I love Chuuk. The people are wonderful, and its blue waters and lush jungle are fantastically beautiful. However, it’s missing a little bit of the charm that most other tropical paradise vacation destinations display. The lack of infrastructure, sandy beaches and plush resorts unfortunately put Chuuk a notch below most other island getaways. I wanted to get a taste of that cushy lifestyle that I’m missing, so I decided to depart from my island home and take a trip to Palau
My trip to Palau was primarily motivated by the visit of a friend from America Micronesia
We planned to spend a few days in Chuuk and then head over to Palau for a week. Before she arrived, I mapped out a precise itinerary of what we were going to do while she was in Chuuk. She would spend a couple days at my home family site on Fefan and we would also spend a couple days on the small picnic island of Pisar. I organized a massive trip with the volunteer community of Chuuk and booked boats and rooms for our stay.
I came into Weno on Thursday night, so that I could be there to meet her at the airport on Friday July 1st when her flight arrived. I posted on her facebook wall “I’ll see you in 24 hours!!”. Within minutes, I got a long distance call from Melissa. She said, “I don’t think I’m gonna see you in 24 hours, I’ll be lounging on Waikiki beach in 24 hours.” I quickly replied, “no no, you’re wrong. You aren’t factoring in the time change. You’ll be here tomorrow”. Melissa thought for a moment and then explained, “24 hours is 24 hours, and my plane isnt leaving Hawaii for another 48 hours”….she was right.
The detail that my lazy mind seemed to glaze over was that Friday July 1st in Chuuk is Thursday July 1st in America. In actuality, Chuuk time Saturday July 2nd is America time Friday July 1st. She was not arriving in Chuuk on Friday. I totally blew it.
I smacked myself in the head a few times and then readjusted our plans. We had to cancel the Pisar trip and only had time to go spend a couple days at my site on Fefan. However those few days on Fefan went very smoothly. She did very well dealing with the difficult conditions of my lifestyle and adapting to the cultural norms. The extra long skirts and awkward bucket showers irked her a little bit, but overall she did wonderfully and everyone really enjoyed her visit. She brought some souvenirs from Spain and my village/family was ecstatic. They couldn’t decide whom to give the gifts to, so they had a raffle full of dancing and laughs to auction off the prizes. My host father was so impressed by the soccer ball that Melissa bought that he wanted to mount it like a trophy and keep it safe on our wall forever. He felt it was extremely special because it was the only item they owned from the exotic far away country of Spain. I convinced him that it was meant to be played with, and the kids happily stormed out to kick it around.
On the morning of our flight to Palau, a serious storm was raging through the Chuuk Lagoon. Palm trees were swaying and the tin roof was rattling like a tuneless tambourine. The clouds were evacuating their bladders and drenching Chuuk with little pellets of H2O. The rain was flooding down from above and gave no indication of slowing down. Our first worry was about the possibility of a cancelled plane, and our second worry was about the harrowing boat trip ahead.
We wrapped our luggage in trash bags, covered ourselves in rain jackets and waddled down to the dock. We piled all of our stuff onto the boat and began our journey across the rocky sea. We bounced, bumped and bobbed our way through the angry ocean. The rain pounded on our backs and the sea splattered in our eyes. Mother nature did all she could to slow us down, but our rickety ship sliced through the waves and finally made it to Weno.
Despite our rainy weather gear, we were drenched to the bone. After we unloaded from the boat, we took our stuff over to a dry spot and began to organize our dripping baggage. I rifled through my backpack to grab my wallet and made a terrible discovery…. I forgot my passport!!!
The simplest and most important travel essential was left in a Ziploc bag sitting on my table back on Fefan. Once again, my absent-mindedness had thrown a monkey-wrench into our travel plans. I panicked for a few minutes, ranted around like a lunatic for a bit, then gathered myself together and thought of a plan. I found some locals from my island and they helped me call a lady from Fefan who could grab my passport from my room and bring it to me safely. Luckily, our flight wasn’t until the early afternoon and my passport arrived in my hands with ample time left. We were soaking wet and still skeptical about our plane being cancelled, but at least I had my passport.
