Fiji for Fiji Fashion Week 2015

The day after I got back from Western Australia, I left for Fiji.

No, I don’t plan things this way, but that’s how they usually happen for me. I had enough time to give my kids hello/goodbye hugs before I was off to Suva.

I was beyond excited to be going to Fiji for Fashion Week!

We stopped for dinner at Tomlus on our way from Nadi Airport to Suva. Of course it was delicious and we booked ahead for a few days time, as well.

As late evening arrivals at Novotel Lami Bay, our accommodation during fashion week, we were a little travel weary as we were taken to our room, and I was ready to crash. But, as soon as we were let in the door I sensed it…. I knew there were cockroaches. I don’t know how, but I just knew they would be there – I have a very finely tuned roach radar. I was immediately transported back to the trauma of my late 80’s experiences in the cheapest of cheap backpackers’ joints in all the wrong ends of South East Asia. The room looked like it hadn’t been renovated since the 80’s and had perhaps been flooded a number of times since. Old decor, broken, cracked, in disrepair, with fluorescent tube lighting on the ceiling (I have written articles on my judging of accommodation based solely on the lighting they use, and fluorescent tube is worse than kero lamp). My thoughts were “How can Novotel put their name to this place”. After all, we had stayed in a nice one in Exmouth, just the week before.

Too scared to recline on any furniture I was overcome with ‘the horror, the horror’, and then I saw the roach.

A call to reception had us moved upstairs to what may as well have been another hotel altogether, so different it was from our first room. Why on earth we were given the downstairs room, I couldn’t imagine!

The bed linen was nice, it was of a more modern standard, and fairly comfortable. And not one roach for the rest of our stay!

The real winner with this hotel is it’s outlook. Such a surprise to look out the next morning to a stunning view across Lami Bay with the water literally lapping at the bottom of the building. Calm and lovely.
The beautiful fish that swim past the restaurant are a sweet addition to the breakfast ambience, and I even enjoyed the music that was played in the restaurant (a bit indy, and nothing at all like the squeaky pop that I often have to listen to in Fiji hotels).

Lami Bay is on the edge of Suva, and the hotel on the waterfront had such a tranquility about it.

And it’s got geckos by the glassful! (I love geckos so much, and how cute is this little guy!)

A special moment on a drizzly weekday morning…

Sonny, Nicholas Huxley (head of fashion design at Sydney TAFE) and I all gave talks at Fiji National University (which has the unfortunate abbreviation of FNU) and at Tailevu North College. I loved talking with the high school kids about photography and their potential for a career with it in Fiji.

I want to go back and give some lessons now!

We did three days worth of shows, and since I have shared so many photos already on my Running Under the Sprinkler Facebook page, as well as Instagram, I’ll just pick a few favourites for here…

I loved being there. It was colourful, fun and real. The models were all gorgeous and so sweet, there were some beautiful designs, and I just had a great time.

While in Suva we had a couple of meals at the Grand Pacific, which is a glorious, colonial styled hotel – the style of the haunts that exist in my fantasy life as international photojournalist or ambassador’s wife.

I would have loved to check out the rooms there.

Hanging with Trevor Whippy, talking camera settings with him, over lunch, while it rained.

Actually it rained quite a bit in Suva, but it didn’t dampen my smile (awww, cheeeeesy!).

It was all a great experience.

In the many decades that I have visited Fiji I had never been to Suva before. It was well overdue that I visited!

Getting peckish driving back to the Coral Coast, we spotted a bunch of shops at Pacific Harbour. I didn’t know what we would find there to eat and it’s a funny little area, kinda sitting in the middle of nowhere on the main road, but there are restaurants perched around a lily pond and it’s got a pretty good selection of food.

I heard some blues wafting along the path, but I thought the song would have been a one-off. I rounded the bed to see this sign

and that was enough for me, but it got even better.

The Baka Blues Cafe is a perfect mix of seafood and music, as far as I am concerned. I tapped my toes and enjoyed a prawn po-boy,

and I was in Fiji.

It couldn’t have gotten more perfect!

The next two nights I was back at my second home, The Fijian.

It had been less than a year since I was last there, but I am always happy to stay.

We had met Tahitian surfing designers, Hani and Benji, in Suva as they showed their designs at fashion week. They came to the Shangri-La to hang out with us.

Hani is a perfect Tahitian princess who made me a perfect Tahitian flower crown!

I wish I could have brought it home with me to show Belle and India, but Australia gets a bit funny about you doing that with flowers and the like, so I gifted it to the lovely Lusia, from Tomlus.