Saipan

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Monday, March 17, 2008
We are in Guam today, the largest island in Micronesia, the southern most of the Mariana Islands. It was created from the peaks of two ancient volcanoes that sank into the sea and fused together millions of years ago. Guam is an island territory of the United States located 900 miles north of the equator in the Western Pacific. As part of the US, we have to go through all the US immigration and customs. Because we, along with half the ship, had a tour today we had to be downstairs between 6 and 6:30am to collect our passport and then go through the line for immigration and customs. Of course the Customs folks didn’t get onboard until 6:30am and the immigration people at 7:00am. There were some hot people in the theater - in fact they ran out of room in the theater and the line was pretty long after that. People that arrived at 6:15 still had to wait an hour and a half. Dennis and I ended up as the first and second people to go thru the line because I cannot take my wheelchair down the steps in the theater so we bypassed some folks and ended up in front - but we were down there early you can be sure.
Our tour was okay - there could have been a lot to see, but our tour guide was having problems with his English and so he forgot to tell us anything until we returned to the bus - early because we didn’t know what we were seeing. Other tours left earlier than ours and got back later than ours - all of us on a 4-hour tour. Ours lasted 3 hours on the dot and that was with going to an extra place. It was interesting to see some of the places where the Japanese and American militaries had their strongholds on one another. Also to learn about the time the Spanish were in control. It wasn’t that our guide Elliot didn’t know, he just does the tour in Japanese more often and he cannot translate it to English very well. He also was born in the Philippines and so speaks one of the dialects from there, as well. Not sure which dialect he speaks from there - he didn’t say.
We returned to a very quiet ship as many passengers had taken the shuttle bus into town to the shopping mall - not sure why they needed to go to the mall when they come to Guam. Some then went on walking tours around the town from there, others rented cars or taxis for tours, didn’t have to pay for them to come all the way out to the pier. In the evening on the ship a group of young people (probably in their teens) came and performed some dances for us. It was a beautiful show - they did local traditional dances, dances from the Spanish influence in the area, and some that crossed between their local traditional dances and more modern day dances. It was a wonderful show. After that they showed the movie “Letters from Iwo Jima.”
Tomorrow we are in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands.

Tuesday, March 18th
Today we were at Saipan in the Northern Marianas Islands. We didn’t have to go through any immigration hassles this morning, thank goodness. We received out bus tickets the night before - they do that for the disabled so they do not have to fight the crowds to get down the elevators but instead can go down a little before and it works so well! They even try to remember to place a paper on the first seats, with your name on it so nobody else that is, or claims to be, disabled can take that seat.
Anyway, we were taking a city highlights tour of Saipan. We first went to the American Memorial Park. It is a beautiful park with the war memorial and an information building with a gift shop and museum. At the museum we saw the film the park service put together and it was very good. Over 28,000 Japanese died with over 3,500 Americans on Saipan. Several thousand civilians jumped over the cliffs in fear of the Americans. One soldier held out until 1972 before he surrendered. We visited the invasion beaches and the suicide cliffs on this rather small island.
Tomorrow we are at sea and then the next day tour by ship Iwo Jima.


Wednesday, March 19th
Today was a sea day and a good one at that. You see there were two bingo sessions and I went to the second one - of course where there are more people - and finally won a game. It was a traditional one line any direction game and I got it in 10 numbers! Yeah! I also did the “On Deck for the Cure” to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. You donated money and then they had a walk for those that could walk. I kept track of how many laps people did, but did the first lap with everyone else.
Today we also had a new speaker, (came on in Guam), Major Rod Baldwin of New Zealand. There were actually a number of crew members and guests that got on or off in Guam. This new speaker was actually very good. His topic today was, Two Great Navies. It was very interesting, but repetitive from some of the other talks we have heard on this trip.
Tomorrow we go around Iwo Jima
Met someone today that knows the Borchers of Lake City - it is a small world!

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