A tiny litte piece of America in the middle of the North Pacific


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Oceania » Guam
March 5th 2007
Published: March 14th 2007
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Hotels along the beachHotels along the beachHotels along the beach

Some of the hotels along the beach front. Probably full of Japanese tourists.
My second day of travel to Palau takes me to Guam. A tiny island in the middle of the North Atlantic through which most flights to places in the North Pacific seem to go. It was a strange, strange experience, as I had to go through U.S. immigration (always a bundle of laughs), only to find myself emerging from the arrivals onto a hot and rainy tropical island! I didn't know what to expect but it definitely did not feel like I was in the U.S.

Nonetheless, what I got was a little slice of America, with the massive roads, MacDonalds, K-Mart, Hotels, Casinos, Strip bars and lots and lots of Japanese tourists. It soon became clear that Guam is a major tourist destination for the Japanese. We tried to get rooms in 4 different hotels which were all booked up! It was very annoying since we had been travelling through the night and all we wanted was a room to sleep in. Eventually we found one in a typical motel, bizarrely called the Harmon Loop Hotel. It was a decent place and much cheaper than the hotels down on the main street.

Later on, once we had slept
Long beachLong beachLong beach

This is the beach where we went on a long walk. It was really nice, the sand was soft and fluffy!
and found something to eat, we headed into town to try and figure out what attracted all these tourists. Conclusion? Mainly the shopping because there really isn't anything else to do in Guam - well unless you are into gambling and strip bars... I guess it does have a nice beach. But that was the only redeeming feature. Actually, I suppose if you left town and went exploring around the island you would find a lot of beautiful spots, with nice beaches and views from tops of cliffs. But we didn't have time for that, so I guess I got quite a one-sided view of the place.

We went for a long and very pleasant walk along the aforementioned and photographed beach with many Japanese tourists staring at us, surely wondering what all these whiteys were doing walking along the beach fully clothed and carrying our shoes in our hands! We also realised that a lot of people come here to get married, as each hotel seemed to have a little chapel in the back garden. We even came across a couple which had just got happily married. And that was that for our brief drop into Americaland in
View along the beachView along the beachView along the beach

One more photo of that lovely beach
the middle of the Pacific. I guess Guam was OK for a stop-over but all in all not my cup of tea!

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