Slumming it

I turned 28 (Thank you everyone for your cards) in Fiji and it couldn't have been a better place to soothe the shock of it! As a birthday treat we booked into the Westin. I'm not proud I'll stay anywhere, but this was absolutely awful. The room was luxurious with a mattress and double shower head specially designed for the Westin. It was tastefully furnished and had a lovely bathroom. I know it sounds awful and you are probably wondering how I could have spent four days there mainly relaxing by the pool with cocktails, umm relaxing, swimming, eating, putting up with the room, wearing the dressing gown, (even though it was too hot for it I made sure I wore it).swimming, relaxing. I think you get the picture.

The Westin was on a resort of two other hotels and you can use all their facilities too. There was a beach in front of one of these but not much of one in front of ours. However, our hotel owns a little island about 10 minutes boat ride away which you can go to when you want. We spent a few hours over there, being the only ones on it except for the family which live there. A member of this family picked us a coconut and Papaya and it was all very idyllic.

Each night the hotel had an unwind ritual which consisted of hunky Fijian men banging a drum and fire dancing as the sun went down. At about this time, the bats would come out and I would occasionally shriek when I thought one was coming for my head. These bats were absolutely massive. About the size of chickens so I think I should be forgiven for being a pansy.

The four days was very resorty, but we enjoyed it. It was a step away from the norm and we enjoyed living it up for a while, although we felt four days was probably the right amount of time. Believe it or not there are only so many times you can watch hunky men dance with fire. We didn't see much of Fiji whilst at the hotel, but that was our next assignment.