Hello from
the land of Palau. I had previously planned to update this blog a little more
frequently but since moving from the hotel to our unit we’ve had very limited
internet access. Yesterday we requested a land line & homenet (DSL internet
service) package. Homenet is a 256k connection @ $1.25 per hour at night or
128k @ $2.50 per hour during the day (+ a $20 a month access fee). I understand
that the service is still very slow due to the country relying on satellite
comms.
So what has
been going on you ask?
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| all but the bottom few notes are 20's |
Well we’ve
picked up, paid for and registered our car. The car cost us $3700 and we paid
for at least half of it in $20 notes. The local ATM’s refused to give me
anything else and some of them would only give me $200 at a time. It was a long
and slow process to get all the cash out. We also bought the car through one of
the larger hardware stores. This kind of thing happens a bit here. Example B: The
place that rents our unit (and others) out is located in a flower shop. The
flower shop appears to sell golf balls and moisturiser as well. There is no
golf course here.
Ok, let me
tell you how you go about registering a car in Palau. First you have to visit
the equivalent of the transport department (hopefully you know where this is as
there are no signs). You wait in line, tell them what you are after, then head
back outside for someone to inspect your car. (Which mostly seemed to consist
of writing down the engine number). Now head back inside, wait again, get the
details written up. Then head 3 buildings over to the Treasury department to
pay for the rego ($75). You’d think this was about it right? But no, in Palau
you then need to drive a few minutes away up to the state office and pay
another $25. You then head back to where you started from and wait again, they
write a few more things up and give you your number plate (singular, like in
the USA you have one plate on the back of your car). Then for $1 you can get
someone to provide the bolts and put the plate on for you (which I’m assuming
is easier than buying the right bolts and a shifting spanner). You then wait
briefly again for your registration card. Congratulations, you now have a
registered car in Palau :)
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| View from the lunch with the ambassador |
Thankfully
one of the Aussie Navy boys gave us the heads up on this one so it wasn’t as
confusing as it could have been. Stay tuned for how to get your local driver’s
license.
After
spending our morning sorting the car out we were treated to lunch by the Aussie
Ambassador to the Micronesia region (one of the perks of being in a small country).
We had a good chat with him about various things like issues affecting nutrition
in the area and his own various roles and duties. Someone tell me how I get one
of these jobs?
The
following day we moved into our new unit. It’s a newly renovated 2 bedroom unit
about a 5 minute drive from “downtown” (when it’s not peak hour traffic… yes
seriously there is peak hour traffic). Compared to the quality of the units we
saw when looking last week, this place is a palace. We don’t have any nice
views of the water unfortunately but we should be quite happy here. There are
another 3 units in the block which are currently empty while the renos are
being completed.
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| our neighbours to the south |
In Palau there
are no street names nor addresses, which can make it extremely challenging to
find a place. Particularly if you are new to the country like us. While
catching a cab last week to view a prospective unit we had to tell the driver
to take us to Momo’s house. Luckily he did know where this was. When telling
people where we live we have to use landmarks like ‘next to the building xyz’
or ‘turn right where the compact road ends’. It hasn’t been too difficult so
far and it just adds to the quirkiness that is Palau.
What has
been quite difficult with moving in to our apartment is the definition of what fully
furnished is. Back home you’d expect to find pretty much everything to live off
without having to buy anything right..? Well here it’s essentially just the
basic furniture; bed, side tables, dresser, fridge, table & chairs,
couches, tv unit, coffee table, that sort of stuff. This has had some fair
implications on us as we’ve had to spend quite a bit of money already just to
be able to do basic living and cooking. We’ve had to buy all sorts of stuff
like, linen, towels, toaster, a wok, a pot, cutlery, broom, pegs & line,
chopping board, can opener, you get the idea. It’s been a little challenging at
times to try and make do without all the stuff we have become so reliant on. I
might touch on this further in another post though.
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| not cheap but a bit of a status symbol for the locals |
Right now
we have no tv, microwave, stereo, kettle, phone, internet etc etc. I think
we’ll see how long we can go without some of this stuff and hope to pick some
off other expats when they leave. So far
it’s been unexpectedly expensive to eat here. Pretty much everything in the
grocery stores are similar prices to Australia. (Restaurants are mostly
slightly cheaper though, except for the Indian place and one of Japanese ones).
After buying the car and having to setup a house we are well behind, and with
the cost of groceries I’m already rather concerned about how we will make ends
meet on the volunteer wage. But we’ll see what comes once we’ve settled in
properly. The locals manage to do it somehow but I think they have a lot of
spam on rice.
Oh and no
one really seems to have their own laundry here. We are probably lucky to have
a shared one between the four units. Of course it costs $1 for each load too.
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| yep, seems necessary |
The first
night in the new unit was interesting to say the least. We had planned to cook
as it had been around 12 days since our last home cooked meal and the cost was
adding up. However the whole island(s) had a power blackout that lasted near 2
hours. We’ve been told this is extremely rare these days but while in the hotel
we saw quite a few power fluctuations. We eventually gave up waiting for the
power to come back on and had to go out and eat at a local restaurant yet
again.
I don’t
think either of us slept well that first night. There was a lot of noise around
(which generally hasn’t continued on successive nights thankfully). The bed
seems to amplify any movement into a crescendo of tidal wave proportions. And
as I expected we were woken very early by all the roosters I’d seen wandering
our neighbourhood. The first rooster started around 3:30am but it was on like
donkey kong from around 4:30am and it didn’t let up. At some point I started
having sleep deprived delirious fantasies about buying one of the air rifles
sold in one of the local shops and taking the roosters out one by one. What I
find funny about this is while I was joking about shooting the roosters I’ve
since found out that one of our fellow Australians here does just that. He
bagged three on Sunday morning alone. Maybe I’ll get him come around one
morning :)
Generally
we’ve been sleeping better since and the roosters don’t seem to be as bad as
they did on the first night. However it is very hot & humid at night here,
just like Brisbane in summer. We put the aircon on one night but with the high
price of electricity here ($200 per month roughly) we’ve been trying to go
without. It’s a fine line between trying to open the place up for some air vs
closing it up so the roosters aren’t as loud early the next morning.
Another
issue we’ve come across is that 3 of our neighbours decided to burn off their
various garden waste over the weekend, one neighbour each on Friday, Saturday
& Sunday. The smoke has been so bad that we’ve had to almost complete shut
the house up for hours while the fires were burning. Two of those neighbours
seem to have their fire pit much closer to our place than their own as well. I
just hope it’s not a weekly occurrence.
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| not a bad arty photo considering it was taken on my phone |
Another
perk to living in Palau is the quality of seafood. For last night’s dinner we
bought a whole Red Snapper caught that day, 1.4kg for $6.75. We only had half
so there is enough for tonight as well.
Ok I’ll
leave it at that before I write a blog article the length of War & Peace.
Stay tuned for more Pieces of Eights coming at you soon.
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