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 awaaaaay!

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.

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 322 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 (Remember, this was 1999 - Ed)

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.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.