How was your commute to work this morning?

I caught the 7;30am Pacific bus into town (Lautoka). Being in Fiji, you are wise to turn up at the bus stop 15 minutes early as the bus can arrive at any time, guess that's not too dissimilar to the UK the only difference being these guys are often early!! ; ) As for the bus stops themselves they come in all shapes & sizes. Some are donated by families in memory of loved ones & vary from metal to wooden structures with thatched roofs. Others are nothing more than a few pieces of timber offering a little shade from the sun, but mostly people just wait under a tree & flag the bus down.

No worries about hearing your fellow passengers ipods or listening to people on their mobile phones, A. no one has an ipod & B. no one uses their mobile on the bus!

The early bus is full of school children of all ages. All beautifully dressed in their school uniforms. So smart & clean it would delight any British headteacher. Pink dresses with white collars & beige shorts with blue shirts for the really little ones, white blouses & purple tunics for the middle school children, white blouses, white skirts for the high school girls & white shirts & white sulu's (long wrap around style skirts) for the boys. How they manage to keep all that white so sparkling clean with all these dirt roads I have no idea! The bus takes several detours off the normal route to deliver them all to school. Unlike in first world countries there are no signs on the bus telling school children how to behave, Fijian kids are polite & full of smiles – I cant say I was the same when I travelled to high school on the train!

There is no pushing or shoving everyone is very orderly & if there is room on a bench seat people will squeeze up to make room for you (definitely not like London!). Men stand to allow the women to sit. The bus driver takes everyone's large heavy bags, placing them around his seat to free up room on the bus & then hands it to you as you leave.

If the rain comes, we all help unroll the plastic windows. No glass here, for maximum breeze in this hot, humid weather there are open empty spaces where glass would normally be.
Here's my stop, reaching up I pull the on the string that runs above the windows from the back of the bus to the front, where it pulls & rings on a bicycle bell....ingenious!

Hands up who wants to swap their first world commute for mine!