Fiji

I know you're supposed to take time to form an educated opinion about a new country, but I was only in Fiji for a week. So, here's what I immediately noticed on my first day in its capital, Suva:

• There are lots of Indians! So many, in fact, that I considered the possibility that Suva was in fact a gateway in space and having visited Suva, I could now claim I've been to India. Sari shops, curry stands, Hindi music, and Bollywood films are everywhere. The tension between Indo-Fijians and Ethnic Fijians is palpable (and the cause of four political coups since Fiji's independence).

• There are no dogs. As I write this in Tonga, there's a dog fight going on in my back yard. In Tonga, livestock, in the form of dog, wanders the street. Hungry? Got a rock and a match? Hunger solved. But then Fiji has something Tonga doesn't: McDonald's...coincidence?

• The people aren't that friendly. But then, it's all relative. Tonga has kept true to its nickname "the Friendly Islands" ever since Captain Cook bestowed it on them in the 1770s. You'd be hard pressed to pass any Tongan on the street without exchanging some form of pleasantry. (as a bonus, I also can't pass a Tongan child who doesn't want to practice/show off his/her English). It's so much the norm that I'm in the habit of saying "hello," waving, or at least nodding my head and raising my eyebrows (Tongan custom) to every person I pass. All's well in Tonga, but in Suva that habit got me treated like an escaped mental patient.

I spent half my week in and around Suva, before heading to the opposite side of the main island and Fiji's second-biggest city, Nadi (pronounced Nan-dee). I bought some snacks for the four-hour bus ride to Nadi, wandering through an actual grocery store in a stunned daze. In Tonga, if I wanted strawberry jam, I would go to the shop that sold strawberry jam and buy the brand of jam they carried. In Suva, I was confronted by half an aisle devoted to jams of all kinds. I wasn't buying jam for the bus, but I still stared at five different brands of strawberry jam and wondered if stepping into a Superstore in Canada would put me into a coma.

And then, in the milk section, I saw something I never though I would. You see, in Tonga, every shop carries the exact same brand of ultra-heat treated ANCHOR regular milk. Many shops put up the free poster that I assume the receive when they order their millionth case of ANCHOR milk. The poster reads "ANCHOR Milk, Which Would You Choose?" With check boxes next to the flavours Chocolate, Strawberry, and Hokey Pokey (and in a cunning display of advertising genius, an additional and checked box labeled "All of them!"). This poster is made of false hope, and is a cruel tease to every Tongan child. "Regular" is the only flavour of milk sold in Tonga.

Now I already know what chocolate and strawberry taste like. But "Hokey Pokey"? Whenever I saw a poster and tried to imagine it, I imagined some flavourful mix of skipping school and playing Twister. And there, in Suva, sat juicebox sized portions of Hokey Pokey milk. I didn't even wait for the bus; I guzzled it as I left the cash register. I wish I could say it tasted like I imagined it would, but it turned out to just be caramel.