Fiji Time

Hi All, We're in Sydney, Australia now after 10 relaxing days in the Yasawa Islands and 2 days in Nadi, Fiji. We didn't go Island hopping we just had 10 lazy days in one resort, The Coconut Bay it was heaven. The resort is extremely basic, it has no hot water, apart from the sea(!) and electricity only between the hours of 6 - 11pm. It was almost like being back in the jungle.

Our time spent in the resort was ruled by a succession of gongs, 8am breakfast, 12 noon lunch, 4pm afternoon tea and then 7pm dinner (and dancing!) Everything is run on Fiji Time, i.e there is no urgency or rush to do anything, definitely my kind of place! there are no clocks anywhere.

We were like part of the family when we left and it was a bit emotional saying goodbye to the locals who have made us feel so welcome. Every night around 3-4 of the guys would dress up in grass skirts and tops and do their welcome Bula Dance, which we then had to do too, then there was some kind of Fijian dance that we didn't have to partake in (thankfully!!) there was then a farewell song sang for anybody that was leaving the next day and then we would play cards and listen to some dodgy Fijian music drinking ice cold beer, it's not a bad life eh??

It is a very simple life they live, no telephone or T.V, there was internet access at the next resort to where we were staying, but other than that the locals have no real contact with the outside world. Matt spent many hours showing them card tricks, talking about England, the internet and music. They loved him!! Everyday it would be "yo bro" or "hey Matthew" which made it all the more sad to leave. He was even dragged to the internet place a couple of times to set the locals up with email addresses and facebook logons.

On Sunday it was Matt's Birthday and they baked him a massive Birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday to him (about 12 of them) they also made us necklaces from flowers, it really is a beautiful resort with friendly people.

The food wasn't really much to write home about despite the good reviews in Lonely Planet, I think I have eaten my own body weight in mixed frozen veg while we were there, they put it in everything! We did have a curry one night (a mixed frozen veg one for me!!) but on the whole it was pretty basic. There was lots of lovely fresh fruit for breakfast and would you believe weetabix!!

So that was our 10 days in Fiji, not a lot to tell you really, it was just a lovely relaxing time doing nothing but chill out.