Fiji

November 18, 2025

Fiji

Fiji: tropical South Seas country in the Pacific Ring of Fire, setting for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Fiji: a volcanic landmass composed of some 300 islands only settled about 3,500 years ago by Pacific explorers. Fiji: where some 60,000 Indians and other Southeast Asians were forcibly relocated during the British Raj to work the sugar plantations (since 1884 sugarcane from Fiji has been shipped to the Chelsea Sugar Factory on the North Shore of Auckland to be processed). Fiji: a gorgeous tourist destination and nation still developing.

I can see from the air as we land that Fiji is just a little farm country with dots of human settlement interspersing the green. I fly into Nadi (pronounced “nandee”), which is definitely in Fiji and not Japan, and breathe the hot tropical air into my lungs. The airport is tiny and I cross the road from the airport to the bus stop and enjoy the laissez faire open air bus ride into the Nadi town center where I stick out like a sore thumb as I maneuver my way through the crowds. No one tries to rob me in Nadi but someone unzips the front pocket of my backpack each time I’m in the Suva bus depot, looking for something to steal. I’m sure they’re disappointed when they find only seashells and trinkets.

Fijians are very friendly. “Bula!” flies at me from every direction—people on the sidewalk, men passing by in trucks, taxi drivers, men on the street as my bus passes them. As a woman on my own I’m not sure what the intentions are and the shouts make me wary. I appreciate the follow up less and sometimes pretend I don’t speak English when I hear “Bula! Where you from?” when walking alone on the beach, while standing in line at the grocery store, from street vendors. A middle aged German man at my hostel in Pacific Harbour told me he receives the same treatment so I’m not as unnerved as I was at first but I still get a little angry every time a passing car slows and I hear “bula!” shouted out the window. A Canadian girl tells me that when a Fijian stops and offers you a ride somewhere, it’s not creepy and that they’re being genuinely nice. I’ll take her word for it.

They are uncomfortably friendly but they are also kind. People are all too happy to give directions or to personally ferry a lost foreigner to the correct bus, as some kind policemen did in Nausori and a schoolgirl did in Suva. I take a van from Nausori to Suva, squished in the tiny middle front seat between the driver and a Fijian lady my mom’s age. The seats are coated in plastic and my sweat trickles down and becomes trapped between me and the plastic, forming a puddle. My shoulders touch both hers and the driver’s and with no seatbelts, I have to hold my palm to the roof when the van makes turns to keep from sliding into them. It’s about 45 minutes from Nausori to Suva and I chat with the lady the entire time. She’s been an elementary school teacher for 17 years and she has six children, the youngest of whom is in his second to last year of high school. She has three grandchildren because her daughter “has made wrong choices” and she is pressuring one of her sons to get married because she wants more grandchildren (done properly this time is the vibe I get from it). Her son is a city planner and it’s his birthday today. He’s turning 24. She’s happy to hear that I’m 24 and she says it’s a good age to see the world. She tells me that her favorite age was her mid to late 20s because of the adventures and fun she had with her friends.

“Kids these days, they plan too much. Where should we go? How are we going to get there? How much money will it cost? In my day, we didn’t care about these things. We just went.”

She has accommodation provided onsite at the school so she lives there during the week and sees her children on the weekends. I hear the same story from a girl who works on one of the outer islands as a masseuse for tourists during the week and only sees her children on the weekend when she can return to Nadi. Time with the people we love is a privilege we take for granted too often.

Fijian friendliness ropes me into an adventure on my second day in Fiji when I wander into an empty restaurant down the street from my hostel. It has dirt floors and no other diners. I order kava, a traditional drink consumed on islands across the Pacific that is purported to bring slight euphoria and feelings of wellbeing. Two men come to drink the kava with me, which I’m not overly thrilled with but I roll with it and make conversation with them. Whatever mind altering effect the kava is supposed to produce doesn’t materialize and instead it only makes my tongue numb. Meli and Chochi (the restaurant owner) and a third man named Jeti who joins us have just come back from Suva where they were boxing for money. I tell them I was headed to the Garden of the Gods and when they offer to take me, I negotiate a fare. Meli and Chochi jump into the car and walk through the gardens with me and even take me to a sweets seller to sample all sorts of lentil-based Indian sweets. I’m enjoying the way the day has unfolded but I’m also on guard. Meli in particular is making indirect pass after indirect pass at me, which I’m politely ignoring.

“I’m looking for a girlfriend,” Meli says. “Someone just like you,” he clarifies, looking at me meaningfully.

“Aww that’s nice, Meli. I hope you find someone.”

We’re at my hostel watching the fire dancers when Chochi’s wife comes to collect him. She is furious and she shouts at him in Hindi, most of which I don’t understand.

“Challo!” she shouts, motioning away from the table and towards the exit. This I understand. Come on, let’s go!

When Meli and I finally make it back to the restaurant for a promised goat curry, all of the lights are off. Meli tells me that he thinks that Chochi and his wife have gotten in a fight over the time he’s spent playing tour guide. Meli keeps repeating that he thinks something bad has happened so I ask whether Chochi might have hurt her. Meli replies that he might’ve so I quickly excuse myself from the situation, escaping back to my hostel as quickly as possible.

I meet Jeti again at the Wailoaloa Beach Club after coming back from Suva and he informs me that the two got in a fight but everything is okay now. I don’t get a straight answer when I ask whether or not she was hit.

