Nadi, Viti Levu, Fiji

3rd November – 6th November 2017

After getting on the ferry, I knew that I had a long ride back to the main island, as I had got on at the furthest possible stop. I sat in the bottom part of the ferry, where it was air conditioned and got myself comfy. It was quite quiet when I first got on, so I could take up and couple of chairs and lie down to try and get some sleep. This didn’t last very long though, as it got busier and busier, and then I got two children sat behind me who constantly kicked my chair, so it wasn’t so chilled out anymore.

Over four hours later, we arrived back at the main port, Port Denarau. When we arrived, we had to wait on the land for our bags to be taken off the ferry, so that we could reclaim them. Once I had my bag, there were coaches that were put on by the company, to take people to various different hotels and hostels, which was very handy. It was already going dark when we arrived back on the main land, so it was nice to not have to faff about trying to find my way to the hostel.

When I arrived at the hostel, I checked in and was shown to my room. I had booked a four-bed dorm, but luckily, I was the only person in there for the night! I dropped my things off and had a wander around the hostel to get my bearings of the place.

After my wander, I settled in the bar area for a while. The night entertainment was Fijian dancing and fire dancers, so I watched that for a little bit. I wasn’t particularly hungry for dinner, so I thought I would just order a sandwich; when the sandwich arrived, it was the size of my head and I really couldn’t manage it all.

For the rest of the evening, I chilled out in the bar area, before I went to bed. It was nice to have the room to myself for the evening because I didn’t have to worry about waking anyone else up and I didn’t have to worry about being woken up by others.

The next morning, I woke up really early originally, but when I saw it was only 5.30, I rolled over and went back to sleep. I woke up again at 7.30 and gradually managed to get myself out of bed. As much as I didn’t have to have an early start, I wanted to go into the town and with it being a Saturday, I expected it to be very busy, so I got up. While I was getting ready in the bathroom, a couple were shown to the room by one of the workers, by the time I came out of the bathroom, they had all disappeared, with their luggage, so I had no idea what happened there.

Once I was ready, I went down for my breakfast, which wasn’t exciting at all: I just had two pieces of toast. After breakfast, I got all of my things together and went to the front of the hostel, to wait for the bus into the town.

The bus arrived just after 9, and it was a bus like I’ve never seen before. I got on and had to but a card – I was surprised it had the technology for something like a card scanner, because it didn’t even have windows. For the first part of the journey, the bus would just stop anywhere on the road, where someone was stood – there were no bus stops. As we got a little closer to the town, more bus stops appeared, but I still don’t think there were any set rules.

I arrived at the main street and got off the bus. The town of Nadi was nothing like I expected it to be. I knew that the resorts were obviously done up and higher class, but I couldn’t believe the difference between the high end resorts and how poor and run down the town of Nadi looked! Walking down the street, I didn’t feel entirely comfortable, but I kept my head up and smiled at people as they passed me.

At the end of the main street was the Hindu Temple that I wanted to visit: Sri Sivi Subramaniya Swami Temple. I was a little disappointed when I got there, as the beautiful building, that I had seen on photos, was covered by sheets, as they were doing restoration work. I still decided to do in though, as I thought it would be interesting to see the inside.

At the entrance, I paid $5 and was given some material to cover my shoulders. I then had to take off my shoes, before I was shown around by one of the workers. I understood that taking your shoes off before entering is a sign of respect but it was so hot and the floor was baking, so it was a little uncomfortable. I was allowed to take photos outside the temple, and of the inside of the temple, from outside, but no photos were allowed once I entered into the temple.

The temple is the largest Hindu Temple in the Southern Hemisphere and it was originally built on the river banks of the Nadi river. It was originally designed and built by Indians who came to Fiji hundreds of years ago. Over the years, there were too many flood threats, so they decided to rebuild the temple on the other side of Nadi, in the centre, where it was a little more protected.

I was shown around the temple, looking at all of the smaller temples within the bigger one, each dedicated to a different God; they believe that there is only one God, but he comes in different forms, and these different forms have their own temple. Ganesh had two, one of which was the biggest and one closest to the front, as he is the leader of all of the other Gods.

The design work inside was beautiful and the detail was amazing; the vibrant colours made it so attractive and mesmerising. There were certain parts of the temple, which only dedicated worshipers could go into and then other parts where only priests could go into. There are seven priests at the temple: two are from India and the other five are local. There is then an Indian artist who also works full time at the temple and is working on the restoration.

The restoration is being done because next July is the 24^th birthday of the temple and every 12^th year is a special occasion. I did ask why 12, but he just said that that is the cycle. For the celebration, all of the chief priests from all over the world will come to the Sri Sivi Subramaniya Swami temple to worship. It was just a shame for me, as I couldn’t see the full beauty of the whole temple.

After my guided tour, I was allowed to walk around on my own for a little bit, but without shoes it was very uncomfortable on the hot floor, so I didn’t last very long. I handed back my material, got my shoes back and walked back through the town.

On my way back through the town, I stopped off at a market with handmade items in it. I only really wanted to wander through the stall at my own leisure, but that wasn’t possible at all: every stall holder tried to drag me into their stall to look at their items. One man pulled me into his stall and I had a look to be polite. He invited me to sit on the mat on the floor so that he could show me his home village on a map of Fiji. He told me that Fiji stands for ‘fun in jungle island’ and that I needed to relax and be on Fiji time; as much as I wanted to try and be polite, I also wanted to leave. I had a look around his stall and told him that I couldn’t fit anything in my bag – he didn’t believe me, so I eventually caved and bought a mini wooden turtle, which he engraved for me, just so that I could get out of there. I think there’s a difference between being friendly and going too far, and he was definitely pushing that boundary, so I left.

