Fiji....Part Deux

We had many adventures while in Fiji, but my husband wins the award for providing us the most...ummm...."what-in-the-heck-are-we-doing" adventure.

On our first trip in to the town of Nadi (pronounced "Nan-dee") we were approached by some dude on a street corner. Okay, it wasn't the FIRST person to approach us. We were accosted by nearly every store front on the main drag. The Fijians like to push their goods on the tourists. Before we left on vacation, a co-worker actually warned me of this behavior in the bigger towns....and to NEVER mention your name because they will create some handicraft personalized and you are obligated to buy it at that point.

I said, "Go ahead and make them TRY to spell my name correctly." because, well, nobody ever gets it right the first time.

So we had been warned. I relayed this information to my husband. But Troy is a likes-to-talk-to-strangers kind of dude. He is overly friendly to the kind of people that I would pass and tightly hold my purse/personal belongings VERY close. Yeah. He's all kinds of interesting to travel with.Never a dull moment.

Stranger Danger is just not in his vocabulary.

And the strang(er) man dude approached Troy first. Because Troy is approachable....plus I'm sure Troy just started chatting it up with him FIRST. He convinced my husband that HE had the BEST handmade handicrafts EV.ER. And so Troy bit. He bit hard. And he waved for us to follow him and the strang(er) man dude.

So we did. With trepidation. Down THIS alley:



That's Tiffiny with the "Where-the-heck-is-he-taking-us" look. How was I supposed to know? I was in the back of the pack. Scared. Wanting to kill my husband who was far ahead of all of us, excited and anxious to get to wherever the strang(er) man dude was taking us.

Down the alley, up a flight of stairs on the back side of the building and in to this tiny gallery. That's where we landed. As I started looking around I didn't notice anything bigger or more special about this stuff than the 15 other places we had passed on the main drag. Except that it was small. And I felt like maybe we would not return to life as we had once known it.

I think they sensed this apprehension from all of us....so they came in for the kill.

"Have you been to a Kava Ceremony yet?"

Nope. Suddenly 3 other men appeared. And so it began. The final manipulation of my husband. He was deemed "chief" for the purposes of the ceremony and I knew right then we were all in trouble. His head was larger than life. So it went on....and we had our first official Kava ceremony (not our last) in a dirty back alley handicraft gallery.

Sweet.

See that dude carving that beautiful Kava bowl? Yeah. I caved. I bought that exact bowl that was carved in front of us during our Kava Ceremony.

I suppose Troy isn't the only sucker.

(to be continued.....)