February 27th, 2015

Hiya...and Happy New Year Chinese style.  On New Years Day, you typically say Congratulations and Prosperity.  "Congratulations" for making it through New Year's Eve without being killed by the monster, and "Prosperity" cause everyone wants that.  In my mind, it is pronounced Gon She Fat Chai, but I have never seen it spelled in English the same way twice.  Gong Xi Fat Choi, Gung He Fa Cai, etc. etc. etc...  I don't care how rich they get, whether they become the world's superpower, or if we all end up having Asian blood someday, they will never truly be able to rule this planet until they ditch this ridiculous language.  50,000 different characters is impossible to learn...I know many people than can speak it fine, but can only read a few characters.

If that isn't bad enough, read this article in Science Magazine the other day.   They studied languages and measured the frequency of positive and negative words used.  Spanish came out on top in the 'positive' category.  Bet you know who came up as the most negative.  When I saw my Argentine brother after 28 years, it was all how seeing each other filled his heart with love and within seconds, I felt like the greatest person in the world.  Whenever I see Chinese acquaintances, I am met with "have you gained weight?", and if I have just dropped 20 pounds..."you're hair is getting much grayer".   

The country shuts down for a week on Chinese New Year and we usually stay home to avoid being caught up in what is called the largest annual human migration.  This year, some friends emailed us a couple months back saying they were organizing a CNY trip to Palau and asked if we wanted in.  After we looked up what a Palau is, we were in.  Located in the middle of the Pacific in what I learned in school as Micronesia, 1300 kms from Guam and 1500 kms from the Philippines, it is certainly what you would call 'out of the way'.  Made up of 200 islands (only 8 of which are permanently inhabited) that are limestone pushed up from the sea millions of years ago.  None of them have beaches that make you go wow...most have no beach whatsoever.  This wasn't on our radar as we aren't scuba divers, but it is a haven for them as the coral and marine life are rich and have yet to be decimated by humans.

Have been talking about the trip to friends here and they are curious.  My advice to them is to definitely go, but get yourself dive certified first as I felt we missed an important part by not being able to go deep.  The stories our diver friends told after their trips were hard to believe, but seeing their snaps made me a believer.

Rays, turtles, sharks...was very jealous.  We had two days dedicated to snorkeling planned and it was completely awesome.  We stopped at one spot that had a sunken Japanese ship.

We have hundreds of underwater snaps and none of them capture the colors...every shade of everything in both the fish and coral.

 

At one of our stops, there was white sandy clay at the bottom of a shallow bay that was said to have regenerative properties.  We all indulged.  I must say that my psoriasis was a lot better afterwards, so will have to look up the magic ingredient.

One of the snorkel spots was a place called Jellyfish Lake.  Effectively cut off from the ocean 12,000 years ago, a particular type of jellyfish evolved and flourished in the lake.  With no predators, they lost their stingers.  You have to make a steep hike up and down to get there, but once you are in, you are surrounded by millions of these creamsicle colored jellyfish.   Very unique and amazing experience.

Snorkeling is fun

We also went night fishing...we were kinda beat and those that did go were reluctant to do so, but it was tons of fun and of course, got the competitive juices flowing.

They sashimied and souped up some of our catch...more fun that it should have been.

Since we were excluded on dive day, Imbros decided to take in some local history.  One of the islands, Peleliu, was the scene of the bloodiest battle in the Pacific during WWII.  We booked a trip to the island to see what we could see, and it was super interesting to a history buff like me.  As we would drive along, our guide would stop at the side of the road and we would go through some trees and find these rusting remnants...like this American landing craft

or Japanese tank

complete with lovely tropical flowers growing inside.

And zero pieces galore.

The battle was fierce as the Japanese had set up in caves.  They knew they had no chance at victory and the plan was to inflict as much pain for every yard of ground.  In the caves are hundreds of bottle of Japanese beer and sake...wanted to take one but they are protected and one would be arrested if they found it in the luggage. 

