Guam'ing it up

Hello from the land of Guam (USA). I don't believe there is another Guam so I'm not sure why they keep reminding us of it being part of the USA.

We arrived here around 7am this morning. Which was about 2 hrs late. We were due to fly out of Cairns at 12:25am but we're delayed due to some repairs. So Amanda and I spent from 8pm until 2am slowly going insane sitting in a deserted Cairns international airport terminal.

The flight was shit. For some reason they decided to run a small meal service, to occasionally and loudly remind everyone to wear your seat belt and the bloke on the other side of the Isle to me needed some help once or twice as he was a paraplegic. So sleep was infrequent, uncomfortable (on old plane) and regularly interrupted.

But Amanda and I arrived in good spirits and had to laugh at how the local customs and immigration guys were very friendly and relaxed. "an orange from Australia? Nah just keep it".

Everyone seems to ask us about diving, they all seem very happy we are moving to Palau though. And on the diving topic, the paraplegic bloke.. Yep he's headed to Truk to dive. I had a reasonable chat to him and he dives all the time and travels all over the place. We had a good laugh about how him and his dive buddy hope no security cameras are ever recording when she shoves him in the chest and knocks him off a boat or jetty and into the water. It was a good little reminder about how you can make the most of certain situations.

Now if you've gotten this far you probably want to hear about Guam. The little I've seen reminds me of what Hawaii was probably like 30 odd years ago, with a big chunk of Japanese influence. The majority of the restaurants seem to be Japanese, ramen, shabu shabu, yakiniku, sushi etc.

The one thing that does stick out for me as odd is the flash Galleria shopping strip. Complete with store like Louis Vitton and Prada. I didn't expect to see the height of 'fashion' to have such an influence here. Again, like the multitude of Japanese restaurants and tv channels I guess it's catering to the Japanese tourists.

I'd like to have checked the place out a little more but we are back to the airport in a few hours to head on to our new home of Palau.