After spending the last few days in Fiji drinking beer (that's what happens - you walk down the beach, some of the locals invite you to join them for a beer and you stagger home several hours later) it was time to prepare for the journey to Los Angeles. Thanks to the International Date Line, this meant leaving Nadi at 10:50pm on Tuesday, flying for just over ten hours, and landing at 1:10pm on Tuesday. I worked out that Tuesday lasted 44 hours, so the jet lag actually wasn't that bad, despite not sleeping much on the plane. At least I managed to finally see "X-Men 3" (always watch until the end of the credits, folks...)

Other entertainment on the flight was the American woman who was sitting beside me, and who complained of having recently had a knee operation. Several times she moved to get up but insisted I didn't have to move, she would just climb over the armrests. She was very sprightly for an invalid, but she seemed to have a relapse when it came time to join the queues at passport control when I saw her being pushed to the front in a wheelchair, holding her crutches. Poor woman.

Just about everybody I'd spoken to, both before leaving the UK and while travelling, had warned me about LA being the worst place on the planet. Sure, LAX is a big and empty place, and my list of previous destinations caused a few raised eyebrows at customs, but I got through without any problems (like testing positive for heroin again). It was then pretty straightforward to get a shared shuttle bus to the Orbit hostel in West Hollywood, despite the minibus driver being rude, unable to speak English very well, and with no idea where he was going. This being America, it's a tipping culture, so everyone expects a reward for being incompetent.

Tuesday night was stand-up comedy night at the hostel, where a bunch of comedians try out their material in front of backpackers. As usual, they ranged from the good to the useless - the compere was an English wannabe actor (like everybody else in Hollywood) and while some of the acts thrived and improvised with the international crowd, others floundered when their US-centric jokes were received with silence and blank looks.

The travel and tour operator at the hostel is a lively Indonesian bloke who labours under the possibly made-up name of Boogie Fever. Through him I organised going on a tour of LA the next day. The morning came and about 12 of us were packed into a minibus being driven by Mickey Z. Mr Z, it should be pointed out, was born in New York but moved here when he was a few months old, so he's an LA native - unlike most of the other tour guides, as he kept telling us. Funnily enough, he's also worked extensively in the entertainment industries - as a driver, set co-ordinator, handyman...

He kept mentioning that he'd travelled extensively when he was driving for the Slayer tour in '88. He was at school with Slash and Steven Adler from Guns N' Roses, Tracii Guns, and Lita Ford (who gave him his nickname), he ran into Madonna and Sandra Bernhardt when they were going out, he knows the guitarist from A Perfect Circle (who I've seen live in London)... The showbiz stories came thick and fast, and there was no need to worry if you forgot any of it - he'd be sure to remind you again three minutes later. Whether any of this is true is beside the point, not to mention the fact that most of the twenty-somethings he drives around would be hard-pressed to know who many of these people are.

Our tour took us through Beverly Hills and past the homes of several stars - they're big and fancy, we didn't see any although Richard Gere's car drove past just before we got to his house. Then it was on to Graumann's Chinese Theater and the Walk of Fame. R2-D2 has bigger feet than me, but Darth Vader's are smaller. Of the standard humans, I could only fit my size 12's into Johnny Depp's imprints.

We only had a short time at each destination to look around, and next it was off to Rodeo Drive to look at a few expensive shops and then on to Venice Beach for lunch. After this, though, came the special part of the tour. Mickey Z, you see, knows everybody - including various gang members. His tour is the only one to take in skid row and South Central LA (at least, according to Mickey Z). Apparently it took him months of negotiation with various gangs to ensure he had safe passage with his group of tourists. He told us we would see people smoking crack on the streets, and other delights.

First up was Inglewood, which - despite its reputation - is for the most part pretty nice. There are large houses owned by prominent doctors, lawyers and drug dealers. Then we moved on to South Central itself, where we were the only non-African American people in sight. Mickey Z dubbed us the WBG or White Boy Gang - despite us not being a gang, or indeed all white or boys. We saw the alleyway where the good guy was shot in Boyz N The Hood, saw plenty of houses with iron bars covering all the doors and windows, and - against expectations - actually encountered one of Mickey Z's gangsta friends...

