Saturday 08 November isn't the day after Thursday 06 November I hear you say? Well it is for me, with Friday 07 November 2008 never happening for me as I flew over the International Date Line during the flight to Fiji. The flight itself was not the best I've ever had either, partly made worse by the duration of the flight - it left LA at 10.30pm and got in to Fiji at 5.05am and what with a 4-hour time zone change it made for the small matter of a 10.5 hours in total. This means that instead of being 8 hours behind UK time I am now exactly 12 hours ahead of UK time which at any rate makes the time calculations easier to work out.
The inflight entertainment was also a bit poor; instead of having a menu to choose what to watch and when to watch it, all of the tv / movie schedules were on a "loop" meaning that if you missed the start of any movie you had to wait until it had completed its run and was about to repeat itself until you could watch it in its entirety from the start. Similarly, if food was taken or one decided to take a walk around the cabin to stretch one's legs then one couldn't put the programme on hold and came back to it at a later point in time; in overview, a pointless and outdated system in my eyes given the technology in use on other planes out there.
As the plane was a 747 and accomodated hundreds of travellers, it took a few hours to clear customs and retrieve my baggage, however it was a good that I'd come prepared and purchased a guide to Fiji when I was in LA so I read that whilst I was waiting in the queue when everyone around me was getting agitated. At the Information Desk I was directed to a representation of the hotel who in time directed me to a private bus that took me to the hotel, getting there by 7.30am. Given I'd only had a few hours' sleep (uncomfortable at that!) I thought I'd probably need a good relaxation day so spent the entire day outside at the hotel's pool which was warm and lovely.
However, the morning was slightly ruined by an Australian and a Kiwi who decided to play about like kids at the pool; jumping in to the pool from a high metal cabinet-like structure and throwing plastic tables in to the nearby mango trees to retrieve the fruit. Despite the mangoes tasting delicious and them buying several jugs of the local Fiji beer I found out the next day that they'd left without paying their bar tab. A fellow englishman, Jamie, seemed to be a sound lad and we got chatting to two Canadians Laura and Amy, both of them from Toronto.
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