4/3/09 To save on a taxi fare we walked all the way to the bus station. We had a couple of rests on the way, including one at the bakery where I had hoped to buy some egg top buns and coconut buns to eat for lunch on the bus back to Nadi. They didn't have any out yet, unfortunately, so instead I bought a couple of Chinese sesame pastries. We had half an hour to wait after buying our tickets, and in that time a woman came up and started chatting. Cynically, I immediately suspected she had an ulterior motive, and I was proved right a couple of minutes later when she said that she was a tour operator and tried unsuccessfully to get us to go on a tour package to one of the other Fijian islands.
The bus was a delapidated, packed and non air conditioned local bus, different to the sort we'd got on the way here. As soon as we got on the bus, it started to pour with rain, but we passed through it on the way back to Nadi. I eagerly bit into one of the Chinese sesame buns, but found to my disappointment that it was a bit like an Eccles cake but with no filling apart from lots of air and a thin layer of sesame flavoured sludge on the bottom. I ate them anyway, because I was hungry. The scenery was beautiful - we passed rivers, beaches and forested mountains. We also went through several small villages which looked very poor, though.
On our arrival at Nadi bus station, we made our way to 'Nadi Downtown Backpackers'. We had been tempted to stay here because the leaflet we looked at in Suva said that they offered lots of free stuff - internet, games of pool, breakfast, airport shuttles - and that some dorm beds were only $12 a night. Once we'd checked in and paid for our three nights, we found out that it was all very misleading! The '$12 beds' didn't include taxes, so they were actually about $15, the pool was actually $2 a game and wasn't in use anyway because someone had nicked the white ball and a couple of other ones, the free internet was only 10 minutes each, the breakfast was only tea/coffee and two pieces of cold toast with a small scraping of jam on it, and the only time the airport shuttle was free was at 5 am! I wouldn't have minded if the internet wasn't free, because only one place we've stayed at in our travels has had unlimited free internet, but it was very misleading to make us believe it was unlimited here when it wasn't really. At the second place we stayed at in Sydney, we got free breakfast, and it was great - self serving for a start, and there was loads of cereal, milk, bread, jam, marmalade and even hot chocolate! That's why the breakfast in Nadi was so disappointing. At every place we'd stayed at so far, the prices of the beds were the same as those advertised, too.

5/3/09 The next day we had a long lie in and then we walked down the road to find cheap internet. Nadi has a large Indo-Fijian population (thousands of Indians were brought over to Fiji for indentured labour between 1870 and the 1920s, and others have emigrated here since), and I could tell the Indian influence straight away. The town centre consisted of one long street with Indian guys standing outside their shops trying to make you go in, for a start, it was quite dusty, and there was a massive Hindu temple at one end, which is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere apparently. We went on the internet for a while; Dave went on for 20 minutes, and then I meant to go on for the rest of the hour. Dave had gone back to the hostel, and I had only been on the computer for 10 minutes, when I was told that the power was going to be switched off on this side of the road in two minutes, so I needed to finish. I said "in that case, please can I have half my money back, because we paid for an hour and we've only been half an hour", and they said back "after 20 minutes it counts for an hour - and by the way, sharing computers isn't allowed"! If they were that concerned about sharing, why didn't they say anything when they saw Dave get off and me get on in the first place? We were sitting right in front of them! I shouldn't have been surprised, really, because there were notices up saying that it cost more to do practically anything apart from emailing. The stinginess of this is something I hadn't encountered before, and seeing as we'd just come out of the disppointing and misleading Downtown Backpackers, I was privately quite annoyed. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd known about the power switching-off in advance, but had deliberately let us pay for an hour when they knew we'd only actually get half that time.
I found another internet place, which cost $1 per hour more but didn't try any funny stuff on me. We didn't do much for the rest of the afternoon, apart from getting some drinks at the supermarket and looking round a couple of shops. In the evening we went out to a restaurant which did a mixture of Fijian, Western, Indian, Japanese and Chinese food, some intermixed. Dave had goat teriyaki curry, and I had a Fijian dish which I can't remember the name of now. It was sauce with fish chunks, some vegetables, a bit of coconut cream and something else in, and some chunks of cassava on the side. The sauce was absolutely delicious - usually I'm not that keen on savoury dishes with coconut in, but in this one I really liked it. Maybe because it was quite subtle? I hadn't expected to like the cassava, because it's a root vegetable similar to sweet potato and taro, but I was pleasantly surprised! The texture was more like a normal potato, and although a bit bland I didn't dislike the taste, like I do with swede and sweet potato for example. One I'd cut it all up into chunks and had put all the sauce on top, the combination was very nice. Dave didn't like his goat teriyaki, though, because the meat was a bit tough and his whole meal was served lukewarm. On the way there and back, we passed lots of Fijian women sitting on the pavement with an upturned box in front of them, which had brown paper bags of powdered yaqona root (used to make kava) on top. They tried to get us to buy some, but because we have already tried it and know it's like drinking muddy water, we refused.

6/3/09 We didn't do that much today. We had a closer look at the big Hindu temple, but didn't look round properly because we were put off by the elaborate dress code. Dave bought a piece of abstract-patterned 'tapu' for himself, but couldn't send it off because the post office had closed literally two minutes before he got there. In the evening, we were just on our way out when we noticed that in the dining area they had the opening day of the World Rugby 7s Tournament in Dubai on, so watched a few of the matches before carrying on out. Once we got outside we realsied that we weren't actually that hungry, so we just bought an ice lolly each before heading back. On the way back, we passed a big group of Fijians crowded outside a shop which showed the rugby, so we guessed that Fiji were playing. When we got back to the hotel, we found we were right! Fiji had won the last tournament, so they were desperate for them to win this time too. There were lots of billboards in Suva supporting them too, and shops with Fiji rugby 7s merchandise in them. We watched more of the matches, including some womens' ones, for a long time before going to bed.
A new couple had moved in before we went out to get our ice lolly dinner - Yan and Nadia, from Brittany originally. They were lovely, and we swapped a lot of travelling advice and stories. Then when I told them about how much of a sham the hostel was, they said that they'd asked for one of the towels, advertised as free, and were given one which had massive holes and tears in it. I took a photo of them with it, just to indicate to everybody the general standard of the place! If any of you go to Nadi, do not stay here - stay at a place by the beach instead. They may be further away from the town centre, but hopefully they won't be so substandard and misleading about everything!