Our plane came on time and we took a short connecting flight to Guam. Arriving in Guam was quite a shock for me. From the plane, I saw skyscrapers, golf courses and swimming pools. I saw streets, factories, and light posts. I saw infrastructure. This was something that I hadn’t seen in almost a year. Just walking through the white walled airport was a disorienting experience. The signs of developed civilization and clean legitimate buildings gave me a jolt of reality. I had forgotten all the luxuries of the modern world and even seeing little glimpses of them was rather shocking.
If the tile floors of the Guam airport impressed me, I was in for quite a surprise when we arrived in Palau. We checked into the Palau Royal Resort and I seemed to be transported into an entirely different universe. White clad bell-boys carried my bags, garden lights cast a romantic yellow glow on a fish pond, and a fully functioning elevator carried me up to my 5th floor deluxe hotel room. I wasn’t in Chuuk anymore.
The luxurious amenities of our hotel and the breathtaking ocean view of our room made it one of the nicest places that I ever been in my life. Tourism in Palau is designed for a Japanese crowd, and as far as I know, Japanese like nice stuff. We spent the next couple days just lounging around the hotel grounds and soaking up this opulent lifestyle. The mud of Weno streets seeped out of my pores in a warm shower and I allowed myself to unwind in these lavish surroundings.
On one of the nights I hung out with Peace Corps volunteers and caught up with all my friends that I met in our training sessions. I was taken aback when they casually argued about which bar’s happy hour we should go to that night. I hadn’t been to a bar in a year, and the idea of having multiple options was baffling to me. I had a great night drinking with my Peace Corps buddies and sharing stories of our experiences. They live a very different lifestyle than we do in Chuuk and it was interesting to compare our adventures. After our drinks, I strolled down the exquisitely paved roads of Palau and marveled at the well-maintained infrastructure. The city of Koror was no different than an American city. Roads, banks, bars, restaurants, hotels, and stores. Wow.
One of the things I liked best about being in Palau was the food. In Chuuk, food options are very limited. Local food or canned meat pretty much covers every meal. But Palau has cuisine from all over the world and is especially famous for wonderful seafood. I ate pounds of sashimi and dined at the best Indian restaurant that I’ve ever had. (and Ive been to India).
However, one of the Palauan delicacies stood alone at the top of all foods. BAT. Not just a few cut-up pieces of bat, but a full fruit bat. A large black bat with a two-foot wingspan. (Hair, head, and wings included for no extra charge) An entire bat was just plopped in a broth and served in large bowl. Now, Ive put a lot of weird things in my belly. I’ve chewed on turtle fat, chomped zebra flesh, sucked on crocodile chunks, grubbed dog ribs, and slurped snake wine. But nothing compares to this bat. This bat takes the cake as the most ridiculously appalling and disgusting foods that I have ever let enter my mouth.
I tore away at the hairy skin and tasted a bit of its gangly chest eat. The texture was rather gamy and reminded me of eating small birds like quail, but it tasted like liver with a trashy after taste. It tasted just like what I would imagine a rat tasting like. I guess that makes sense, a bat is basically a rat with wings. My friend Melissa fancies herself as an amateur food connoisseur and really enjoys eating exotic foods, but the bat was a little overwhelming for her. She didn’t want to scrape off the flesh for herself, so she asked for me to cut her a bite and put it on her plate. She closed her eyes and looked away as I prepared a nice piece for her. Melissa jumped back and screamed when she opened her eyes and saw the severed bat head staring at her with pointed fangs and open eyes. It was a dirty trick by me, but it was also pretty hilarious.
Melissa and I decided that we wanted to get out of the city and really get a stereotypical beach paradise vacation. We found a small resort located in the rock islands that would be a perfect place for us do to all the activities we wanted while enjoying the unruffled serenity of beachy relaxation. We zig-zagged through the small islands and made our way out to Carp Island Resort. From our quiet bungalow cabin at carp, we had easy access to the three most famous things about Palau. Diving, rock islands, and jellyfish.
