As I said before, the place is absolutely pristine. On our diving days we would stop at beautiful beaches for lunch. We've never seen so much gorgeous water in our lives. We rented a car with another couple from California and drove around Babeldoab to see some of the land based sites. The pics speak for themselves. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Dear all, Back on land now so here are the Palau photos! Wendy xxx [View Full Entry]

---

---

We dropped a giant number of clams to spend a week in Palau, 5 days diving and 2 days trooping around the tiny cluster of islands inhabited by a scant 20,000 people. This is the most gloriously beautiful place I have ever seen in my life. And we've been to some great places as ya'll know. Dive boats drive through a morse code of mushroom shaped islands surrounded by varying shades of startlingly clear blue water. In the shallower bays surrounding these Rock Islands the water looks like a swimming pool of filtered spring water, the sun flashing ripples of light [View Full Entry]

---

---

A glowing green salt water lake lies in the middle of one of the rock islands. Jellyfish from the ocean were trapped in it ages ago and without the normal sea predators evolved so that they no longer sting. They swim a few kilometers a day in a circuit around the lake, keeping in the sun to support their symbiotic algae. You can swim in the lake with them while they harmlessly pulse their way around you. It would be brilliant for someone to film them and sell the videos as stress relieving videos like those fish videos. It's mesmerizing and [View Full Entry]

---

---

Dear all, Where to begin?? We arrived here in Palau in the early hours of the morning feeling sleepy but excited. We had finally arrived at one of our dream destinations!! Palau is a group of islands and we stayed in Koror as its a good jumping off point for all of the divesites. Next morning we were up early even though we had barely slept as we were eager to explore Palau. We wandered into Koror town and I was feeling a little disappointed....it was just a town, where was my amazing tropical island?? Next day we got on a [View Full Entry]

---

---

My stopovers in Brisbane and Cairns, Australia, brought me back to a world that, over the past two months, I had almost forgotten existed: vast sprawling cities, flashing lights, people who do not say hello to each other when they pass in the street because there are simply too many of them, tour agencies advertising expensive “half and full-day rainforest treks”, the sort of meaningless experiences bought up by gap year students feeling the need to take a break from their year-long booze cruise around the world. Guam, an overseas territory of the USA, is also highly developed, [View Full Entry]

---

---

September 10, we spent one day in Manila, where we got the best massage ever, before we got on our plane to Palau, Micronesia. Palau is an island in the Pacific Ocean, 500 miles east from the Philippines and 2.000 miles south from Japan. Palau is not just known as the laziest country of the world, but it's also famous for scuba diving. some of you might know it from the TV show Survivor. We stayed a week on the island of Palau and at a place called DW Motel. We couldn't post this blog earlier, because we didn't had a [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hopefully this will be my final enty for the Palau Blog... The day after our last dive in Palau we spent the day at the Palau Pacific Resort just snorkeling on the private reef there, which was fantastic, I spotted a moray eel, and searched again for the octopus we had spotted a couple of days previously. Grae had developed a very sore ear infection which wasent helped by the doctor stabbing him in the ear with the instrument meant to inspect the infection. It bled quite alot and Grae was in alot of pain so he absolutley couldn't get his [View Full Entry]

---

---

During a conversation with Simon the Frenchman (Ed's flatmate), we talked about where to dive in asia. Simon had been an instructor in the area for several years. Philippines? ok. Thailand? very touristy. I mentioned our plans to fly to Palau and Simon's response was "don't quit diving after Palau, eh? You'll never think diving is good elsewhere again!!" With this in mind Lauren and Simon arrived at 1:30am on Saturday morning to a stifling hot airport (at least it didnt smell like vomit as in Manila) and were taken to a transfer hotel where t [View Full Entry]

---

---

First, just a small note about my last entry on Tubbataha...I forgot to let you know that not only did I see a whaleshark, easily between 8 to 10 meters long cruising at 21 meters deep...but I had also two of the best night dives ever. Quite easy to understand when you see the amount of fish. But this time, you can imagine that in a single torch light, I had the chance to see at the same time a huge turtle, as well as 2 white tip sharks cruising just below the turtle...amazing! But let's go back to Palau... If [View Full Entry]

---

---