Amature Traveler Podcast Interview

I am featured on this week’s Amateur Traveler Podcast where I talk about my trip to Micronesia. (Hence, the photo of Palau for todays Daily Photo.)

The Amateur Traveler Podcast is one of my favorite travel podcasts along with the Indie Travel Podcast. Both podcasts focus on talking to real people, not just having tour guides and guide book editors on every episode.

If you are a regular podcast listener, I strongly suggest you subscribe. It is a very well done weekly podcast.

While I’m on the subject, Chris refers to a video I shot in Palau in the Jellyfish lake. For those who haven’t seen it before, here is the video

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Daily Photo - Two Lovers Point, Guam

These are locks left by couples at Two Lovers Point in Guam. The locks are left by people as a symbol of their love. Two Lovers Point is a popular spot to get married.

Daily Travel Photo - Guam

Upper Talofofo Falls in Guam

Daily Travel Photo - Guam

This photo was taken near the northern shore of Guam near the site of an American landing in WWII

Micronesian Military

Some of the Micronesian fallen

I want to post this before I leave Micronesia and forget about it.

While walking through the Guam airport I was struck by a large sign that listed the Micronesian servicemen and women who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I knew that Guam and CNMI had soldiers in the US military. While I was in American Samoa I was frequently reminded that American Samoa had the highest percentage of enlistment of any US territory or state. One man from American Samoa and Guam were killed while I was in both places and it made the headlines of the local papers.

What I didn’t know, and sort of shocked me, was that FSM, the Marshalls, and Palau were represented in the US Military. All three countries have no military and their citizens can join the US military. Many do because it offers them a better career path than anything they could have at home. It was not uncommon to see American flags and Army bumper stickers on the cars in all of these places.

Palau has had three men killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. On a per capita basis, they have probably made a greater sacrifice than any state or city in the US….and they are technically not even Americans. I’m sure no one in the US would really fault them if they wanted to sit this one out, especially considering most Americans have never heard of these places and don’t know they even exist.

It was just something I wanted to pass along…

McPacific America

It’s as psudo-american as taro pie!

I’m lumping McDonald’s for Hawaii, Guam and Saipan all together. They are pretty much the same and all share the one unique thing I find interesting.

The McDonalds in Waikiki did something I liked an haven’t seen anywhere else. They gave you a free package of diced pineapple with every meal: breakfast or dinner. It was a descent sized portion of pineapple too. A similar sized package cost $3.99 across the street at a convenience store.

Waikiki, Guam and Saipan all served Spam and rice for breakfast. In Guam they also served Chamorro sausage and Portuguese sausage. I tried them both (not at McDonalds) and couldn’t really tell the difference. They are both rather spicy.

The idea of rice (and even fried rice in some places) is something which you wont find in the mainland United States, but is something you get used to pretty quick. In fact, I have really come to like rice and eggs.

What all three places have in common at their McDonald’s is they serve taro pie. (see photo)

I guess taro pies were originally served in Asian McDonald’s then picked up in Hawaii and later in the Marinas. The idea of a taro pie isn’t shocking, but serving it as a dessert sort of is. Taro is a root vegtable. It’s like a potato or perhaps a sweet potato. Usually if a pie has potatoes in it, it would be joined with meat and served as an entree. (One of my favorite dishes are pasties which are Cornish pies that are really big in Northern Michigan)

The McDonald’s taro pie is sweet. It is designed to be served as a replacement for the apple pie. The sweetness comes from the purple, jelly like filling that is inside the pie. It is far sweeter than a sweet potato is sweet, so its not coming from the taro itself.

The other reason I’m surprised they have taro pies has to do with the difficulty of taro cultivation, at least in the Pacific. Taro is probably the biggest staple food in the Pacific. Growing it can be a real pain. Often, if you live on an atoll, you have to dig very deep pits to access fresh water to grow the taro. I don’t know how they do large scale cultivation of taro, but I can only assume they don’t have to dig enormous pits.

I would really like to see a McDonald’s cassava pie….

Final Thoughts on Guam

Tumon Harbor, Guam

As I previously mentioned, I had no preconceived notions about Guam. Having nothing to compare it with, I sort of used American Samoa as a benchmark.

American Samoa is a US territory, but it seems very subdued about it. You will see American flags flying here and there in American Samoa, but it is first and foremost Samoan. Much of this is due to the fact that Samoa is in the middle of nowhere and not next to anything. There has been little opportunity for them to be influenced by others.

