Judge: Your client stands accused of reckless endangerment, unnecessary risk, questionable racist presumptions, as well as shameless self-serving and sub-clinical narcissism in a foreign country how do you plead?
Lawyer: First off, he’s an American traveling abroad, isn’t what you described just normal behavior in such circumstances?
Judge: Don’t distract from the case at hand, the man has to answer for himself.
Lawyer: Of course your honor, I’m gonna let this guy speak so we can end this preposterous opening bit.
Me: Thank you your honor, It all started with an 11 hour flight from Boston to Honolulu on Hawaii airlines; I slept a couple hours barely cognizant of putting some freshly microwaved pancakes in my mouth as their excuse for the onboard meal; but for the most part I spent the plane ride reading and debating if I needed to pee badly enough to warrant waking the person next to me. The girl next to me eventually started reading some disturbingly raunchy shapeshifting smut1 on her kindle which I couldn’t help peeking over as it was far more engaging than my brilliant book, The Biggest Bluff by Maria Korninkova. Which is about her learning poker from scratch and the psychological lessons along the way.
Getting into Honolulu I had the honor of a 10 hour layover so I gathered up my 18kg backpack with my neck pillow awkward attached to the outside and hustled out of the airport. All around me the airport announcers boomed with messages that always ended with a severely passive aggressive ‘Mahalo’. “Mr. Smith please get your white butt up here so we can get your colonizing ass off the island right now Mahalo.” I may be reading into it but my general impression of Honolulu is that many folks there are generally exhausted and fed up with the never ending stream of tourists.
My Uber driver was a Massachusetts native with a prodigious number of tattoos who bought a one-way ticket to paradise and never looked back; the ride made me contemplate the number of people who never recover from a severe Catholic upbringing, but I kept that thought to myself and thanked her for the ride. I somehow ended up at the Asahi Grill for lunch, which claims to have some of the best oxtail soup in Hawaii, the oxtail soup was decent and the place provided some much needed respite and outlets. I found a Biki Bike which is like Hawaii’s version of the blue bikes and biked along the beach into Waikiki otherwise known as the tourist capital of the city. Clouds of miniature flies berated me on the journey but eventually I found a little island pool to dip my feet into and test drive my new camera.
Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, maybe it was the fact that the last time I spent time in Honolulu it was chasing after a girl who was not that into me (which may or may not be a reoccurring motif), but Hawaii and I generally don’t seem to get along too well. For being an island literally thousands of miles from anything, they have a surprisingly large homeless population and there are always new mega apartment buildings perpetually in the process of being built up. I know I’m not getting an authentic dose of the real Hawaiian culture but the Honolulu that I’ve seen seems to struggle with a lack of soul. After an outdoor shower I was feeling a little better and decided to hit up an AA meeting because I had no idea what else to do with myself. And if there’s one thing AA meetings are good for, it’s for people who have no idea what to do with themselves. There were four people at the meeting including myself, a motley crew if ever I’ve seen one, but as we awkwardly read through the big book (the foundational text of AA) almost having to yell above a loud ass fan; I felt myself glad to have the company of these odd bedfellows. The meeting got out and headed back to the airport, I find myself glad for the meeting and vaguely disappointed to have missed what I’m sure was a drop dead gorgeous sunset. Seeing the pick up basketball games and crowds of locals around parks on the drive back to the airport made me realize that there are more levels to Hawaii/Honolulu that I will likely never know, and I’m okay with that for the most part.
Judge: Jesus Christ enough with the backstory, When are we gonna get on Fiji?
Lawyer: If it pleases the court; shut the hell up and let my client cook.
Me: Your Honor this is important contextual information adding color to an otherwise banal travel trip. Please limit your interruptions.
I arrive at the Nadi airport about 6 hours later, having got some decent sleep, and watched a classic Guy Ritchie movie Rocknrolla (2008) featuring Gerald Butler and Thadiwe Newton among others, I wondered where her career had gone since she was borderline starring in this movie; I had no idea she existed before Westworld (2016) which earned her a prime time Emmy, not that you asked but she’s been up to stuff. She is close friends with Nicole Kidman and called out a director for some sexual misconduct before #MeToo and was more than likely punished career-wise for that. Anyway she’s a star and plays her role in RocknRolla with perfect poise and class.
