Ladies and Gentlemen, you are no doubt thrilled to hear that I am alive and well, despite a number of near misses which I will document later in this post. Firstly I must apologise (particularly to Tony) for the mammoth gap in updates. This is solely due to the archaic nature of the Fijian communications infrastructure. To say that things are basic out here is like considering Stephen Hawkings a gymnast. Now this doesn't mean that they don't make up for it in other ways (although, I met Steve at collage once and he was really unpleasant and obnoxious. He con ciders himself on a higher plane than anyone else and will therefore refuse to respond to you if he conciders your question too basic. Suffice to say that I never found out which Power Ranger he wanted to be). Anyway, I digress. Steve makes up for his faults with his incredible intelligence, Fiji follows suit with its stunning scenery. The sheer abundence of paradise beaches and cloudless skies can result in some rather amusing pompus behaviour. For example, when we arrived on one of our first islands I happened to overhear one of the dive instructors talking to a student: There was me, sweating like Michael Jackson in a school playground, with each step on the smoldering sand making the same sounds and smells as bacon does when you first drop it in a frying pan, and one girl turns to the other and says, "Oh dear, the water is only 27 degrees today". ONLY 27 degrees?! I'm lucky to get baths half that temperature, especially after Princess Pickle has used enough hot water to reflood Sheffield just to rinse her hair. But I best try and assume some logical order to this post so I will begin by talking about our trip around the mainland. The Fiji Experience bus picked us up from our hotel, aptly named, 'Smugglers Cove'. Unfortunately, I am still unable to say the name without defaulting to a Pirates accent, which as many of you would agree, sounds more like a farmer. Dont worry, I'm working on it. The Fiji Experience bus was just like a regular bus from home. However, with its aircon and tinted windows it was about as subtle as a punch in the face when driving through the relative poverty of the city of Nadi. To give you some idea as to just how much we stood out, every other bus in the country was manufactured in the 60's, hasn't been maintained since, has no glass in the windows and gains momentum through a combination of luck and gravity. But with a maximum speed of, as near as makes no difference, nothing: Fiji's public transport buses are still and faster and safer mode of transport than getting in the car with my Mum. And so to the other people on the bus. One thing that I have noticed when meeting all these people is that nearly everyone dresses in stereotypical clothing for their nation. When we stood in the circle to introduce ourselves, a quick scan picked out two prime examples. Firstly, there was a tall and skinny blonde chap with thick lensed glasses. He was milk bottle white and, despite the sweltering heat, wore long black trousers and a navy blue jumper and topped things off with a big blue rucksack and completely unnecessary walking boots. where was he from? You guessed it, Germany. The second was a girl with frizzy black hair. she was skinny and wore long baggy clothes in pastel colours and, along with her sash bag, looked like she had hand made them all out of curtains from a nursing home. Yep, your right, she was from France. I'm going to fast forward a bit as I am sure that you all have work to be getting on with, so I will detail the two near death experiences that occurred whilst in Fiji. The first of these came on the last day of the Fiji Experience trip around the mainland where we visited a rather bizarre set of geothermal mud baths and spa pools. I cant admit to having much of an interest in these areas, so I decided to amuse myself by conducting an experiment. Before we set off, I noticed that my facial hair had grown to such an extent that I was beginning to look like a big issue salesman, but instead of shaving it all off I was inspired by the music on someones Ipod and thus my investigation began: if I gave myself a chin strap beard and covered my entire body in mud, would I look like Craig David? In order to gain effective coverage I would need an assistant. The attractive blonde girl didn't want to get all muddy (more on her later) and Sam was too busy trying to understand the German boy so I selected Greg from Manchester. In a nutshell, Greg was great fun, if a little crazy. One example was that he would refuse to exit the bus the door and would instead leap out of the window, sometime whilst the bus was still moving. Having helped me with my experiment (it turns out that I did indeed look like Craig David, but it didn't help me sing any better), Greg decided to remove his trunks in the murky water and hold them above his head. This inferred nudity caused the entire group to evacuate the mud bath and head through the tree's to the spa pool. When everyone had left I took the opportunity to snatch Gregs shorts and ran towards the spa pool with naked Greg in hot pursuit (I must stress that this is not a situation that I would normally find myself in). This was much to amusement of the rest of the group, the bus driver and the local villagers. Incidentally, it apparently appeared in the Fiji Times under the heading 'Craig David the swimmer, escapes from naked swimmer'. Me and Greg were then presented with two major problems. The first was that we were travelling at high speed on wet slippery mud, and had about as much grip and stability as a newly born Giraffe on an Ice Rink. The second problem was that having transitioned from lounging in the bath like waters, to sprinting at high speed in the cold rain, I was left feeling as dizzy as a Maypole Dancer in a Hurricane. With both these factors in mind, I was particularly pleased that I managed to collide with the relative softness of a palm tree, and not the huge jagged rocks ether side. I am now facing a law suit of tens of pounds as record sales for Craig David have plummeted in Fiji since the incident, so much so that he has cancelled his upcoming Fijian tour. My next observation of note came on the remote island of Kuata. Now, many of you may be sat reading this from your offices or studies around the world (that's right JM, the audience is growing) thinking that you would rather be in the remote island of Kuata too. You would, however, be wrong. I am simply unable to explain in words (or any other expression for that matter) quite how bad it was. Part of the reason for this is that I still cannot quite comprehend how stupid the management staff are. To be honest I was amazed that they managed to maintain a constant pattern of breathing all day, let alone cause me misery as well. Now don't get me wrong, I am no island resort expert, but I have a few ideas that might make my guests stay more pleasurable. And one thing I would not do is RUN OUT OF EVERYTHING. This is a true as day list of the things that the island ran out of while we were there (for all of 2 days): Fiji Gold (lager) Fiji Bitter (bitter) Vodka White Rum Dark Rum Gin Red Wine White Wine Sprite Fanta Coke Mineral Water Chocolate Bars Ice Cream Peanuts Crisps Rice Potatoes Mango Tinned Drinks Anything with alcohol Phone cards And finally, believe it or not, they also ran out of electricity! Anyway, I best go. I managed to find a way to scam the Internet cafe to get free Internet but I think that they have noticed...