Fiji’s dollar is almost as strong as New Zealand’s but the country is poor and this is quickly apparent outside of the resorts. Minimum wage in Fiji equates to $2.8 nzd per hour, compared to New Zealand’s $22.70 (trip taken in 2023, NZ minimum wage has since increased), meaning (quite simply) that a New Zealander’s time is worth 10 times as much as a Fijian’s. Fiji is also loud, the sonic atmosphere polluted with horns honking, music blasting, dogs barking, people shouting, or some combination of the above. The air and environment are also polluted with plastic, burning rubbish or burning sugar cane. There’s a higher degree of human and animal suffering. Walking down the street in Suva, homeless men with tumors and thick toenails sleep on the street and look close to death, sometimes not even a sheet of cardboard separating them from the scorching hot pavement. It occurs to me that the nurses we hire from Fiji have probably experienced providing medical care to these people. The dogs that range the street are scruffy, mangy at times, and they scratch and bite at fleas as they roam the streets looking for food. The separation between tourist and local is high and it makes me feel icky when I return to the resort in Nadi. The inequality I see here tickles at my sense of fairness and I ponder over how an ideal world might function. What do we humans owe each other? Whose responsibility is it to help a nation develop? Whose responsibility is it to reduce suffering in the human race? What does that look like in reality, with the political and economic systems we have in place?

I stay in a hostel in Pacific Harbour and I’m having dinner when a middle aged kiwi comes to introduce himself and say hi. He works for the hostel and he’s directing a project to light up the palm trees around the restaurant for a New Years celebration. As we’re chatting, an older kiwi man comes to say hi. I read the situation as him coming to hit on the first man, his sexuality seemingly confirmed when he begins to talk about the “gorrrgeous Fijian men.” So when he asks me to have lunch with him the next day I accept, thinking that he’s a harmless lonely old gay man. Over lunch, he tells me about his career as an architect in Tauranga, his marriage (to a woman—maybe he’s closeted?), and his children. We go for a swim when he finally makes a pass at me and I turn him down, surprised. I ask him about his wife and he tells me that he’s been cheating on her for years, especially during the height of his career when she was at home raising their children and he was being wined and dined across town.

“There were too many temptations,” he tells me. He tells me that she knows about the cheating but I don’t get a straight answer when I ask whether they’ve ever talked about it. Maybe he’s happy living the way he is but the idea of it is extremely sad to me and solidifies my conviction to have a partner who commits to me and to commit to them in return.

I spend the next day by the beach—what else is there to do? Pacific Harbour is remote and the section of beach in front of the hostel is shallowed by a small retaining wall of rocks placed out several meters into the ocean. The sun is hot, the water is blue, and little loungers beckon from the shade of coconut trees. I set my things down on one of the loungers and go for laps in the waves. I drag a lounger into the sun to soak up the warmth and read the book I picked up in the hostel’s lobby until I’ve dried off and am ready to go. I stand up and am gathering my things when an elderly Asian lady approaches me. She seems fragile and she’s dressed in a one piece with a floatation belt around her waist and pink floaties on her arms like children wear. We begin to chat and she says that she wants to go into the water but she’s scared and her sister has stayed in their bungalow rather than accompany her. I had been about to leave but I put down my things and hold her hand as we wade into the ocean. She’s from somewhere in southern mainland China and has only seen the ocean a few times before and definitely never swum in it. I stay near her as she timidly tries out her doggy paddle and I like to think that I made her holiday.

Back in Nadi, I’m walking out for a swim when I get caught in conversation with Leon and Katy, a couple my age from the UK who have just quit their jobs in London to go traveling for 6 months. They’re with a Canadian named Melana and the party grows as I recruit more friends until we have German Lara and Michele (from my hostel in Pacific Harbour) and Canadian Nico. Everyone except Lara heads over to listen to the live band at the Wailoaloa Beach Club where shoes are optional on the sand floor. Locals and tourists mix here and the vibe is relaxed and low key. It won’t be that way forever: giant resorts are going up on either side of it and the soon the bar will be overrun with tourists and the locals pushed out.

At the beach club we chat with Jeti, one of his mates (whose offer of marriage I politely turn down), and a kid named Tom from a volunteer group that’s going out to one of the villages to work with the youth. Tom is an innocent, trusting 18 year old British boy and we worry about him as we watch him interact with everyone in the bar with no trace of reservation or caution. I try to set Tom up with some kiwi girls at the bar and I tell him that they like his shirt and want to talk to him. He looks around, nods, and then beelines for some middle aged Fijian women and begins chatting them up despite their confused and stony faces.

The next day I meet some people from my hostel who are also going on the Malamala Island day trip that I’ve booked. Alvin is a kiwi and Manjalu is from India but has been working in Japan for two years. They met a few days before and scored an extremely cheap deal on this cruise by sitting through a sales pitch. We take the boat over and claim some sun loungers by the beach and spend the day relaxing. Alvin and I try separately to swim around the small coral reef island but neither of us make it. Once you round the lee side of the island, the waves and current fight you and we give up 3/4 of the way around. Manjalu is an avid snorkeler and she’s happy as a clam floating there in the water. She’s adventurous and joins me in jumping off the dock. Alvin and I spend our last minutes on the island in the infinity pool overlooking the ocean. We get a dinner of curries from the restaurant next to our hostel and then enjoy a drink by the beach before calling it a night.

Other than Jeti’s friend at the beach club, my interactions with men on the last two days of the trip are refreshingly non sexual. I don’t feel like I’m dodging advances and I can be myself more fully and let my guard down. Although an unexpected adventure, Fiji doesn’t disappoint.

Manjalu later messages me when she has a stopover in Auckland and I take her to hike the Mercer Bay Loop in West Auckland and we have lunch and a swim at Piha beach. The friends you make while traveling are one of the most special parts and it’s always a delight to see them again.