So I arrive in Nadi Fiji, the sunrise lights up the open air airport with warm orange glow. My luggage is MIA, evidently you have to verbally confirm that you have bags checked, even if it was at your previous destination, I assumed airlines were just magic my bad. But no matter, being the wise man I am packed my day-pack with supplies to last more than a few days. Being an unwise man, I told this girl I met on Bumble who was supposed to give me a tour that I would meet her at a cafe on the other end of the island on a time frame that gave me very little wiggle room for error.
I get a lift to my rental car agency, and notice everything car related is reversed here because Fiji used to be a British colony. In my infinite wisdom I opt for a manual transmission car because I had just gotten some practice on an old pick up and wanted to be fancy. I won’t go into detail about the number of traffic laws I broke on that day but it was numerous. I head to my B&B for a shower and some breakfast before a grueling ride.
The ride is gorgeous. A two lane highway with the occasional passing lane called the Queens road is my route. There is a national speed limit of 80 km per hour, which I flagrantly ignore, yet it appeared that my disregard has been accounted for because for every village you come across, there are at least two speed bumps some varieties of which will have you wondering if your car is still intact if you go over them faster than 20 kph. So here I am, driving along the Fiji coast. Along windy but pristine beaches and vaguely mysterious jungles. The African tulip is flowering on many of the trees giving the jungle an amiable impression. Many people are hitchhiking and will raise their hands as you zoom by, emaciated dogs and other farm animals periodically dot the sides of the roads. Before this I completely forgot that dogs are not worshiped as fur babies but in fact are not all that special in much of the world.
Your boy is feeling like a sober Hunter S Thompson recklessly passing every car I can, risking life and limb to meet a girl I barely know. But I push it a little too hard, and on one of the potholes I clip my car begins to rumble shortly thereafter; it doesn’t sound like a flat, I think some part of the bottom of the car is dragging and fear the worst. But it is a flat and I think to myself, “I know how to do this, I may not be the most masculine man, but I sure as hell am competent enough to do this task.” Except the car jack is some dinky European corner cutting bullshit and not your standard jack. A local Fijian man named Zach and his friend comes wandering over to where I have pulled over to help out and I am deeply suspicious of getting clubbed over the head. In fact at the end of the affair I can’t find the car key for a solid two minutes and get suspicious that one of them stole it, but I fucking left it in the trunk because I’m a forgetful fellow and also this car is ancient enough to require the key to open the trunk.
Lawyer: The defense would like to interject this testimony by pointing out that the defendant was running on very little sleep and does not normally work under such borderline racist presumptions. He was not aware that Fijian people by and large are incredibly hospitable and generous to even random strangers.
So anyways, Zach and his friend get a proper car jack, and they get the spare on within minutes, I do basically nothing feeling not very much at all like a strong independent man. I give them 60$ USD each, which by their reactions when they take the money tell me they in no way expected any financial reward for their help; it’s just what people do here, it’s just the right thing to do. As my guide said today, “The world could stand to learn a lot from Fiji.”
On top of that, not 10 minutes after I am driving and have the spare on, I get pulled over for going 90 kph. I take this encounter to heart and don’t speed for the remainder of my drive here. You don’t rush things in Fiji, this is island time, there is no rush.
I arrive the coffee shop 40 minutes late and with a cute desi girl nowhere in sight. We text back in forth in the coffee shop and she sympathizes with my tiredness and offers to cuddle with me, I meet Leslie who works at the coffee shop a lovely man who doesn’t like to be put in a box but was lightly flirting with me and recommend a good supermarket while he had Grindr open on his friends phone. I get the bare necessities at the supermarket although they don’t have an outlet converter. When traveling abroad please check if you need an outlet converter because the American style of electrical sockets are not a universal (Duh). I get to my Airbnb, the driveway is tiny and sloping so your boy stalls a ridiculous number of times getting his car into the proper spot.
Guess how many times your boy stalled getting into this spot? At least 7
The Airbnb is small and lovely and there’s even a signature cockroach hiding in the corner to let you know it’s authentic. I text with the girl, I’ll spare you the details but there’s some lurid sexting and promises made about what might happen tomorrow, I soon crash at around 9pm.
