Palau: Random Observations #2

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

Palau: Random Observations #1

We are very quickly coming up on a month in Palau, I have been writing down little things I’ve noticed so I can blog about them before they become the norm and I just consider them part of everyday life. I thought I’d start today with a few examples:

LANGUAGE

While pretty much everyone speaks English at a decent level both Amanda & I have been surprised to find that everyone talks Palaun to each other. I incorrectly thought that after being taken over by USA in 1944 that English would be the first language and Palaun a traditional 2^nd. It’s kind of nice that they’ve been able to keep their language but it also makes it a little hard for us at times. Amanda has found that a number of meetings & events at work are conducted all in Palaun, I also had a glimpse into what it’s like to be a Russian hockey player in Montreal when I had a baseball training run a language I don’t understand. We have had a one hour language lesson but it’s not an easy language to learn at all, it sounds very African to me when it’s broken down and there are so many different little tricks to pronunciation. Eg. a ‘ch’ in the middle of a word is a slight pause but at the end of word it’s a normal ‘ch’. After one lesson I’ve given up hope of being able to learn any Palaun, it’s too difficult. 

BUILDINGS
I've noticed here that there are a number of buildings seem to be half built. The concrete shell is complete but nothing else and they look like they've been left like this for a while. It's as if they build in stages when they have the money or they start projects without being fully organised and run out of money half way through.

The photo of the front of this hotel from a few weeks ago makes it look quite run down but most places seem this way from the outside. The hotel is a little old but clean and has a fairly new bathrooms. But when checking out the hotel from the back we've noticed how the concrete is exposed (no paint or rendering) and the steel rebar wires are all sticking out a couple of feet. This too is common, I'm not sure why things aren't finished. I don't know if it's laziness or lack of money. Some buildings also seem like they were due to be another level higher but have been put on hold.

CARS & DRIVING

Everybody drives cars here, we've only seen a handful of push bikes & scooters and there is little walking from what I can tell. Most cars seem a bit run down, we even saw one a few weeks ago that looked like it was on fire (while still being driven along). We have see a few flash cars though like a Bently owned by one of the hotel moguls who lives here. A median price for a car is about $4000 and typically they hold their value well. 

Like a lot of things here, driving reminds me of the 80s in Australia. Palau like USA drive on the right side of the road however most cars are imported from Japan so the driver is seated on the right side of the vehicle therefore driving in the gutter. But there are also US cars here too, so it’s a weird mix. You don’t really notice how much you look at drivers in other cars to make sure they have noticed you until you can’t work out which side of the car they are in. 

Seat belts seem to be a suggestion and not compulsory here. I’ve noticed kids climbing all over the place and hanging out of windows. While I don’t like to see this it doesn’t seem to be too much of an issue here as the max speed limit is 25mph aka 40kph and often through the busy sections you are just plodding along at about 20kph (for no apparent reason). I understand there is a low rate of accidents and most of them are drunk drivers running themselves into a tree. The alcohol limit is double that of Australia at .10 and I believe they don’t test unless you have an accident. There is a big ongoing campaign to stop people drinking & driving but I doubt it’s overly successful. Along with the lack of compulsory seat belts you’ll often see a bunch of boys or kids sitting in the back of a ute just like Australia in the early 80s.

Drivers are very passive here as well, frequently letting other people in and even slowing down to let pedestrians cross the main street even if they aren’t near a zebra crossing.

Did I mention there are no traffic lights as well? Apparently they were implemented at some point at 2 or 3 main intersections. There was a massive campaign leading up to this to inform the locals on what to do: green means go, yellow means prepare to stop, red means stop. However once implemented this became an issue, because some sections of the main road are long and straight It meant you could see the traffic lights from quite a distance away. When the light went red some drivers would stop hundreds of meters away from the lights because they could see it was red. So instead of re-training everyone they decided to rip the lights back out. Honestly I don’t think they really need them due to how passive and slow everyone drives.

Along most of the main street there is a middle lane that is used for vehicles to turn across traffic or to pull into when trying to turn onto the main road. It seems to work fairly well but there are still a few spots where it gets interesting, again lucky most people are pretty passive. It’s nice to see how so many people can drive without getting annoyed at each other but I do get frustrated at someone doing 20kph endlessly in the 40kpd zone, especially when you are stuck behind them for kilometres. I’d love to see this policed as it definitely causes some of the traffic issues through peak hours. 

INFORMATION

Something that has been driving me nuts of late is the lack of quality information around the island and viable ways to find said info. The Belau (Palau) games are on at the moment, it’s like Palau’s own internal Olympics with sports including things like Baseball, Swimming, Basketball, Weight lifting, wresting, canoeing, fishing and MAA (not MMA) Micronesian All Around. It’s a pentathlon event with sports like spear fishing and coconut tree climbing. The games seem to be a pretty big deal, but how do you know what is on… We’ve been able to find a list of what days certain sports are on but little other details. 

There seems to be no central location that you can look to find this information. There are some notice boards at various locations like the grocery stores and post office which are heavily used in an official and unofficial fashion but these have no games info.

A few weeks ago when I enquired about playing baseball I was given a schedule. So far the schedule has been vaguely accurate. We caught a game on the first day that was to schedule but I was told about night games that weren’t listed. Tuesday I went to see a second game, it started half an hour late. Yesterday I’ve twice gone to the field and there has been no one there, the schedule and even yesterday’s newspaper list a full day of games back to back. WTF?!?

This is just one example of the frustration of information gathering here. It very much seems to still be word of mouth.

OK that'll do for now. I promise I'll soon put up a more personal update about what we've been up to lately.