The rock islands of Palau are a geological wonder. This type of unbelievable rock architecture can only be seen in a few places on our planet (I’ve seen one of the other’s in Hailong Bay, Vietnam ; ). They are often referred to as karst limestone formations; more simply just called rock islands. The remnants of shells, coral and other sea creatures have been piling up on the ocean floor for billions of years. Over the millennia, tectonic movements caused this ocean floor to shoot to the surface. Exposure to the elements along with the slow secretion of chemicals from the rocks have caused the bottom of the rock outcroppings to erode. The result is a multitude of mushroom-shaped rock piles. To make it even more remarkably wonderful, the teetering mineral deposits just happen to be situated in tropical latitudes that are ideal for plant growth. So what we see now are hundreds of green mushrooms spattered across the southern waters of Palau. It truly is a magnificent geologic wonder (go google a picture of Palau, because my shabby descriptions don’t do these islands justice).
The rock islands are beautiful to behold, but most people come to Palau to see the beauty of what lies below the water. Untouched coral blooms and throngs of fledgling fish swarm the waters around Palau. I got a Peace Corps discounted rate and took a day trip of scuba diving to see the sights from an underwater perspective. It was spectacular! In my opinion, the main thing that makes Palau scuba diving special is the abundance of fish. Thousands of fish with a thousand different colors cascaded in front of my face as I carelessly floated through the warm waters of deep-sea paradise. The highlight of my scuba diving trip was the sharks. Lots of sharks! I saw at least 15 long, sleek, cartilaginous predators perusing the waters around me. These sharks were much larger than most that I see when I’m spear fishing, but they also seemed a lot less scary. I think that is primarily due to the fact that I didn’t have a buffet of bleeding fish strapped tightly around my waist. Having shark treats attached to your hips does make their presence a little more ominous. Luckily, I was just observer this time and not a competitor.
Melissa and I rented a kayak and paddled around the islands in search of a diving spot called Turtle Cove. We never found the turtles, but we did enjoy a leisurely kayak trip and some crystal clear snorkeling. On the last day of our Carp island experience, we soaked up the last rays of sun lying in our hammocks and then took a boat for our final adventure. We bid goodbye to the lonely island paradise that was our home for a few days and looked forward to fun ahead of us. The fun ahead of us was all about jellyfish.
These aren’t just any ol’ jellyfish. These jellyfish are special. Very special. These are stingless jellyfish. You can touch them, poke them, stroke them, and put them on your face without the slightest worry of injury. They have been isolated in a salt-water lake on one of the rock islands. In this little lake, there are no predators. So the jellyfish have adapted and no longer have a need for stinging chemicals. These jellyfish live with only jellyfish, and it doesn’t do any good to sting your fellow jellies. The evolutionary oddity has created a jellyfish haven. This lake is full of jellyfish! I expected to see some jellyfish floating around in small pockets of the lake, but I was sorely mistaken. It was teeming with jellyfish. Millions upon millions of jellyfish called this place home. As I swam through these jellyfish hordes, squishy little invertebrates accosted my arms, legs, face and body. I used to hate jellyfish, now I love them.
My Palau expedition was a much needed break from Chuuk and gave me a fresh perspective on my life here. Melissa’s visit made me look at my lifestyle in a new light and actually made me appreciate it more. I realized how well integrated I am into the society and how comfortable I feel with this type of life. The modernization of Palau gave me mixed feelings. On one hand, I wonder, “how come Palau can do it, and Chuuk cant?” Palau is turning into a little America and is pushing full-steam ahead into modernization. There are a lot of benefits to this ideology. On the other hand, seeing the Americanization of Palau made me appreciate the rural aspects of Chuuk. We still maintain some of the traditional lifestyle and are able to thrive in our undeveloped island landscape. In truth, that is one of the main reasons why I joined the Peace Corps. I wanted to prove to myself that people can live without all the advents of modernization. Our satisfaction in life is not entirely dependent upon the material items that we possess and the luxuries that we can afford. People can still live very happy lives without Iphones, reality TV, and McDonalds. Maybe even happier……
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