I wake up at 4 in the morning promptly refreshed and feeling like a new man, there’s a waterfall/ jungle walk nearby Suva and I scarf down the rest of my chicken and pineapple skewers and head to the park at around 7 AM. Gently stepping over the cockroach which has unceremoniously decided to turn upside down in the middle of the walkway, still twitching, I feel conflicted about whether or not to squish it or save it and as I often do, decide on unsettled passivity and let it suffer. On the way there the road quickly turns into a muddy mess but a German couple points me the right way. No park hours or none of that nonsense here, there’s a guy named Sonawai who I give 5 Fijian (2.4 USD) as way of an entrance fee, he points me in the right direction and off I go.
The waterfalls and creeks are cool, but my mind is more focused on my loneliness and the potentiality of getting laid today. There are constant bird noises, one call I hear frequently is a deep ‘Awhoo, Awhoo, Awhoo.’ Which sounds like it could be a monkey but I soon learn there’s not a whole lot of larger animals here in Fiji. No poisonous spiders or snakes either, they have some wild boars but that’s about as dangerous as things get here at least on land. I soon take the side path and find myself slipping and sliding through some mud and constantly having to deal with spiderwebs. As I reach the downhill really side trail it’s clear no one has been on this path in at least a week (Which I later learn is because someone broke their arm traversing it recently) and the spider webs are reaching serious intolerable levels. I debate going back and look to my inner child for guidance. My inner child expresses that he would be rather disappointed in adult Jesse if he flew halfway around the world and was going to turn back through the jungle because of a few spider webs. Armed with a discarded Fiji water bottle and anxiety I make my way down the trail. Literally at times yelling out of fear, constantly brushing myself off from imagined spiders (Great day to wear a bro tank by the way, literally offering no cover.) Swinging my arms and the used Fiji bottle out in front of me constantly because whenever I stop doing it I catch a spider web to the face. This part of the trail is only a mile but it feels like a lifetime, I eventually reach the end of the trail which features a gorgeous (but rather understated in the cloudy weather) pool. In retrospect I definitely should have jumped in as a cleanse but alas I make my way back up to my car feeling brave to have conquered my fear and destroyed many spiders hard nights work.
Sonawai and I talk a little bit, he politely rants a bit about the high price of hotels. “Why would you stay at a hotel with a strict check-in and check-out time? That’s not real hospitality, just stay at me or my daughter’s house, we will cook for you, and as for a price? Whatever you feel like it was worth to you at the end is fine with us.” I agree with him fundamentally, but I thought of the privacy of being in your own little box and plastic wrapped bars of soap. Why would you want to be connected with others when you can have your own little prison for the low price of 100$ a night? What a bargain!
The rest of the morning passes in a blur of YouTube and research. The girl I’ve been messaging wakes up with a headache so I feel like my odds of getting laid are getting slimmer which emotionally feels the equivalent of at least 1.5 9/11’s. I need to get this tire fixed but it’s Sunday and Fiji is a nation that has yet to completely bend the knee to capitalism which means that most of the places are closed. I go back to the coffee shop, and wouldn’t you know it, Leslie’s coworker Willie knows probably the only tire repair place open on a Sunday and literally takes an hour off of his shift to drive with me to the shop. As we drive past a neighborhood that features a gated community across the street from some single story favelas, he mentions that this is where the rich people live, though some of the people living in the shacks are making as much as those in the gated community. Material pride is very much still a secondary trait here in Fiji.
The car place is a loud and bustling pace filled with lots of yelling and shouting, cab drivers washing and vacuuming their cars. I fear the worst for the tire given that I drove on it for almost a kilometer on the flat before acknowledging the severity of the situation, but the leak is manageable and the guy who runs the place fixes it easily. Willie is explaining that he started this place a decade ago by himself and now has a number of employees working under him. This is the first of several examples that indicate to me that the so called American dream is more alive in Fiji than America. The tire(s) are fixed for ridiculously low price and I am soon back on the road. Willie’s GF/partner calls for the 5th time and he sighs in exasperation, “I need to save to buy ticket to America so I can get myself a black woman.” I find this greatly amusing and gently prod him further, “Are you sure? I hear they can be a lot to handle.” He replies back with a Tyler Perry caricature and we both laugh. I ask Willie what’s next for Fiji, which I self consciously admit is an odd question but somehow he knows exactly what I mean, he remarks on how the world is only just beginning to open it’s doors to Fiji after Covid, and Australia/ New Zealand are in need of foreign labor and are beginning to tap the Fijian labor market. Soon we are back at the coffee shop.
