Cinema Tastic

Tuesday 21st September 2010

MP3 track of the day: common people – Pulp

Weather: Hot, so what else is new?

Again another early night meant another early start and I was out in the center of Lautoka for around 8:30am. It didn't take long for me to see the town; this being Fiji's second largest town there really is nothing to do (and I'm here for two days!). After a spot of breakfast (a glass of Mango juice and a chocolate muffin) I headed into Lautoka market (which is a slight upgrade to Nadi's … at least the food is on tables instead of the floor) for a quick look around before going to the bus station to see where my bus departs, in two days time, for Nadi. I also noticed buses to Ba (pronounced Bar) and I thought tomorrow I might go for a bus ride to the north of the island. After this I went to a few supermarkets to have a look around; I didn't buy anything as I was slightly put off by seeing shelf stackers dusting the products.

It was 10am and I was at a total loss of what to do; I was just about to head back to my hotel (to check my guidebook for help) when I saw the local cinema … why not I thought. There wasn't really anything I wanted to see but there were two films I thought I could watch; one was 'Resident Evil: The Afterlife' and the other was 'Take'.

I went for 'Resident Evil' and I purchased my ticket ($4 … £1.30, bargain) and then some popcorn and a drink ($7 … £2.30, total cost £3.60, bargain). Once inside it was nice and air conditioned and there was only five people watching the film. The film however was rubbish, more American action rot with little plot, but it did kill two hours.

At 12:00 I left the cinema feeling full of popcorn (which was salty, not sweet … yuk) and looked at the time for the showing of 'Take', 15:30 … for £1.50 I might go and see that too. I walked back to my hotel and got my guidebook out to see if this town had anything else to do; “... the Laukota botanical gardens are superbly kept...” my guidebook stated. Umm that sounded good and so I toodled off there.

Now I'm not sure what my guidebooks writer was smoking when he said 'superbly kept' but the botanical gardens consisted of about six trees, a bush and three park benches. As you can imagine it didn't take me long to look around and so I was soon back at my hotel to get changed and then I headed out to the cinema.

'Take' was a much better film; it's about a robbery in LA which had a couple of twists and tuns and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Once again as I left the cinema I had a look at the film times for tomorrow as I might go back again. Finally I found a restaurant and had tea (which wasn't that nice) before heading back to the hotel.

So after having nothing to do with my day, it actually went quite quickly; hopefully, with a bus ride to the north of the island and a another cinema showing, tomorrow will pass along nicely too.

Toodle Pip