As we touched down in Nadi (pron. Nandi hence the airport code NAN) I felt that lovely warm humid heat on my face again, just like Samoa. “Fiji Time” was instantly recognisable as our driver certainly took his Fiji time to get to us and take us to Nomad’s Skylodge.

We met a couple of other guys going to the same place at the airport who were nice, Matt and Ross. They’ve both been on the road for a long time and are reaching the end of their travels. We got stuck into some Fiji Bitter and then wandered down to the fabled Ed’s bar for a heavy night with the locals.

Nadi itself… not a lot to write home about. Not as nice as Apia, Samoa and nothing to do. Crap shops.

The highlight was spending a relaxing 2 hours of serenity in the Hindu Temple. See pics

Well, I’m currently sitting in Auckland airport transit lounge having survived 3/4 of the journey so far. Air NZ has seriously improved since my last trip with them and has a great in-flight entertainment system with on demand movies, sound and TV. That and a comfortable seat kept me sane for the last 22 hours.

Chinese Medicine and Dr Gilbert

Hong Kong airport was not a highlight, vast expanses of space and great minimalist design but absolutely nothing to do. Gilly found a traditional Chinese medicine shop with some interesting
products which we can only guess the use of. He is now seriously
thinking of incorporating them into his practice, they’d go down a storm with
the Geordie clients up in his Newcastle practice no doubt.

Tonight, we had a little send off party by meeting up with the old Edinburgh gang in Soho for a Lebanese meal in Kaslik, Greek Street.

Needless to say, they will all be following our progress on this blog.

Gilly and I are getting pretty excited (dare I say totally stoked) about tomorrow even though I still have so much preparation to do in the morning. Always a last minute person.