Of the 10,000 Japanese troops on the islands, 9,500 died.  463 of the survivors were Korean and Chinese slaves that were used to build the cave network.  37 Japanese hid out in the jungle for an additional 2 years, occasionally launching guerrilla attacks, until they were convinced the war was over by the Japanese Emperor in 1947. 

Machine gun nest

 

Old Japanese HQ

  Only 500 people live on Peleliu today...not enough to clear the island of all the rusty WWII relics, but we did see groups of people in the jungle still actively clearing unexploded munitions and mines, so it is still not safe to go outside the lines.  They not only don't clear the WWII stuff, but modern technology is also left to rust away.  We saw abandoned cars like this everywhere.

That is a tree growing from inside the car.  A really interesting day...only touched on the horror that both sides must have felt.  A great part of the day was the boat ride out.  As we were the only losers that weren't diving, we were also the only ones on the tour.  To get anywhere in Palau, you need to take a boat, and the rides are usually between 30 minutes to an hour.  The ride to Peleliu was about 45 minutes.  I found all of the boat rides so relaxing...warm, but not too hot, mostly calm seas due to the coral reefs, but still the occasional swell that would splash mist on your body, and sublime landscape to watch pass by.  Having the boat to ourselves this time allowed for some deep relaxation and introspection.

 

And having a ton of people on the boats was also great fun too.

This was a good trip for all of us as it wasn't just us.  There were four families with kids ranging from 2 to 18 years old.  The Tattersfields have two kids the same ages as ours...we actually met them as Paul and their daughter are in the same debate/MUN teams, so we became friendly and ended up here.  Our kids were inseparable for the week.

 

 

 and the parents enjoyed having adult time.

 

We learned a couple of months ago that the Tattersfields are moving to the states this summer.  We just started to get to know them and are sad to see them go.  They are moving to Portland, so hopefully, our paths will cross again. 

I learned a bit about the history of the islands.  Obviously, inhabited for millennia by Pacific Islanders, their colonial history started with Spanish occupation (the Philippines are right next door).   As their power waned in the 1800's, the Germans took over as they were close by in New Caledonia.  One of the islands was rich in phosphates that the Germans mined, and they brought monkeys to the island to use to detect noxious gasses (like the canary in a coalmine).  That island now has 50 people and 5,000 monkeys.  During WWI, the Japanese aligned themselves with France and England iin order to claim the German possessions in the Pacific at war's end.  I mentioned above that the US then took over forcibly in WWII, and Palau became a US protectorate until 1994, when it achieved independence.   One of the more unusual foreign policy aspects of Palau is it is one of only 8 countries in the world that recognizes Taiwan as an independent country...they get a ton of cash and perks for that.  A result is that there is a healthy influence of Taiwanese on the island running hotels and tour groups. 

Our tour obviously originated in Taiwan, and we booked a package through a Taiwanese company.  As many of our party spoke Chinese, was not a problem dealing with the guides, and they organized a ton of fun stuff for us (like the night fishing/snorkeling), and did a great job.  The one thing that we did diverge from the plan on was the food.  Three of the dinners were prearranged, and the first night, we were taken to a place that must be what the Chinese love, but did not fit with our decidedly Western tastes.  I won't bore you with yet another diatribe as to how shitty I think Taiwanese Chinese food is, but this meal hit all the beats as to why I can't stand it.  Complete with the ultra-bizarre dish that only Chinese people and humans cut off from civilization would ever think about eating.  Fruit Bat Soup.

Look at that thing.  I hope that it makes you live 10 years longer or makes your pecker-ooo 10 millimeters longer.  We were pretty much horrified but will say that in our group of 13 that night, only Paul, Betty and I tried it (and no, my junk did not get larger unfortunately).  Not sure what to say it tasted like...if the taste of licking a 9 volt battery were in liquid form?  Something like that.  Anyway, the Chinese at the table next to us slurped away at theirs happily. 

We decided to eschew the next two scheduled meals and ended up having some decent Italian one night, and some spicy Thai another, served by one of the biggest Lady Boys I've ever seen. 

All in all, loved Palau and feel fortunate to not only have had the chance to visit, but to meet and hang with a bunch of new and cool people.