The Best Hostel I Have Ever Stayed At

The best hostel I have ever stayed at so far anyway. I suppose if I do happen to find a better one then I would have to write another blog post with this title. As I'm typing this post now, I've been traveling 20 months straight and I checked into the hostel that I'm writing about near my 4 months of travel mark. Before that I was living with hippies in Hawaii.
So where is it?

Fiji. I knew nothing about it. I had only recently learned that the country existed before going there! It is a dot on the map. The reason I went there was simply because someone suggested it.

For awhile,  I had planned to go to New Zealand after Hawaii. I got a cheap flight deal To Hawaii but since it was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and not really near anywhere, I didn't find as good as a deal out.
And just in case any of you may be thinking I could have sailed or gotten a ride on a merchant ship to get a good deal like a skillfully cheap vagabond might consider, uh no. I had gotten out of the Navy about 6 months before and I definitely wasn't going to consider getting on any kind of ship just yet.
I found that a plane ticket to New Zealand was expensive. "You should go to Fiji first man, it's off the hook and you can see another country on the way!" my friend Kai said. He was right. Fiji is in between Hawaii and New Zealand and a little closer to Hawaii than New Zealand is and so a cheaper plane ticket. OK, why not?      
I bought the ticket to Fiji.

I didn't need a visa to go to Fiji. Actually, what is surprising is that I'm allowed to stay up to 4 months without a visa!
However, I did have to show an ongoing flight ticket out of the country.
Before arriving I booked a hostel online. Wow! Online the price said 6 US dollars and something per night.In Hawaii, the hostels are about $30 US dollars a night! 
The hostel had free airport pick up and I read that it had free kava parties. Kava? Kai had been to Fiji before and explained it was like a muscle relaxer that everyone drinks over there.
Should be interesting.

When I stepped off the plane the first thing that I thought was What the fuck?!!!  I thought I had stepped into an oven. I thought Hawaii was hot. Fiji was a super humid place and it was the first time I ever experienced that amount of the sticky type of heat. I arrived on December 30th and it was summer in Fiji.

They picked me up at the airport and for the first time in my life I got in a car designed to drive on the left side of the road and they drove me to Bamboo Backpackers.

well, here it is..

So what was so great about this place? keep in mind that this my personal opinion. But I must point out...

-Free airport pickup
well, that was nice.

-  Swimming
It has a small swimming pool and also it's on the beach. The humidity and the sun in Fiji was pretty intense but I would often go swimming in the ocean around sunset and the water was so warm, almost as much as a hot tub.

- bar/restaurant

-ping pong table

-fire on the beach

and sometimes fire shows!

- Volleyball

- Free access to kitchen
You can store your food/drink in a big refrigerator. There is a shop within walking distance of the hostel so I would buy my beer there instead of the bar because it's cheaper and store it in the refrigerator.

- Mango and coconut trees
they are on the property!

- Party every night
It was super hot in the daytime but every night is Bula time! Bula is Fijian for hello, cheers, and pretty much what everyone screams when they feel excited.  Every night I was there many people were socializing, celebrating and partying. but don't worry if you want to chill,  plenty of people just chill out too.

-lots of hammocks

- Kava
Free kava every night. But in Fiji, free kava is very common. I was even given kava in a store,.. before they aggressively begged for me to buy something. 
Anyway, it has been said "No kava, no Fiji."
I drank lots of kava while in Fiji and I never once had to pay for it. Kava seemed to be a huge part of Fiji.  So what is it? I've heard it called a muscle relaxer?
Well, it comes from a root that they smash into powder then they mix with water in a big bowl.
 

notice all the different sized bowls behind him.
this man gave me a welcome to Fiji kava ceremony.

Kava looks like muddy water and it also kinda tastes like muddy water. Drinking it is done in a ceremonial way.  It is scooped from the big bowl and drunk out a coconut shell and usually in a group. After drinking a bowl of kava, it is common to clap 3 times.  Before drinking a bowl of kava, people will usually say Bula and clap once. I was told, "Clapping is a sign of respect for the kava." 

 As with many things that are natural, there are also health claims about kava. I even had someone tell me that it has been used in cancer treaments.  I've also heard a few people tell me that their body did not respond positively to too much kava. Personally, I have no idea if it's healthy or not. 

Fijians have been drinking kava for years and many are proud of it.  At Bamboo Backpackers, they had kava every night. 

Before I tried kava, I thought that it might feel like a drug or something like that but it was very mild. The first thing people notice is that it makes their mouth feel numb.  Many people drank about 5 bowls or so and said they didn't feel much. 

After about 10 bowls, I was feeling relaxed. Kava has no alcohol by the way. At night many people drink kava, and the Fijians at the hostel play guitar and sing. They often play things like Bob Marley. One of my personal favorite songs that they often played is "Please Don't Touch My Papaya"

 The effect doesn't get you stoned like weed or fuck you up like alcohol can but it does make you relaxed. It's difficult to describe exactly. 

The Fijians typically stayed out there drinking kava longer than all the tourists. I would often see them still in the same place at about 2:00 A.M. still drinking kava!

- Good price
The price for the cheapest dorm room was 12 Fijian Dollars a night. About 6 USD. At least that was the price and the exchange rate at the time I was there.  That is for a bed in a 12 bed mixed dorm with fans. It costs a few dollars more for an dorm with air-con. Private rooms also available. 

- People
The hostel itself is great but what really what made my experience staying there great was the people that I met there.  

 I have made friends at other hostels around the world but never as many as my stay at this one. Perhaps If I went back there now, it wouldn't be as great. It depends on who's there at the time and maybe I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. 
Maybe the kava and alcohol contributes to the already social ambiance of the place itself.

Another reason other than the heavy social energy that it was easy to meet people was that the hostel was in Nadi, which is a main entry/exit point in Fiji.

Fiji has 333 islands!!! Most of those are small though. Nadi was on the major island. So the hostel was kind of like a home base. Travelers enter and stay there and go and visit other islands and usually come back before leaving Fiji.

Also, I'm not choosing my greatest experience while at a hostel. This is just the best hostel in my opinion, the actual physical hostel itself along with it's perks. It's possible to have an awesome experience at a not awesome hostel too. Even If one does have better experiences at other hostels that doesn't necessarily the hostels itself are better. 

Another exceptional hostel I must mention is on Mana Island, Fiji. I had a great time there. There are no shops on that island so 3 meals are inclusive with the price. I will write about Mana in the next post. 

What I didn't like:  Bamboo was advertised online that they had free wifi. They give you a limited amount of free wifi. 
I don't remember how long.
After using that amount of time, you can buy wifi by the day or for 1 week. It's not too expensive but many people figured out some glitch in the system and were able to easily access the free wifi over and over because of some technical reason.
 Some countries are stingy with wifi and some are not, maybe it's just Fiji because it was the same on Mana Island with having to buy wifi if you wanted it but don't let that detain you from having an amazing Bula time!  

Thanks for reading my blog/internet journal. By the way, yes I realize that about half of this post is on a white background and the other on a dark one. This was partly on accident but then I decided that I liked the way it looked. 
 I'll close this post by sharing a few pictures. I'll be writing more about Fiji and putting more pictures soon!