Palau pic's of the day!

Recently I've been tormenting some friends and family back home with photos of the view from where we stop for lunch when out diving. I thought I should extend the courtesy to the thousand of faceless readers of Pieces of Eights as well. Hope you enjoy them ;)

Long Beach

Sunset from Sam's Tours

Two Dogs

Another sunset from Sam's Tours

Jackson Beach

The rotting fruit & vegetables of Palau

While I'm getting an extraordinary amount of days off in a row, you, the readers of 'pieces of eights' are benefiting with yet another post. This time it's on the rotting fruits and vegetables available for purchase here in Palau.

Previously I've mentioned about the poor quality and limited range of produce. It is pretty common to find rotting food for sale on the shelves in here. Some of it is quite disgusting at times too.

While some produce is grown locally (which I rate highly), I'd estimate that well over half is shipped over in containers. This often means that by the time the boat gets here the food is already decaying. Tomatoes and lettuce seem to be the worst affected.
 
Once at one of the two major stores we've seen the whole fruit & veg section completely empty. You definitely have to change the way you shop here, no more can you pick a recipe then go out and get what you need. Here you either go and see what you can find or you go with a vague idea of something and see what you can work out while shopping. Often we have to stop at three different shops to get enough to cook a meal with.



And unlike back home, there is another problem I've come across here. Often you can be fighting with local restaurateurs for various produce. It's a pretty common sight to see someone loading up their trolley with every single lettuce or every packet of pork available in a store. I got so annoyed with this once that when a guy was loading up with every can of cold coffee I delicately pinched one from his trolley while he was busy with the last arm load from the fridge. YOINK!

While slightly off topic, here is a story that sums up Palau. One of the hardware stores used to stock some small part for diving equipment, this part was in such high demand that it sold like hotcakes. So much so that the store often ran out of the part. So due to the problems they had trying to keep this item on the shelves they decided to stop stocking it! Madness!

These don't look too bad actually

P.S. After originally posting this my friend Inger from Inger in Palau sent this:  "Nathan forgot to mention the frenzy when a new container comes in and the mass text messaging that goes out through the ex-pat community. "Everybody, drop what you are doing immediately and get to Surangel's. Now!!!". Then everyone gets overly-excited and buys 3 lbs of avocados to gorge on which inevitably go bad in 2 days."



How could I forget!

Ok so this isn't fruit nor veg but it's pretty disgusting either way

Independence and UN days

Ok finally I'm getting around to a long overdue post about Palau’s Independence and UN day holidays. 

October 1^st was Palau’s 19^th Independence day from when they became a republic in 1995. In true Palauan fashion the details of events where rather thin on the ground. All we knew were that everything was going to happen under the both sides of the KB bridge. Amanda was going to be working on the Airai side of the bridge with a community group running a salt awareness campaign as well. 

Both Independence & UN days had plenty of small stalls selling various bits of food however the drawcard for Independence day was the speed boat races. I believe this is a pretty big event on the Palau calendar and we noticed about a month out various boats appeared on the water in practice. Personally the races weren’t as interesting as I thought they’d be, I only ever saw a two boats in the same race and the boats didn’t seem that fast. I do know at some point in the day one of the drivers did some sort of flip and was tossed out of his boat. I understand he was ok. There were some fireworks later in the day but we had moved onto to a house warming party and missed them. Here are a few pics from the day.

Koror side of the bridge checking out the races

Now onto UN day, which to most of us ex-pats is a pretty weird holiday to have and I still don’t know the meaning of it. Either way I wasn’t complaining. Yet again various stalls were set up selling food however the draw-card for today was traditional dancing by various states. Again not the most exciting day but fun to check out some traditional dancing etc.

'Chips' style cop bikes on the right

New skate ramp built for the kids by the current Civic Action Team

An Urbex Surprise

A little over a year ago, prior to Amanda & I travelling to Osaka, some friends mentioned a recent visit to a boarded up old theme park in Nara (Japan). A few google searches later turned up a photographers dream, appropriately called Nara Dreamland. Dreamland been closed for a number of years but in true Japanese style it’s had been boarded up and left rather than pulled down and demolished in a more western style. 

In searching for further details on Dreamland I came across a new concept of Urbex (Urban Exploring) which has the rather awesome unwritten rule of ‘leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photographs’. (Which is very similar to the code a lot of divers follow as well, just replace ‘footprints’ with ‘bubbles’). 

One of the best Urbex examples I’ve come across is Florian and his Abandoned Kansai blog. When Amanda and I visited Osaka/Nara in November last year we found Dreamland but sadly security was on site that day so the best I could do was a few photos over the fence.

Yes ok, Urbex in certain locations would be considered trespassing but I prefer to think that if I’m just taking pictures it’s ok right?

Now where am I getting to with all this… Recently I had been diving with a great group of people from Ohio (mostly). On Monday just gone they had paid a little extra for 2 dives and a half day land tour on the island of Peleliu. I was lucky enough to be able to tag along with them for the tour.

For those who aren’t aware Peleliu island was the site of a ferocious and sadly rather pointless battle during WWII (1944). Essentially the American army wanted to take the air strip from a determined and well entrenched Japanese army. What was expected to take 3 days took well over 2 months. I won’t go into too many details, you can read more here if you like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_peleliu

The land tour took us around many war sites on Peleliu but for me the jewel in the crown was the old Japanese Army Headquarters. I was aware of this building and had been very keen to check it out but mistakenly thought it was on the larger island of Babeldaob. So I was completely taken by surprise to round a corner in our old beaten up tour van and pull up right out front of the HQ. 

Unexpectedly and very suddenly I was doing my first Urbex photo shoot!

Unfortunately with no concept of my what day would entail I only had my small point and shoot Panasonic Lumix camera on me. I can’t wait to get back and explore some more, next time with my DSLR!

And finally a couple of photos I took outside Dreamland last year.

Nara Dreamland, from over the fence

Sunset from the Dreamland parking lot