Guam is nothing like American Samoa. Nothing. Guam is part of the USA and they hit you over the head with it the moment you walk off the plane. The airport has several “WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS” banners. Outside the airport is a huge line of American and Guam flags. There is a greater diversity of fast food restaurants and chain stores in Guam than you will find in most US cities of similar size.

The roads are built like American roads. Guam has the only four lane roads I’ve seen in the Pacific, save for small stretches of New Zealand…and I think there might be more four lane roads on Guam. I actually experienced traffic. Not bumper-to-bumper, moving-at-a-snails-pace traffic, but significant traffic nonetheless.

I’ve heard of some cities (in particular Christchurch, NZ and Victoria, Canada) be called more British than the British. I think Guam might be more American than America.

This is due to the enormous military presence on the island. There is a naval base, an air force base and a marine camp on the island. Next year another 8,000 marines will be moving here from Okniawa. But for the military, I don’t know if Guam would be anything like what it is today.

Yet, there is another part of Guam that you also can’t miss the moment you leave the plane…..the Japanese.

When Americans leave the country for vacation, they will usually go to Mexico or the Caribbean. This is to be expected due to the proximity of those places to the US. Likewise, Guam is a big tourist spot for Japanese. 90% of the tourists to Guam are from Japan. If you go into the downtown area where the big resorts are, almost everything is in Japanese. It is a lot like Waikiki in Honolulu. Also like Waikiki, there are a ton of gun ranges right in town. At first you might think the large number of gun ranges in Hawaii and Guam are due to the military bases, but you’d be wrong. The Japanese love shooting guns. They can’t do it in Japan, so its a popular thing to do when you come to the US. (Some of the signs for the gun ranges in Hawaii are funny. They have a gun in a full combat outfit with an M-16. If you read what you get to shoot, it’s mostly .22’s.)

Yokoi’s Cave

I went to one of the popular attractions on the island: Talofofo Falls. Its just a few waterfalls on a small river, but there is a small amusement part that was built up around it. While most of the attractions on the island cater to Japanese tourists, this place seemed REALLY Japanese. As I was walking around I sort of figured out why.

If you recall your Gilligan’s Island history, there was an episode where they found a Japanese soldier who didn’t know the war was over. That was based on several true stories of soldiers found in the Pacific who had been in hiding for years after the war was over. The most famous case was of Shoichi Yokoi who was found living in the bush in Guam in 1972….28 years after the end of WWII. The real attraction of the park wasn’t the waterfall at all. It happened to be the location of the cave that Yokoi lived in. Yokoi is a Japanese hero. There is a small Buddhist shrine built on the location. The name of the gift shop in the park is “Yokoi’s Store”. Hardly any mention of this was in the english language signs or brochures.

One other way that Guam is different from American Samoa is the people. The natives of Guam are the Chamorros. They only account for about 40% of the population of the island. They are heavily Catholic and most of them have Spanish last names.

The US picked up Guam as a spoil from the Spanish-American War, along with the Philippines. It became a Spanish colony almost 500 years ago and was used as a station for ships traveling to and from the Philippines. Unlike the Philippines, Guam never opted for independence.

Unlike the Samoans, the Chamorros have been mixing with different people who have come to the island for hundreds of years: Spanish, Americans, Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. I haven’t heard much Chamorroan spoken in Guam, even in conversations between locals. In fact, most of the people here have American accents.

Geologically, Guam is the southernmost island in the Marinas Island chain. Ethnically, they are the same as the Chamorros in the Northern Marinas Islands, but historically and politically, they have been separate for a long time.

I think if Guam were closer, there would be a lot more tourists from the US which visited. It is an interesting slice of America plunked down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Guam First Impressions

Guam isn’t something you think about much, so I had no idea what to expect. I was mentally using American Samoa as my measuring stick for Guam. Both are American territories in the Pacific, so I figure that would be as good a benchmark as any.

(Actually, I do have one thing when I think of Guam. For years, I’d attened the national high school debate tournament and every year a team from Guam would show up. Every year they were dead last. You were lucky if you got to debate Guam and were nervous if you had a Guam judge)

American Samoa was much more Samoan than American. Guam, at first glance, seems very American.

I’m in the same time zone as Sydney, so this is the farthest point west I’ve been so far on my trip. I’m sure I’ll have more to say tomorrow.