sort through all the nonsense. Turns out she was the past president of JCH college.
Somehow things wound up working out, and somehow Anna and I had to share the last bed left at some shady hostel that night. When we walked into our room, there was some guy just standing in there naked. Mind you it was a multiple-person room, but this guy made no effort to throw on any clothes even after acknowledging Anna's presence. Total weirdo.
The next morning I set off for Mana. It was like paradise, except that I got sick on my second night and puked up everything in my system. While on the island, we stayed at this cheap lodge but kept leeching off the resort and all of their activities. The first night I won three times at Bingo for a grand total of $35. At coconut ice cream making the next day, though, I got busted for being a backpacker and they kicked me out, but not before I got to have my ice cream. Because we were backpackers eager to save money any way we could, instead of taking a proper boat from Mana over to Beachcomber, they put us on the smallest ghetto jetboat while the weather conditions were terrible. The waves were incredibly choppy and I'm pretty sure I broke my tailbone, not to mention that I might have just as well jumped in and swam by how soaked I got during the ride. One of the waves hit me so hard that I was knocked straight backwards and almost out of the boat. Another near death experience was while watching the fire twirlers at a bar one night. Three times the flame stick flew out of the twirlers hand and landed in the audience, once even setting a guy's clothes on fire. Don't worry, though, the flames for those shows aren't typically as hot as a normal flame. 
After Mana we went to this crazy party island called Beachcomber. Instead of picking up any cute single girls, we managed to befriend this 24 year old associate professor of neuroscience from Ottawa who was getting harassed by this shady guy from LA all night. I also sort of won the chess tournament on the island earlier in the day and was rewarded with a free jug of beer that I couldn't even really drink because my stomach was still recovering from the bad fish that I think I'd eaten the night before. Dan and I and Chris were the only three that showed up to the chess tournament at first, then some other random stragglers, I beat Chris, he beat two other kids, I refused to play another game because I was mentally drained, so I won somehow. We also played tons of scrabble (the weather was pretty bad outside). I still had two days on the mainland after Dan and Chris left, so I spent them latching onto this British couple.
So that's Fiji in a nutshell.

1 comment:

Lucky Balaraman said...
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