Fiji is, without a doubt, the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I could tell you all about the miles of perfect beach, the clarity of the water, the lush green leaves of the coconut trees that even seem to curve _just right _and how I spent days lying in a hammock writing my journal and listening to the soft sound of the sea, but I just don’t think I’d get close to portraying how utterly unbelievably perfect it was. Instead, I’ll tell you that I got sunstroke on my first day sunning myself on the boat out to the island, then spent 3 days in bed feeling rough. During this time, Sarah managed to catch some kind of stomach bug, and so did a guy named Paul that we ended up traveling with, while Helen got bitten by every mosquito in Fiji. All in all, we had a lot of bad luck with our Fiji trip. Oh yeah, and it rained. A lot. Not every day, mind, there was still enough sun for me to get sunburnt again (honestly mum, I was wearing loads of sunblock), and I still don’t have a decent tan. I went swimming with sharks, we snorkelled in underground caves, we partied on Beachcomber (THE party island in Fiji), we failed to understand Australian Football, and generally had an amazing time doing very little.
Well then, that’s it, tomorrow I get my final Greyhound bus (good riddance) to LA, and then I leave for Fiji on the 20th September. America has been a lot of fun, it really has, but I’m happy to move on too: I can’t wait to be in another country, somewhere really new and exciting. Fall is just starting to edge in here. We got cold on the beach before the sun went down on Sunday, and the leaves on the trees are starting to fall. I won’t get to see it hit in full force but this is the first time I’ve ever seen a season change in another country and it’s made me feel quite poetic.
Well well well, where do I start? Las Vegas is a pretty tough place to describe. Take all the pictures you’ve seen, and double it. The whole place is like one big cartoon: everything is over the top and everything is brightly lit. I stayed on the Strip, right in the middle of everything, and spent a hell of a lot of money on nothing in particular. I played some craps, I avoided poker because playing poker in a casino is way too intimidating for me, I saw Cirque Du Soleil. I pretty much achieved all my Vegas goals.
Let me tell you about the awesome night I had last night. As regular readers may know, I met a whole bunch of cool people in New York and had loads of fun there. One of them, a Scottish girl named Sarah, is doing pretty much the same trip as me, and it just so happened that we were flying to Fiji at almost the same time so we said we’d go together. I hadn’t really given it much thought until I got to LA when I emailed her to see if she was still up for it, and she said yes, and gave me her flight details, so I could change mine.
I just got off a 30 hour train journey from the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle: a 3 day celebration of all that is exciting about computer games.
I want to tell you all about it in detail but I’ve already written about 8 pages in my diary and I really don’t want to write them all again, so here’s some snippets: