A Month in Guam

We arrived in Guam on Easter Sunday, convinced that we were about to be bombed.  Either by the North Koreans (see article at Korean Missiles), or by our own government as they prepare to parachute dead Tylenol-poisoned mice into the treetops to kill the millions of invasive brown tree snakes (see article here at Guam Tree Snakes).

We believe the mice are probably a bigger threat, but decidedly more fun to watch than an in-coming nuclear-tipped missile.  We hope that the government sees fit to drop the mice before we leave for home. Our plan is to hang out in the area where the drop will occur with binoculars, cameras, and open umbrellas, hoping for a good show. Now THAT is entertainment!

Amanda and Roger beach walking.

We are staying with Nick and Amanda for a month on Guam.  While Nick works as research attorney at the Supreme Court, Amanda has been taking us on educated and educating tours of this marvelous island.  Guam is rich--in local island culture, WWII history, and beautiful, beautiful beaches and countryside.

Guam is a tropical paradise, nearly entirely overlooked by the US tourist market. All we knew about it before we visited was that it was a big WWII site and our kid lived there. Fair enough.  It is in the middle of nowhere, 3000 miles west of Hawaii and 1200 miles east of the Philippines. The cheapest direct flight we found from the US mainland is through Manila, and the flight goes from LA to Guam, where it refuels (no-one allowed on or off the plane), continues to Manila, and then connects with a flight that goes back to Guam.  It is NOT easy to get here.

Linda and Nick at Ratidian Beach.

The Japanese have not overlooked it, though.  They found it first when they bombed the shit out of it on December 8, 1941 (the day after the day which shall live in infamy, a function of the international date line), occupying it until we bombed the shit out of it in July 1944 and recaptured it in a brutal amphibious landing.   The beaches are still full of Japanese, but they are partying and posing for one another like supermodels instead of fighting. Nearly all the tourists in Guam are Japanese, where they come in throngs (and thongs!) to get married, lounge on the beach, and shop at the Largest K-Mart in the World.

Normally on the blog, we try to keep you up to date with our activities, stressing the more entertaining ones. However, we have been here nearly a month and haven’t bothered to do that yet. Our time has been a mix of sightseeing, historical discovery, beach walking, snorkeling, overeating, and outright sloth, leaving little time for productive writing. Oh, well, what can a person do? Cram it all into one blog, that’s what.

The Island

The island is small, three times the size of Washington D.C., or, for you Detroiters, about the size of Wayne County (though less corrupt).  But there is plenty to see and do. In a month, we have just scratched the surface. The interior is mountainous and rugged, with rivers and waterfalls. As we explore, we constantly try to imagine what this terrain was like for the marines who landed on the beaches and moved into the interior. We took a Talafofo River jungle cruise and went boonie stomping (hiking). We visited a truly bizarre tourist attraction called Talofofo Falls. This is a Korean-run private park where the highlights are a waterfall and the cave where Sgt. Yokoi, a Japanese left behind when the war ended, lived for 28 years. Yep. He was discovered in 1972.

The cave and waterfall were interesting, but the other attractions really caught our eye. The owners appeal to a broad audience by offering target shooting, bumper cars, an historical museum, a gift shop, a ghost house, and “Love Land”, an erotic sculpture garden. All the signage was in Japanese with quite awful English translations. They obviously felt no need to consult any of the thousands of English-speaking locals for a quick grammar-check. It made for an amusing walk through the museum, which also housed life-size statues of pirates and American plains Indians. They probably got those for cheap somewhere.

Ahhhh, the erotic sculptures. First of all, the signs forbid anyone under the age of 19 from entrance. A sign on the gate warns you to close it immediately due to wild pigs, which freely roam the area. Who knows what they would do if they saw those statues?

Wild pigs abound in Guam.

The first sculptures on the path are a man and woman in Victorian-era clothing bowing to one another. We are not quite erotic yet. They got a little steamier, such as Venus de Milo, and became downright ridiculous, especially the nude woman riding a giant penis like a horse. And a six-foot high disembodied penis.  The “art” most entertaining, though, were the metal mechanical sculptures where the viewer can turn a crank and make the statues move, assuming positions both predictable and potentially painful.  Roger took some stop-action photos of one of those and will be happy to share them with you.  When it comes to erotic sculpture, though, the East Asians have much to learn from India, that’s a fact!

Historical Happenings

The island has dozens of historical sites that deal with WWII battles. It also has a beautifully organized museum that explains Guam’s role in the war. The national park, War in the Pacific, is excellent and free and does a terrific job of describing Guam’s role in the war. The park consists of several different amphibious beach landing sites, historic buildings, gun emplacements, and battlefields. Ranger Ben has recorded an audio tour that you can follow on a cell phone, as you drive from one site to the next. Enormous guns dot the island, as do Japanese pillboxes.

This Japanese pillbox is hidden in the natural limestone on the rocky shore.

The Japanese hunkered down in those structures waiting for the American invasion, and, for thirty thousand of them, its inevitable conclusion. It is eerie to crouch in one and look out to sea, trying to imagine what the experience must have felt like for both sides. We swim on some of the invasion beaches as well. Looking at old photos of those beaches is sobering. Signs everywhere warn visitors that there is still live ammunition around the island, and explain what to do should you stumble across any. Thankfully, we haven’t.

One particularly unusual sight was the South Pacific Memorial Park. It is a Japanese monument dedicated to peace and friendship between the US and Japan. Mostly, though, it commemorates a group of Japanese soldiers who took refuge in caves in the nearby ravine and their commander, who committed suicide as the Americans closed in. The site is disturbing. There are huge stands of bamboo around the caves, the tallest we’ve ever seen. When the wind blows, the bamboo makes bizarre, eerie noises. We visited late in the afternoon and the combination of deep ravine, tall trees, dim light, and creepy noises gave us the willies.

Honey, I shrunk the kids. It looks like a clump of grass, but is  actually enormous bamboo plants.

We have done much more during our month here than just these few activities. We’ve visited Gef Pa’go (a traditional Chamorro village), hiked all over, climbed to the Latte Stone of Freedom at the governor’s complex, explored the caves at Ratidian Point, visited the historic beaches, and seen the Magellan Monument, among many others. The kids bought Linda a batik making class as a gift, and both she and Amanda seem to have serious batik-making talent.

Beach Fun

We did a LOT of this.

Swimming with the fishes.

Beaches surround Guam (it IS an island) and we have sampled many of them. It is also surrounded by a coral reef with spectacular fish and coral, perfect for exploring with a snorkel and fins. Linda gave serious thought to purchasing a Hello Kitty floaty device (they are everywhere) to make sure she didn’t drift off to sea, since the ocean is out to get her. After a few snorkeling outings, however, she decided that shallow water, sunshine, and a lifeguard-trained Amanda made extra protection absurd. So, Japanese tourists, there is still a ridiculous inflatable on the shelf for you to buy. And in the underwater photos, Linda does not look like a wimpy dork. Win-win.

Our favorite!

The ocean water is bath water warm, crystal clear, and calm. The reef is close to shore and it begins in knee-deep water. The fish are beyond abundant, with a huge variety of fantastically colored critters.  Our favorite is the chubby bright blue sea stars that drape over the coral like a Salvator Dali clock drapes over a table. At times, it seemed as though we were swimming in an aquarium. It would be crazy NOT to snorkel under these conditions. We have taken full advantage of this beautiful reef. One beach on Saipan has two sunken Sherman tanks offshore that are now part of the reef. Plants and coral cover it and fish surround it. Outstanding swimming territory!

Food and Festivals

Some of the goodies at a night market.

Guam and the other Marianas Islands are very big on food and festivals. A weekly Night Market at Chamorro Village is near the apartment and offers music, crafts, and excellent food selections. Unlike a lot of fairs back home, most of the food consists of actual meals and is cheap, healthy, and delicious. Food is a major sign of the hospitality of the people here.  It is thrust at Nick and his coworkers at every occasion and meeting, and people insist that they take the abundant leftovers home. If you know Nick, you know how happy that makes him. Festivals here are open-door events, and visitors are told to feel free to walk into a participating home and help themselves to a plate of food whenever a big fiesta occurs.

During our first week here, the kids took us to a fundraiser at the home of a former governor that included a buffet dinner, and the spread was massive. It included dishes such as spam sushi, pickled quail eggs, shrimp patties, fried rice, chicken kelaguen (and spam kelaguen, too), fina denne sauce, and literally dozens of other local dishes. What an introduction to the local culture! Apparently, the kids hang with a slightly more illustrious crowd here than at home. We rarely visit former governors in Michigan.

A few days later, one of the Supreme Court Justices invited the four clerks and us to his family’s private beach for a Sunday cookout. The land was accessible only through Andersen Air Force Base, and the “road” demanded his four-wheel drive vehicle. There were about 25 people there—all family-- with food for three times that many (deliciously prepared local dishes that included multiple crab dishes and FOUR kinds of pork spare ribs), a pristine sandy beach, and clear water. This is a typical way families spend weekend time. Families often have a private beach or an inland ranch where the whole clan gathers to eat and visit together. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, especially when there are so many good cooks in the group.

Spam sushi

Exploring this island has been fascinating. It is very modern and American, but with a very strong Chamorro twist, making it almost foreign. The food is spicy and delicious, and seafood and Spam are abundant on most restaurant menus. The supermarkets have a big selection of Spam products as well as other potted meats. I’m sure they sell it at markets back home, but they don’t have entire sections devoted to it like they do here. Anyway, it’s been a terrific trip, and we have tried hard to ”suck all the fun out of it”. Thanks to Gail’s friend for that phrase, by the way, we use it all the time. Saturday we head home, and Michigan, you’d better get your act together and warm up or we will be very disappointed with you!

Saipan: The Most Non-American Place in America (Yet)

Saipan 

The view of Saipan's coral reef from our cute plane.

We have just returned from a four-day trip to the island of Saipan, exactly 129 miles from Guam. Nick and Amanda researched the area and thought it would be an interesting place for the four of us to visit, and they were absolutely right. Amanda did the research, and Nick arranged the airfare and hotel accommodations, so all we had to do was show up. Since we are retired, we are not used to any real work of any kind, so this fit in with our lifestyle perfectly.

The only possible glitch is that we were traveling on a shoestring and decided to share a hotel room. The kids like us so much that they didn’t want to be separated from us even a little bit. Yep, we are that cool. The hotel, however, allowed a maximum of three people to a room, ignoring the fact that there was sleeping room for four. Nick had learned a lot growing up with Roger, including the maxim that it’s ok to lie a little to save some cash. We had to decide who of the four of us was the least obvious person among us. This person would have to slink around the resort unobtrusively, Ninja-like, staying under the radar of the three-person-max police. It seems crazy, I know, but for some reason, we chose Roger. There was some logic to it at the time, but I can’t remember for the life of me what our reasoning was.  Anyway, we chose the very person MOST likely to strike up conversations with security guards, random Japanese tourists, and terrified Russian nymphets. More on that later.

We weren't the only tourists who stood out like dogs' balls.

We didn’t bank on the possibility that we would be the only Caucasian non-Russians in the 435-room hotel. Yep. We didn’t exactly BLEND. As the Aussies used to say, we stood out like dogs’ balls. This surprised us, since Saipan is American, more or less. It is a part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, and belongs to the US. However it is FAR from the US mainland, and only a five-hour flight from Vladivostok, Russia, and even closer than that to Japan. Since there aren’t many tropical islands within a stone’s throw of those places, the tourists flock here.

The Japanese presence on the island is huge (and we are happy to report that they are much friendlier toward Americans they meet on the beach than they were in July 1944.)  Signs on storefronts, at tourist attractions, and in advertising are mainly Japanese, with Russian running a close second. Many shop employees don’t speak English at all. The tourist map we used to navigate the island had captions in all three languages. We are accustomed to dealing with people who speak other languages, but it was disconcerting to deal with that in America. Very interesting, but strange.

Typical signage in Saipan

We spent a day driving around the island checking out the historic WWII sites, of which there are many. Roger’s Uncle Dick fought there in the invasion, and it must have been hell.  The memorials include the disturbing Suicide Cliff and Banzai Cliff, where thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilian families committed suicide when the island was taken by the US.

The bomb pit for Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb.

Was Enola Gay? The highlight of the vacation was a day trip to Tinian. The island is just off the southern shore of Saipan, a stone’s throw really. The ferry no longer runs, though, so it was a ten-minute flight in a tiny four-passenger plane. Once there, we rented a car and toured the nearly deserted island.  Amanda navigated with the skill of a Micronesian seafarer, and a good thing because our road map was outdated, out of scale, and at times just plain wrong.

Like Saipan, Tinian teems with WWII sites, but unlike Saipan there are few tourists, Japanese or otherwise. During our first three hours driving around, we saw only three other cars. We drove down Runway Able, the runway that the Enola Gay used on its bombing run to Hiroshima, and saw the pits used to load the atomic bombs before the flights. The bombs were so big and so heavy they couldn’t be loaded conventionally.  So they dug two concrete pits, positioned Little Boy and Fat Man, then taxied the B29’s over the pits and winched them into the bomb bays.  The island is scattered with ruins of Japanese bomb shelters, weapons, buildings, and vehicles--all accessible and ready to be explored.

Not all the sights were war-related. Tinian is home to the House of Taga, which has the largest latte stones in the Marianas Islands. Big suckers. Never hear of latte stones, you say? Neither did we until we arrived in Guam. Latte stones are two-piece upright pillars that supported a traditional house. They are all over Guam and the other Marianas and are common symbol of the area.

Latte stone, Amanda, and Nick

Then there was the Tinian Shrine, a Shinto site from the Japanese occupation that was nearly impossible to find.  The map had it wrong, and we circled for some minutes until we found a few actual residents in a driveway.  We stopped to ask directions, and they explained that the road shown on the map no longer existed, and it was impossible for us to find it.  “We’ll take you,” they said and Josiah, Frances, and J.J. piled into a pickup, with Josiah perched in the back of the pickup, king-like on a bench seat removed from a mini-van and with a sun-shielding umbrella over his head.  We followed them off-road up a jungle track to the shrine, overgrown and eerie in the dappled jungle sunlight.

Russian Nymphets: Don't they have bugs in Siberia?

There is only one adventure to relate from the Saipan trip, much to everyone’s relief.  Late one evening, Roger decided to take a walk down by the pool to reconnoiter.  He took the elevator from 7, pressed Ground, and was surprised when the elevator stopped on 2.  Waiting in front of the opened elevator stood a twenty-something Russian, obviously in distress. She wrung her hands and said, “Help! Please! Come!” and she motioned to the opened doorway to her room, visible from the elevator.  Thinking someone must be hurt, Roger followed her into the room, where her girlfriend stood sobbing and shaking, still dripping from the shower. 

“What’s wrong?” They pointed to the bathroom, its door shut. They took turns pointing to the bathroom and sobbing.  They were terrified.  “What is it?” One girl put her hands under her chin, as one might imitate a rabid chipmunk, and made a noise that sounded like “beep…beep…beep.”

So Roger opened the bathroom door—cautiously, to be sure—and looked around, scanning the floor beneath the sink.  The girls gathered closely behind him.  “No! No!” they said, as they pointed to a washcloth on the vanity shelf.

Roger shut the door, always prudent.  “What is it?  A mouse?”  “No mouse.”  “A rat?”  “No rat.” She indicated with her fingers something the size of a half-inch or so, and repeated the pantomime of the rabid chipmunk. “Beep…beep…beep,” she said, probably in Russian.

So Roger bravely re-entered the bathroom, girls watching anxiously from behind, and proceeded to pound the shit out of the washcloth with a hairbrush until he heard the expected “crunch”. He removed the washcloth, and found beneath it a cockroach the size of a Tylenol caplet, promptly flushing it down the toilet.

“Everything is good now,” he reassured them. “My job here is done.  Everything is o.k.”  He felt pretty damned good, truth be told.  They were very grateful (not that grateful, as it turned out), and Roger got a warm hug from one of the girls, and a wet and sticky one from the other.

We met them at breakfast the next morning, and they were still effusively grateful, although in Russian.  With this confirmation, we now believe this story to be true.  The girls explained that they were from Khabarovsk, 500 miles north of Vladivostok, and that all the Russians one sees in the Marianas are from eastern Siberia, a five-hour flight.  That explains the throngs of Russians, comrades.  So we were able to do a Good Deed, improve American-Russian relations immeasurably, and learn something at the same time.  This is why we like to travel.

Saipanda, silliest marketing mascot ever, is actually a bit of word play in Japanese. "SAI" is the                                                                            the Japanese word for rhinoceros, so a Saipanda would look like...Get it? The Japanese LOVE IT.

The Road to Bali

See our Bali album at Bali Album . Here's another album at Bali iphoto link
Hot, exotic, and cheap.  No, we’re not talking about a Thai hooker, but the tropical paradise of Bali, the tiny island that sits at the end of a string of islands that form the Indonesian archipelago just south of the Equator. It is beautiful and lush, but the weather is hot, humid, and oppressive.  If there were an international armpit farting competition (and we cannot say with certainty that there is not), it would certainly be held in Bali.

We had both been here before—Linda two years ago on her alleged “quilting tour” with Gail, and Roger nearly 40 years ago on his back-packing trip through Asia with Delaney.  Not much has changed for Linda.  For Roger, quite a lot. In the seventies, the tourist mecca was clustered around the surfing beaches at Kuta, infested with beer-soaked Australians, but the rest of island was beautiful pristine rice paddies and quiet rural villages. Today the tourist trade has spread far and wide from Kuta, and it is almost continuous development of hotels, restaurants and boutiques for miles into what was once the countryside.

This is not one of those “you should have been here in the old days before it was ruined” rants.  Bali is still magical, and in fact quite a bit more comfortable and travel-friendly. We started our trip a few miles across the peninsula from Kuta in Sanur, a recent beach development where there are quiet local beaches nestled among the big resorts, and a reasonable amount of shops and restaurants.  The Australians are older now, and have more money, and there is quite a population of American and Canadian ex-pats who have taken up residence in villas and condos near the beach. Our stay here was our standard fare: a modest, charming family-run guesthouse a short walk from the beach, shopping, and ever-present $5.00/hour massage places, MANY of which were legitimate.  We prowled the beach and town in the morning and late in the afternoon, and cooled off at the pool and in the a/c during the heat of the day. As always, there were interesting people staying there- Nancy and Sylvain from Montreal on an amazingly well-planned month-long trip through the island, and Kas, a Dutchman who escapes winter for five months every year, a smart feller for sure.

Beach walking and pool lolling were fun, but we went a little further afield one day with a taxi arranged by the hotel for us. We had a driver and car for ten hours at our disposal for $40.00, and got out money’s worth. We visited a local market, a few beaches in on the western shore, and Kuta and Legian with their miles-long beach filled with locals, tourists, and surfing schools. We finished our day at the seaside Tanah Lot Temple just in time for a breathtaking sunset. A well-spent $40.00!

After our four-day decompression by the seashore, we took a bus to Ubud up in the hills about 90 minutes north of Kuta.  We found a simple home stay for the first night, and then moved into unaccustomed opulence at the Komeneka Monkey Forest Resort for the last two nights.  We had a private villa with our own infinity pool, and gorgeous view of the jungle ravine and rice paddies adjacent the hotel.  A nice way to travel, to be sure, but if this were our normal standard we could afford to travel once, perhaps twice a decade. 

Is that a banana in your pocket…?  We visited the beautiful and enchanting Monkey Forest Temple where Roger was attacked by a troop of monkeys.  He had bought a small bunch of bananas at the park entrance to feed the animals. This is against all advice from the guidebooks and the park signs where the warning was posted in several languages, one of them English.  His first monkey encounter was friendly enough, with Roger handing a banana to a patient little guy who neatly peeled and ate it. Awwww, it is SO cute! The same monkey then decided he wanted ALL of the bananas, right NOW, and proceeded to climb up Roger’s leg, nearly pulling down the poor guy’s cargo shorts. Roger had to protect his glasses, his camera, and the bananas, so something had to go. He wisely chose to give up the fruit, and the attack stopped immediately.  The monkey was pretty cool about getting the best of Roger; he didn’t flaunt his victory or try to make Rog feel less than a REAL man. That’s better behavior than you could expect from a lot of humans. Twenty minutes later two different monkeys leaped on Roger, even without the lure of food.  A decidedly unsympathetic Linda captured the debacle on film, as did tourists representing countries from most of the world. Someone has probably posted a you-tube video by now.

