7/2 AAA, Day 19: I've figured out why Bollywood movies suck so hard

Yet again, today earns the moniker of "longest day ever". Woke up at 5:30am and caught a taxi with Domenica to town to catch a mini-bus for the 3.5 hour drive around Viti Levu to Suva. I just wanted to see the city, but my Swiss companion had business: namely, trying to convince the Australian High Commission that she should be given a transit visa to enter Australia. Long story short, she got thrown out of Oz and she's not allowed back for 3 years, but her flight to Switzerland has a 2-day stopover in Sydney. Either they okay her for two days or she was going to have to live in the international terminal with Tom Hanks and the duty-free employees.

First of all, embassy waiting rooms have the atmosphere of free clinics-- people are just sitting around waiting for bad news. Joviality is not appreciated, and when I made Domenica laugh by making jokes about how great it would be to live in the airport-- spread newspapers over you to sleep like a bum, do your laundry in the sink and hang it EVERYWHERE, etc.-- I was actually shushed by people who don't find exclusionary periods and immigration as funny as I do. She ended up getting her visa (after 2 separate visits to the embassy) and then we got to "explore" Suva. Basically, Suva is the biggest city in the South Pacific, about 7 times larger than Nadi, and about 7 times dirtier and 7 times less eventful. The Fiji Museum was just a scad better than the Vanuatu Museum; the market was a market; the weather was terrible; the people were dodgy; the architecture was weird. So we tried to leave. And that's when shit got crazy.

In order to save $4FJD (about $2.50US) we bought 'express' bus tickets. Just a big bus, and supposedly a bit slower, but it goes direct between Suva and Nadi with just 2 or 3 stops. But we were lied to by the DRIVER of the bus and we got on to find the bus stopping every single kilometer to let people on and off. Then the ticket guy comes around and informs us this bus isn't even GOING to Nadi, and we have to get off in Navua (the least glorious place on Earth) and wait. We do so, and the right bus comes, only to inform us that it's so full we'll have to stand. Which we did, for about two hours, as the bus inched its way up hills, stuck behind logging trucks, so full of people that it couldn't overtake. The bus had a DVD player, oddly enough, and they were airing Elvis' opus Blue Hawaii and I realized why Bollywood movies are so weird-- they were too heavily influenced by terrible American musicals from the 50s and 60s. After Blue Hawaii, I finally got to sit down against the window next to an obscenely large Fijian woman. And then they changed movies. To Speed. Yes, the Keanu Reeves movie about a bus that will explode. Genius. I was so taken aback, and the drive was taking so god damn long, that I did the only thing I could: pulled the remainder of the rum out of my backpack and drank it out of a plastic coke bottle. Because of its strength everyone could smell it, and the lady next to me stared me down, but no one said anything. What should have taken 3.5 hours took almost 6. Good thing I saved 2.50, huh?

Back at the hostel we met a crazy Phillipino guy who wouldn't stop buying massive beers for us.
And we met our new friend, Camilla, who came down to the beach with us and we all got trashed and watched some Fijian guys shucking coconuts with their teeth. Went to bed D-R-U-N-K
Drink Count: 12