Now, I know it’s been a whole month since I last posted here but we’ve just come from Fiji where Internet facilities are completely non-existent. We spent two nights by the airport in Nadi at a great little beach-side resort. Lots of young backpackers who spend a night there before heading off to an island or to the coral coast. We moved on to the latter and stayed at a disappointing place called Vakaviti. You know it’s a bad idea when you see a For Sale sign outside and find the bar and restaurant shut. Nevertheless, it’s an extremely friendly country where everyone shouts, “Bula!” to you when they pass you on the street and quite sticky-hot. Sue will also confirm that there’s a quite a few mossies. The local drink, Kava, looks and tastes like muddy water but is supposed to be a narcotic. For some reason we drank quite a bit. Half the population are fourth-generation Fijian-Indians who the bumbling British imported to work the land back in the colonial days and, as with other ex-Empire countries, this has led to the intense racism and recent military coups. Most roads are unsealed, cows roam the streets and the taxi drivers are quite mad. That sort of place.

And now we’re in Honolulu. A complete contrast to Fiji. Hyper-clean and tidy but feels just like any other American city despite being miles away from contintental US. It’s the Costa Del Sol for Americans (and lots of Japanese) and stupidly expensive if you stumble into the wrong bar. Four quid for a half of watery beer? Um, no thanks. To help us find somewhere cheaper, we went on an organised pub crawl night. Despite the whooping and hollering of some of our American companions doing “erotic” drinking games, we had a good laugh, typically talking to the British and Irish crowd. Tomorrow we’re moving out of our cramped hostel room into a swanky sea-front appartment (courtesy of my extremely generous parents) where we intend to buy food and alcohol and barricade ourselves into an air-conditioned paradise.