It all went horribly wrong!

Saturday 18^th September 2010

MP3 track of the day: Mrs Jackson - Outcast

Weather: HOT!

I got up a reasonable time and decided to head to the one thing I really wanted to see in Suva, the Fiji Museum. It cost me $7 to enter (£2.30) and was well worth it. Firstly you make your way through Suva's botanical gardens. The gardens themselves aren't very impressive with limited flowers and trees (plus there was quite a bit of rubbish lying around, oh and construction work) .

A five minute stroll through the gardens and you arrive at a big building labeled the 'Fiji Museum'. Inside you are greeted with a large room containing Fijian canoes of war plus smaller fishing vessels and equipment. All was very impressive and after this I headed into the gift shop to get to the other side o the building where the museum continued.

The main exhibition went through Fiji's history and how the population evolved and when the 'white man' first appeared. There were quite a few artifacts and it was really interesting to see all the different tools and religious artifacts. The best bit was the cannibal fork which is a 4 pronged fork to eat human flesh (which I shall hopefully be getting one as a souvenir at some point, going to be a pain to post it home though). The museum then lead onto some Methodist reverent who was killed and eaten by one of the tribes in Fiji a long time ago. After this the exhibit took you upstairs where you got to see ancient clothes, tapestries and religious artifacts.

It was now 11:45am and so I headed into town for lunch before having a small look around Suva. Once back at the hostel I chilled for a little while (watched the rugby) before heading out at 3pm to get my laundry.

As I approached the laundrette something didn't look right and as I got closer I could see that the shutters were down. Horrified I asked the barber next door why the laundrette was closed and he said that it was 'half day' closing and that it wouldn't be open again until 6:00am on Monday morning as they didn't open Sunday at all.

As I walked steadily back to my hotel a few choice words were used; all my clothes bar what I'm wearing were practically in that bag of washing (bar a fleece and a coat … great!). I then went through other scenarios; why didn't I go earlier? Why didn't I go at 11:00am when the ticket said?

After beating myself up for a little while I got back to my hotel and took stock; okay I'm not ill, I haven't been mugged or lost my passport … so on the grand scheme of problems this one was pretty low. I was leaving on Monday morning at 8:15am and so I (hopefully) have enough time to race up there at 6:00am, pick up my stuff (if they hadn't sold it already) and get back to the hotel for a shower and change before getting a taxi to the bus station. The only problem is that currently I've got to wear the same clothes for three days in this heat … I am going to stink.

Once back at the hotel I had a shower (with no towel as that's at the launderette's too) and chilled before heading into town for tea. I decided to have a early night as there wasn't much else I could do today. As I lay there I thought to myself, no wonder the Fijian economy isn't exactly 'tip-top' if business have two days off each week!!

Toodle Pip