We arrived in Fiji, with our jackets and fleeces quickly packed away, and a Fijian band played music welcoming us in at the airport. We had heard quite a few bad things about Fiji, such as it's not safe, there are a lot of thefts, it's dirty blah blah blah. Fiji is a third world country and although some areas are not particularly nice it isn't the same for the whole of the Island. We flew into Nadi and were expecting to be harassed by taxi men etc as people had told us, but we weren't, a few people asked us if we wanted a taxi and when we politely said no, the left us alone. In fact the whole airport is very relaxing, most of the staff slowly walk about, have a chat, have a drink, and hardly do any work at all. I felt instantly more relaxed. We got the local bus to the coral coast on the south of the main island. The islands off the mainland are the nicest but also very expensive, it costs a fortune even to stay in a dorm room, even more pricey than Oz and NZ, so I don't know whos getting all the money but I doubt its the locals. The coral coast is still very nice and it wasn't very busy either. The locals say that since the military coup which happened not long ago many have stayed away, but it seemed quite safe to us. There were no problems against tourists there.The bus ride was fun in itself, we saw beautiful coast line, and they even played Free Willy 3 on the bus (yeah I didn't know they made No. 3 either!). The population is 55% Fijian and 45% Indian. I think the British brought Indian labourers over years ago. All the people are really friendly and will shout Bula (Fijian for Hello) from miles away. We had booked to stay in 1 hotel but it was fully booked for our first night so we stayed in a dorm hostel the first night, and we went on a walk just to check the hotel out it the day before. But we missed it and carried on walking and ended up in one of the local villages. 3 men were shovelling sand into a wheelbarrow and carrying it up to there house and a small Fijian kid was with them about 3 years old. As soon as he saw me he opened up his arms with a big grin on his face and ran at me, grabbed hold of my skirt and wouldn't let go. I managed to get his hands off eventually while all his family shouted at him! Sorry I'm going to make you jealous now, we stayed on the beach and by the pool all day, went swimming and just totally relaxed. We went snorkelling out in the lagoon one day and we saw tonnes of colourful fish and blue star fish and a crown of thorns, this big weird thing that kills all the coral. The water was so clear you could see the fish just by looking down into the water when on the shore. We went out in the few restaurants they had, they had a lot of Indian food. We met a few locals, one British guy who liked to talk to Chris and I about the state of our country (even though he hadn't been back for 50 yrs), very annoying! It was a lovely relaxing holiday, we only had 2 cloudy days which wasn't too bad. I could have stayed there longer quite easily, most times we were o the beach we were the only ones there.