Leslie tells me to check out the Fiji Museum which boasts the boot of one of the original European captains who came to Fiji, this boot allegedly features teeth marks because the captain pissed off the locals and if you didn’t know this yet the native Fijians were some of the OG cannibals on planet earth once upon a time. I find myself in the middle of some modest emotional torment because I talk about some about my latent bi-sexuality with this girl I’ve been texting and she finds that rather repulsive and tells me I should go have fun with my new gay friends. I find this very confusing because of all the accusations that have been hurled at me by girls I pursue, lack of interest is a new one. I am begging her to reconsider, but at the same time knowing it’s doomed, and at the same time realizing perhaps this baseline lack of self respect and willingness to grovel is not my best or attractive quality and I should probably reconsider my priorities. She says the only way she’ll see me is if I send a video making out with Leslie but as much as I am willing to debase myself for the extremely off-chance of sex at this point, I am not going to use another person as a means to an end (perhaps ironic in retrospect.)
Judge looks down at his desk and sighs putting his hand on his forehead: Jesus Christ man really?
Anyways, Leslie needs a ride back to Na(n)di2 so I ditch out of Suva looking forward to having a ride with a local filled with knowledge. He is in high spirits and we talk about the gay side of life, he tells me interestingly enough that he wouldn’t recommend opening up that side of myself, not saying this directly but basically implying that “once you get fucked in the ass it’s hard to go back.” It looks like there is much of this talk to come but we stop by his family’s house on the way back and he finds out some bad news which is a big downer. He dutifully decides to sleep off his depression and I plug into the last Murderbot Audio book by Martha Wells grateful for some gentle escapism. He sleeps through all the speed bumps with ease and three hours later we are back at the Ideal Bed and Breakfast in Nadi and we say an awkward farewell.
I wake up decently early the next day and have breakfast with a lovely couple of older Australians, they talk about the big scary Trump guy, and confirm my suspicions that the world really does revolve around American politics. “When the American economy sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold,” as one of the Kiwi’s3 I was talking to put it. I visit the garden of the sleeping giant, which is a kind of meh orchid garden with a good vista. Like seriously, there’s supposed a Sleeping Giant somewhere in here visible but I couldn’t for the life of me see it. There’s some mud baths up in that area as well. But the main adventure of the trip has passed and I find myself relieved to turn in my rental car and go to the hotel where I will be meeting up with my crew to kayak the Yasawa Islands.
The garden in question, no resting giants to be found that I could see
Judge: So we are supposed to believe that this is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth? You spent your first 48 Hours in Fiji chasing after a random girl on the internet, being afraid you were going to being kidnapped by perfectly nice helping locals, yelling in terror as you careened through spiderwebs in the jungle, and driving a guy three hours back home who slept most of the way?
Me: More or less that’s the truth of things.
Lawyer: Your honor, I ask the we end the trial, as we all can clearly see, my client is a fool, but a mostly harmless one at that. No substances were consumed, no people truly harmed, my clients prejudices and idiocy were injuring to his own pride and ego, whatever is left of it at least.
Judge: I am inclined to agree with the defendants lawyer. But before I dismiss the court, I must ask the defendant, what lessons do you take away from this experience?
Me: Thank you for asking. Firstly, time plans out so they are not particularly rushed and there are time for errors. Secondly besides a disturbing lack of self-respect and despite some unnecessary risks, I pray that I have the courage to keep doing foolish things with enthusiasm, and perhaps it will work out better next time.
Judge: … You may be a hopeless case, I hope you understand this.
Me: Your honor, as long as I’m breathing I got a chance.
Judge: Jesus Christ get this guy out of here.
Thank you for reading, part two involves the first half of the group trip Kayaking to the Yasawa islands, there will be much better material I promise.
Hi again – this is the third time I tried to post a comment – cue the charm. B and I found this hilarious! Mr. MacKinney is very, very funny. ❤️
Don’t know how I missed this until today! Gets my vote for best new travel blog 👍🏾