We spent the rest of our visit avoiding the monkey-infested areas of town, although we were compelled to eat dinner one night at the Three Monkeys Tavern, just to keep the memory alive. The area surrounding Ubud is beautiful, and we spent one blisteringly hot morning hiking the ridge and rice paddies. We finished off our Ubud visit with a morning at a local spa, where 2 ½ hours of Balinese massage, mud exfoliation, and floral baths costs under $20.00. The treatments worked, and now neither of us has even a little monkey stench.

In five hours, we leave Bali and fly overnight to Guam, where we get to spend time with Nick and Amanda. We are VERY excited to have this time with them. They have been gone from the mainland for seven months, way too long. We are a little sad to leave Bali, though. The people here are the kindest, calmest, most gracious ones we have found. If getting here weren’t such a long, pricey ordeal, we’d be back in a heartbeat. 

Manila Stop-Over

8:23 A.M., Manila time-We’ve been traveling just about 30 hours so far, and we are lounging in the Philippine Air employee lunchroom, rehydrating. We can’t help but comment to one another that we have seen SEVERAL employees who look exactly like Orlando, Jerry Blank’s friend in “Strangers with Candy”, no surprise, I guess, as you fans will agree. (Are there any other fans out there?) We’ll have twelve hours in Manila before our flight to Denpasar, Bali, and in elementary education lingo, we are using our time wisely. Our mission- track down Roger’s missing Kindle, which should be languishing in the seat pocket of our US Airways Charlotte to LA flight, but is likely in the pocket of the airline cleaning crew member. Roger left it behind as we made a mad dash from the domestic to the international terminal of the LA airport, trying desperately to make a very tight flight connection. “How tight?” you ask? We had about 45 minutes to deplane, RUN with our bags about ¾ of a mile, check in at the Philippine Air desk, get through an enormous TSA line, and make our way to our gate, the last one, of course. Roger, ever the gentleman insisted on carrying both suitcases as Linda hauled the carry-ons. Our race through the terminal was intense enough that two TSA employees asked Roger if he had just run a marathon, and our flight attendant hovered as if he was suffering a heart attack. He was breathless and sweat-soaked. As he puts it, he was “as filthy as a Frenchman”, no offense intended.

Our last two big trips were group tours, making them essentially stress-free, and we are now terribly spoiled. So far, this trip has been stress and nothing but.  It will smooth out soon, of that we are certain, but these first few flights have been a bear. It began as we shopped for flights and were quoted absurd price tags of $6700 EACH just for airfare! Like THAT would ever happen- do they know who they are dealing with? We ended up with a string of inconvenient but affordable flights spanning 50 hours with fairly tight connections, but we were confident that it was doable. That blissful feeling lasted until Philippine Air changed our LA departure from 11:10 pm to 10:10, due to the unforeseen, unpredictable daylight savings time change. And so we found ourselves running through the airport like a couple of out-of-shape geezers (EXACTLY like out-of-shape geezers!). Tracking down the Kindle will likely be an exercise in futility. Philippine Air had been amazing and is doing what they can to help us. US Airways are, in Rogerspeak, “dicks”. It looks like it’s time to hit the used bookshops until this is resolved.

Manila "Jeepney" 

Our day in Manila is very low-key. We’ve had little sleep and we are exactly 12 time zones away from our sweet Eastern Daylight Time, so we are beyond punchy. We gave up on taking a  tour of historical sights and are at the Mall of Asia, the biggest one in the continent and the Number One Attraction in Manila, according to Trip Advisor. It’s even nicer than the Gibraltar Trade Center, and with slender, stylish shoppers instead of chubbos in sweatpants. Shopping at a mall is not our usual way to spend time, especially in an exotic locale, but it is hot and humid out, it is air-conditioned inside, and we are weak and tired. Adventure can wait a day or two. Starbucks and Wi-Fi, here we come! Next stop,  Sanur, Bali!