For a while now I’ve been meaning to write another post
about odd things I’ve noticed here. Hope you find it interesting/amusing.
I know I’ve mentioned the dogs before but have I stated that
the local chickens and roosters have better road sense than the dogs? It’s
quite incredible that most dogs seem to have no understanding what to do, yet
the chickens just seem to know how to get safely to the other side (must be due
to all the jokes at their expense). The dogs are way too complacent here,
relying on slow and highly defensive Palauan drivers to stop for them or to go
around them. This doesn’t happen all the time though as I’ve seen a couple of
flattened dogs on the road and quite a number of dogs seem to have bad limps
with a hind leg. No doubt losing a battle with a vehicle.
Also over the past few days we’ve seen lots of crabs
crossing the road, there has to be a joke in here somewhere…
While still on the local dogs, I don’t think I mentioned how
a good portion of the dogs here seem extremely short. It’s like their legs only
grew half the normal length. I’ve since been told that this is what happens
with constant inbreeding and is also the reason a lot of the cats have stubby
tails or no tails even.
Ok enough on the dogs, back to the cars/driving. Something I
failed to mention last time was about the window tinting on certain cars. Like
a most rules here they aren’t enforced so become more of a vague suggestion of
what you should do. Legally you can’t have tinting that blocks more than 35% of
light. Some car windows are completely blacked out, I have no idea how the
driver sees anything (maybe this explains the terrible driving!). A lot of
others have put one of those retractable, suction cup windscreen shades across
their front windscreen (yes, whist driving). It looks ridiculous to see all
these cars driving around with the shades pulled across. But I guess at least
they can retract them at night.
Since school has started again the traffic of a morning and
afternoon going down the main road on the island is terrible. It’s stop/start, extremely
slow moving traffic. With no traffic lights they station cops at various ‘major’
intersections to loudly blow whistles and vigorously wave at traffic to keep
driving and stop letting people in. What is probably more frustrating than the
peak hour traffic is when driving outside those periods on fairly clear roads when
you encounter somehow who refuses to drive quicker than 20kph as it far too dangerous
to go any quicker.
Also Palauan drivers have no clue how to drive near a
cyclist. Twice I’ve seen someone who was driving adjacent to a bike, speed up
to get 2 metres ahead of the cyclist only to turn across in front of him causing
him to hit the brakes to avoid running into the side of the car. If that was in
Australia the cyclist would probably be dragging the driver out of the window
and laying a good beating on him. I’d honestly hate to see a typical Palauan
driver attempt to drive in Australia or elsewhere, they would probably be the
cause of multiple deaths.
While still on cars: I have often noticed people driving on
completely bald tyres. The worst was the one where most of the rubber was gone
leaving a significant section of the fabric interior. Crazy!
On slightly related note I saw a roughly 18 month old child
standing unrestrained in the front seat of a 4WD, half hanging out the window
with two hands on a can of coke that it was chugging down. Amanda sure has her
work cut out for her!
At finally a quick note on the service industry. It’s a really
interesting mix in Palau, being a former US territory tipping is sometimes
included on the bill, sometimes encouraged, sometimes not expected at all. We
have received service that ranges from amazing to the worst ever. Some places
know you by name, expertly split the bill without request and know what your
regular order. Other places you are made
to feel like a complete inconvenience and have to get up from your table to
find someone to give you a menu or take your order. Let’s just say the former
places get tips, the latter do not. And one final observation which is kind of
cool is that the service (petrol) stations still have someone who fills your
car for you.
Enjoy your weekend I’ll be working by helping train 8 US
Army people with their Open Water diving course. Hopefully they actually
want to get in the water unlike the two girls earlier in the week :o
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