Update – Fiji Now!
Ok, so for the record, I am now in Fiji.
I am terribly behind on my weblog. I’ve missed writing about leaving Hong Kong and New Zealand. I will try to rectify that now.
After my dad left Hong Kong, I stayed one night in a delightfully tiny cupboard. The room had a bed which literally occupied 90% of the space. It was wall, bed, wall in one direction and wall, bed, 2 foot space, door in the other. It cost 200 Hong Kong Dollars and was the cheapest in the area.
I then left for a 10 hour flight to New Zealand. It was uneventful, and would have been much better had I been able to sleep. SInce I couldn’t, I slept most of the next day in Auckland, New Zealand.
New Zealand is a very beautiful place, and although it is crawling with backpackers it wasn’t quite like Barcelona. Barcelona was full of kids with lots of money and not so much time; they partied hard. New Zealand is full of kids with lots of time and little money; they partied hard — economically.
I jumped off a building in Auckland. Everyone else was doing it…
It was a “fall-by-wire” jump where they allow you to free-fall and then slow you down just before you go splat. It was something like 500 feet, from the tallest building in the southern Hemisphere (they say). I survived and got a certificate.
While I was falling from the sky, Clark from PSU called me. I obviously didn’t answer during the decent, and I didn’t notice the ring so it wasn’t distracting from the ground flying up to meet me. When I called back, I realized that no one knew where I was… so I went online first thing in Fiji.
So far, Fiji is great. It is definitely a tourist place, but you can tell that there are certain “segregated” areas for real tourists and us backpackers. The backpacker side is much more real and seems more enjoyable.
The guy staying in my room just arrived as well, and he is on the same flight as me back to the USA. We are both winding up round-the-world trips and jsut want to lay out on the beach, so it looks like we’ll be hitching around together to visit the different beaches and outlying islands.
I’ve only been here a few hours, but I can already tell its going to be nice and relaxing… as long as I can get insect repellant.
I’ll try to write again, but it might be tough as the islands we are planning on going to don’t even have electricity, much less internet access. If worse comes to worse, you’ll hear from me again once I arrive in Los Angeles on the 12th.
