Dear Reem, Simon and Aria

At the beginning of our trip, back in October, we stayed in our first beachside accommodation on Koh Tao. Who would have thought that five months later, we would still not get bored of sitting on a beach, watching sunsets and enjoying beautiful weather at what is possibly our last beachside accommodation of the trip. Sitting with your toes in the warm soft sand, being able to swim in the pool at any time of day or night, having the tough decision of whether to spend the day on a sunlounger or in a hammock, making friends with the rough around the edges local dogs and reverting back to a maximum of two items of clothing at any time. You can be pleased that we spent your kind wedding gift so well by saving it for this moment.

Welcome to Fiji or 'Bula' as the locals say which means 'hallo' if you didn't guess, an island paradise in the Pacific ocean where the locals are proud of living by 'island time' which is basically an excuse why the service everywhere is so slow. Fijian traditions consist entirely of getting stoned on a root based drink called 'kava', so you know this is a place to come for its culture. Fiji is a country that is in the process of recovering from the worst cyclone that has ever hit it. Today, we saw evidence of this when we went to a botanic garden and saw a tree fallen over.

So far we have made it as far as Bamboo, a friendly hostel on the beach just outside the airport. This was only meant to be a temporary stop before we headed off to some picturesque desert islands but sort of got stuck here and still haven't left four days later. Perhaps it is the wealth of entertainment they put on here. With hourly activities every day, you could never get bored. For example, we played a game where you had to try and smash a watermelon with a cricket stump while being blindfolded the other day. How can you compete with that sort of entertainment? My only gripe is that every day they advertise Bingo at two o'clock which never seems to happen. I want to play Bingo. But you know, I can cope with these levels of inconveniences when the swimming pool is nearer than the toilet. I have missed weeing in the pool so much through all our barren times in New Zealand.

And so in keeping with a honeymoon that has been populated with a third member at every opportunity, we have been joined for the Fiji leg of our tour by Jordan, a friend we made on our very first flight from London to Bangkok who had the distinction of being the drunkest person on the plane by far. Jordan is a girl with an aversion to wearing clothes, who likes getting drunk and falling asleep at the table, tells stories that go on and on and make no sense whatsoever and has a limited knowledge of statistical maths. For example, she is under the deluded impression that seeing two German penises allows her to be able to say with all certainty that all German penises are of a particular size. I had to point out to her that she would need to see at least 398 other German penises to be able to say with a 95% confidence interval that her assessment of German penises is correct. This is possibly the only blog in the world that can make a joke that involves German penises and statistics. Boom.

But it is not all fun and games here. I have discovered a new skill to add to the CV after we convinced a young chap from Birmingham that a bottle of wine, several vodka and cokes and a couple of jaeger shots combined with no previous hairdressing experience was in no way a drawback to letting us cut his hair. He could walk away proud of our achievement.

I have also been honing my 'not being a b**** and actually being nice to people we meet' skills. Yesterday, I managed to have a half an hour conversation with a German about his Australian Visa without laughing no matter how many times he pronounced it 'weesa'. See I am getting better.

Lots of love

Jim and Donna