White tourists ... GET THEIR MONEY!

There is nothing worse than being taken advantage of because of your skin tone or gender. We definitely know how that feels now that we’ve traveled to Fiji. Taxi drivers and shop attendants automatically stereotype us based on our appearance and act accordingly. As a group we had decided to walk to the main road to check out the grocery store since we were told that was the only store only since it was Sunday, a Holy Day. Almost every taxi driver slowed down to either stare us down or ask if we needed a taxi. Walking down the beach we were also told to enjoy a horse ride on the beach. Lauren and I were beyond tired of being stereotyped by our skin tone since they automatically assume that we are rich tourists and can just throw our money around. We understand that this society makes all their money off tourists, but this was not something that we’re used to. After a short walk through the grocery store and getting really cheap ice cream treats it was unfortunately time to part ways with the Germans for good. They had their flights that afternoon so they had to get back to the hostel to collect their bags before heading to the airport. Lauren and I had decided that we were going to stay in town to see which shops were open and hopefully get some souvenirs. Before anything we had to walk nearly two miles to the closest ATM and then back the opposite direction to find some shops. While we were resting at a bus stop from the sun we had yet another taxi pull over to ask where we were heading. We gave him the usual general answer but insisted that we didn’t need a taxi. However, this one was persistent saying that he could take us to the McDonald’s that was about 4 miles down the road for just a dollar each. We honestly couldn’t pass up on this deal since that was going to save us a lot of time in the hot sun! We made it all the way across town in a short 10 minutes, while the taxi driver of course tried to talk us into letting him take us into downtown. We were fine finding our own way though and come to find out there were some shops that were open on Sundays. The clouds were building up once again so we knew that we would have to head back soon, especially since we didn’t want to be walking in the dark! That was for sure. We were just about all shopped out whenever a guy came up to us on the street and told us about a shop that sold real handmade Fiji items, not like the Indian shops that sold the manufactured items. We were a little uncomfortable with going up to this shop, since a girl had told us about a store that had overpriced items just a couple of days before. When we got in the shop the owner asked us to participate in a kava ceremony that was accustomed for their village. We did not want to do this at all, but it would  have been highly rude for us to decline and leave. It didn’t last long, but then the owner started his salesman act of trying to sell us really expensive items by giving us a ‘great deal.’ We weren’t going to be fooled though since all the items looked exactly like the ones in the stores just way more expensive. With a loud clap of thunder we gave the excuse that we had to get home and tried to bolt out of there. He then asked for a donation for the school children in his village and gave a couple of coins, which he was not pleased with. Fiji people always want more money! We were just trying to be polite at this point since they obviously weren’t from a village considering it was Sunday, a holy day in the Fiji culture, meaning they wouldn’t be working today. The whole situation really fired us up though and we swapped some not so nice words about the experience on the way back to the main road. Finally over the situation we decided to stop for a late lunch/early dinner since we wanted to be back at our hostel way before night fall. We both enjoyed some Fiji burgers, which we had been craving the entire time on the islands. Unsure of whether or not to tip, we agreed on the former which turned out to be not the norm since the waitress was a little surprised but grateful. Oh well, we made her day! Like planned, we had an easy stroll back to the hostel which was probably a little over a mile and made it back before nightfall. We had planned to maybe enjoy the rest of the night on the beach for the last time but completely exhausted from all the walking throughout the day we were probably in bed before 9 PM. We didn’t mind though since that meant we were that much closer to waking up and getting on our plane bound for our second home of Sydney!