After walking through the rest of the stalls, very briefly, I left the market – I just wanted to get out of there. I walked back down the main street towards the bus stop. Just before the bus arrived, I nipped into the supermarket to buy some snacks for lunch for the next couple of days. Afterwards, I got on the bus and head back towards the hostel.

On the way back, the same rules applied to the bus, as in it would stop anywhere to pick up or drop off people, but I just didn’t realise how flexible they were: I pulled the bell as we turned onto the road where the hostel was and the bus just stopped where I pulled the bell. I had to then awkwardly ask him to keep driving to the bottom, where he nearly drove passed the hostel, as I didn’t pull the bell. I made it off in the end though.

Back at the hostel, I didn’t do much all afternoon. Just after lunch time, the clouds came over the town and the rain came. It rained hard and it rained all afternoon. There’s only so much you can do when it’s raining, and the afternoon became very boring for me – the first time I have been bored in a very very long time and I didn’t like it. The rain soon turned into thunder and lightning and the boredom got worse as the afternoon dragged, as it just wasn’t relaxing at all and there was nowhere to just chill out.

Eventually, evening arrived and more people started to emerge. I made some new friends and sat with them for a while. There was a Halloween party going on at the hostel, which was weird for me as Halloween had already happened and everyone was celebrating bonfire night at home. We sat under the shelter in the outdoor part of the restaurant listening to the music. I went to bed relatively early in comparison to everyone else, but I was tired and I wasn’t particularly interested in the party anyway.

Overnight, Joe set off from home on his way to meet me, so I woke up very early, excited about the fact that I only had one more day alone. When I woke up, my phone said it was 6.20, but it was still dark outside, which was very unusual. When I checked the world clocks, I realised that we had gone forward an hour – I knew this was happening soon but different people kept telling me it was happening at different times, so I didn’t know when it was definitely happening. After I figured all of that out, I rolled over and tried to get some more sleep – it was far too early to do anything else.

I woke up again and got up at about 8.30. I went for breakfast and sat with the people I had sat with at the party. We had breakfast and everyone discussed their plans for the day, as it was another gloomy day in Fiji and we knew there wasn’t much to do in rainy weather in Fiji.

After breakfast, I had a wander to the hostel down the road, as I knew that some of the people I had met on the islands were staying there. Jodie and James, one of the couples from the island, were going to be on the same flight as me to Auckland, so I wanted to find them to organise sharing a taxi to the airport the next morning. Luckily, I bumped into them straight away, which was very handy.

I spent most of the morning chilling out with Jodie and James. We walked to the shop so that they could get some breakfast, as they didn’t have it included, then we walked back and sat in the hostel I was staying at, as it was a bit bigger than theirs. We chilled out and had a catch up, before they had to go back to their hostel to move rooms and organise themselves.

Once Jodie and James had left, I sat around for a while longer, organising things on my laptop to try and pass some time. The cloudy and rainy weather was not good at all, as there was nothing else to do and it made time go much slower.

Late in the afternoon, I went back to the room to get myself organised to leave the next day. I had a shower and packed my bags. It took me a lot longer than it should have done, but I had plenty of time to waste, so it didn’t really matter.

After everything was organised for leaving, I went back to the bar area. Selina (one of the girls I had met at the Halloween party) was there, so I sat with her for a while. While we were sat there, Jodie and James came back. They were going to have dinner at Smugglers with us, but as it was cheaper at their hostel, we all decided to go there instead, as we were all on travelling budgets. For dinner, I ordered a pizza.

After dinner, we all walked back to Smugglers, as that was where the nightly entertainment was. There were Fijian dancers and fire dancers again – they were very impressive. While we were sat there watching the show and having a chat, I felt something hit my leg. At first I thought it was a bug, as there were so many around, it happened a lot; however when I looked down, there was a gecko attached to my leg! Geckos don’t usually bother me but when one was attached to my leg, I freaked out slightly. I shook my leg and it eventually fell off but I was a bit on edge for a while after that. Towards the end of the show, they got some of us up to teach us the ‘Bula dance’ which is their version of the Macarena. I got up, but only because I was dragged up by a Fijian man, but it wasn’t so bad once I was up there.

 

The show ended on the beach, with the fire dancers putting on a show.

On the way back to the restaurant area, there was a different dancer, trying to drag people onto the dance floor. I avoided him at first, but he came back and got me. This time it was a little bit different and we had to just follow his moves, before we ended up doing the Fijian version of a conga. At the end, we all ended up in a circle and had to take it in turns to go in the middle and do our own dance, alone – this is my worst nightmare and as it worked its way around the circle, I got more and more nervous, but I did it!

After the dancing was over, we all decided it was time for bed – I definitely didn’t want to be dragged up for any more dancing. Back in the room, I double checked that everything was ready for the morning, before getting into bed. I was far too giddy to get any sleep at first, but I gradually drifted off.

Throughout the night, I woke up a few times, with excitement, but when I checked the time and realised that it was too early and that Joe wouldn’t have even landed yet, I went back to sleep. I woke up, for the last time, just before 6. I lay in bed for a while texting Joe, who was now only a three-hour flight away from me, in New Zealand. I eventually got up and ready; I grabbed some bread and jam from the breakfast bar (I couldn’t have toast as the power had cut out) and I walked down the road to meet Jodie and James to get our taxi to the airport, for our flight to Auckland!

My experience of Nadi was completely different to the rest of Fiji that I experienced. It was eye opening to see the difference between the nice resorts on the islands, to the poverty that there was in the streets of Nadi town. The weather didn’t help my Nadi experience, as I couldn’t get out as much as I liked, but I guess it gave me a couple of extra days to relax before the moving around and exploring starts again in New Zealand!

To travel is to live, Katie x