Driving down one of the streets, Mickey suddenly shouted "SEVEN-UP!" and pulled in to the side of the road as a muscled black man with a tidy beard and corn-row hairstyle strolled over from his front porch. Seven-Up was initially wary until Mickey took off his headphones and microphone, since all the other gang members Mickey knew had been imprisoned in the last few weeks. Mr Z had a short conversation with Mr Up, then drove on to skid row. Funnily enough we didn't actually see anybody smoking crack, although we did see something truly rare - a couple of white people.

Next up was downtown LA, which is popular as a filming location since the skyline can be used as a double for New York. At the moment they're filming the live-action Transformers movie here, and there have been several explosions recently. We didn't see any actual Transformers, but they've all been changed beyond recognition anyway - I saw a picture of the new Megatron last month, and he's totally different. Oh well, it's a Michael Bay film, that's only to be expected.

Final stop was a trip to take a picture of the Hollywood sign (the Y shadows the W only at this time of year at about 3 in the afternoon, so we have special pictures). Then back for a game of sahccer with Boogie and various random guys from the hostel. Following this, it was time to explore some of the LA nightlife, so I got a bite to eat with Paul, Liddy and Georgina (all English) from the same room as me, and we went to the Saddle Ranch bar.

As I said, everybody in America expects a tip, which means that your drinks cost an extra $1 for the privilege of having a failed actress with plastic breasts open the bottle for you. The saddle ranch also has a mechanical bull, and after being badgered by the bull operator for about an hour I decided to give it a try - I failed to go on the one in Australia since I'd hurt my knee, so there was some justice in finally doing it here. The bull's motions depended on who was on it - when it was a man it was set to throw them off, when it was a woman it just jiggled a lot. Can't imagine why.

Back at the hostel I brought out the bottle of Bounty Rum from Fiji and immediately ran into Steve, who was on the Feejee Experience bus. I hadn't even known he was heading to the USA, let alone the same hostel. Strange how often these things seem to happen.

Next day was a hangover-nursing exercise, which started with lunch at the Hamburger Hamlet opposite the Chinese Theater. As we ate, we watched the preparations for the premiere of "Tenacious D in 'The Pick of Destiny'" that evening, but still didn't see any celebrities - if you don't count the costumed idiots who wander around the walk of fame charging for photos. The Spongebob Squarepants costume would give any child nightmares. There were also some unidentifiable costumes, like the red-and-gold demon-thing who nearly took my head off with his wing.

That evening Paul and I went to see "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" in the Chinese Theater. This was an interesting experience, since some of it was filmed outside and the red-and-gold winged demon appears when Borat runs into the Oliver Hardy impersonator ("I did not come here to argue with a man dressed as Hitler"). The film itself is, of course, deeply offensive to just about everybody, and extremely funny. Funnier still is the fact that a film which sets out to lampoon American prejudices has been the number one film here for the last two weeks.

Next day I felt bound to engage in a quintessentially American cultural experience, to better my understanding of the nation's collective psyche. That's my excuse for going to Disneyland, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. Disneyland itself hasn't changed a huge amount in the last 16 years, but it was a school holiday so it was pretty full. I managed to brave the queues and go on Star Tours, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Indiana Jones Adventure (that well-known Disney character), Pirates of the Caribbean (now with added Jack Sparrow), the Buzz Lightyear Astro-Blaster, the Astro Orbitor...

It's a completely artificial experience, and you spend half the day standing in queues. If I go anywhere like this again I'm going to get a t-shirt printed that says "The next time your child touches my legs, I'm going to stamp on it". The food queues are packed with people who are so far beyond morbid obesity that they must already be dead, and moving around thanks to state-of-the-art animatronics. Even so, once you've braved the queues and sat down in Space Mountain or Pirates, there's no stopping the daft grin that plasters itself all over your face.

So despite having been warned off LA by nearly everyone I've met, I have actually thoroughly enjoyed it. It's fascinating to watch all the people who are determined that their dreams will come to fruition - I've been stopped in the streets by at least four hip-hop artistes selling their new albums, who are all going to be famous (according to them). As long as you remember not to believe a thing anybody tells you about themselves, there's a lot to enjoy about this smog-choked metropolis populated by insanely deluded fools.