PALAU - BLUE SEA & SUNSHINE

Vacation again, I start wondering wether the name of my blog is still valid, as I basically never write about Japan. Well I hope to do more so in Winter, as I will post some skiing pictures then. But so far we are not in winter but in summer, in warm >30 degree summer in Palau, where the rainbow end.



I have already seen many nice places but honestly this was one of the best. Imagine a country with 19.000 (yes nineteen thousand) inhabitants and around 580 islands. Can you see where I want to target? Yes? It was so peaceful, so quiet, so much untouched nature. It was just beatiful.

I was in Palau with 7 friends (6 Japanese and one other from Austria) basically for diving. As I personally do not have a camera with underwater housing for diving pictures I am still waiting for them to be able to show you some pictures. The highlights were Blue Corner with many sharks, turles, many school fishes and strong current. We have also seen some eagle rays flying through the sea.


For the diving trips we were basically the whole day on a boat, from 9 AM to around 4 PM. Shippering around, diving, snorkeling & swimming, sounds like fun? Was fun! The last day I took a guided tour (alone the others are more passionate divers than me) and explored the rocky islands.

Jeju Island - Koreans Hawaii? (Aug 2008)

Well Korean Hawaii perhaps but competition to the real Hawaii, for sure not. I enjoyed the stay on Jeju Island quite a lot, it was very busy as we had many items on our schedule so it was not really relaxing but extremely interesting, and the southern part of the island was also really beautiful.
We (my colleague Marco & me) were originally wondering whether we should stay in one of the very luxury hotels, we were thinking about the hyatt regency, but I am really happy it was booked out. The place we were staying was great, nice, rather small wooden block houses, with an own balcony with chairs & a table, really great for a final beer before going to bed.



The first day we came to Jeju Island around noon and explored the beach nearby our Inn and afterwards some markets and shopping possibilities in Jeju city. I, bought my own bibimbab pots (two of them) and a set of chopsticks and spoons (they look great but they are not too easy to use). Having spent some money and fully backed we achieved the first days goal.



The second day, we the Inns Grandpa was kind enough to drive us around the island and explain us many interesting sights, always with the help of the local tourism information who had to translate everything by telephone. This was a really interesting experience. He showed us very nice sights though such as some Vulcan craters. great beaches and nice temples. Me personally I was most impressed by the beautiful landscapes.



The third day, it was a Saturday, we planned, and did our diving. Unless the sea was quite rough that day, it was a cool experience. It was my very first current diving experience but I think I did rather good. After the second dive the island was entirely flooded making it rather difficult to pack all stuff and to stay organized. There were very many fishes, and even we saw a fugo, my first in real live.






Afterwards we did some sight seeing in the southern part of Jeju Island which was mainly dominated by stiff coast.






On Sunday morning the Journey ended, we went back to Seoul from where we changed to a plane to Tokyo - and all I further did this day was sleeping, I think you can understand that, I was just pooped.

1 Weekend in Seoul (August 2008)

We took the chance to extend a business trip to Korea into a nice but not very relaxing holiday. I and my colleague Marco went to Seoul on a Saturday; the flight distance between Tokyo and Seoul is just ~ 2 hours. We were not very lucky with the weather, but the trip was still great. And it was my first time flying business class :)

Saturday afternoon we explored some markets. We started at Namdemum Market. This was after knowing all the other markets, by far the best, liveliest and most interesting market. We found some nice things to shop and had a lot of fun just watching people.

At night we explored the highlighted nightlife of Seoul, but we had to face quite some disappointment. We were told that the nights are crazy and people partying until morning. What we found was one of the very typical US military guy meets Korean princesses type bar, which was interesting for character studies, but not real fun. After running up and down the whole Itewon (that’s the name – like Roppongi dori in Tokyo) without being too attracted to a bar we went to a second place slightly better, but still extremely boring. But the dinner was delicious.

Sunday morning we were picked up at 7 AM for your tour between the lands of North and South Korea – the so called DMZ (demilitarized zone). This is a 2km broad area – where joint projects are done and where neither the north nor the south roules. The feeling was rather strange there, very quiet and nobody was really relaxed, the fully armed military did also not really help to make me feel more easy.

On Monday the last day of our Seoul vacation we went to the folk museum. We had a driver and a guide for ourselves and felt like king and queen. It was quite rainy also this day. The museum was still cool as you can see in the below pics.