Friday, June 20, 2003

 
So, we are back in Suva

But how much fun we had flying back ... flight left pretty much on time .. our great "exit row" seats were not that great .. not really much more legroom, and our seats would not recline ... weird people and loud kids on board ... food was ok .. better than average actually ... fish or chicken was the big question again ...

But the big fun started arriving in Nausori, the airport close to Suva. In Sydney we had stocked up on all kinds of nice food items and japanese ingredients which are not available in Fiji. Knowing that customs regulations on food are tough, we stayed away from stuff that is not sealed in, like fresh fruit, meat and such ... so .. we felt ok answering the question on the customs form with "we have no food with us" ... i mean ... a sauce mix to make Thai Tom Yum soup can hardly be called food ... or dried seaweed.

But as luck has it, customs felt inclined that night to check each and every suitcase ... and they were not that mad about finding "food" but more that we did not declare that we had food items with us ... so ... they went through everything, tried to figure out what is what (which with most of the japanese stuff was a challange) .. they talked about confiscating everything and punish us with a huge fine (I kept recalling that headline in the newspaper, when some tourist lady was fined 1000FJ$ for bringing in 3 apples) ... but I tried to talk to the people, explaining that this stuff is not dangerous, that we did not know and such .. and they came around ... in the end the only wanted to confiscate 3 items ... and i could talk them even out of 2 more of those .. but in the end they took all the rice we brought (yes, we do have rice in Fiji, but Ritsu is very picky about rice and wanted to bring this special japanese rice) ... I was really surprised about some of the stuff they let us keep though (Natto, pickled Ginger..) ... and I also had a little too much liquor on us (the 2 bottles of wine that we brought from the Hunter Valley e.g.), but that was ok too.



Well .. in the end we got through quite well ... just such a shame about the rice!

We took a cab back home and everything seems fine and the cat is very happy to see us ...

from now on the adventure continues on the nacken fiji experience
posted by Peter 8:55 PM