Palau

September 14–16, 2012

When locals hear that you’re headed to Palau, they always ask, “Going diving?”

It’s impossible to imagine any other reason for coming here.

The flight is a late-night one, and by the time it lands, all the food places are already closed. I lucked out: a 24-hour fast food stall, the only one in the entire country, was still open.

The hotel has Internet only in the lobby. Like everywhere else in Micronesia, the connection is really slow.

The following day, I rent a car and drive around the country’s perimeter.

The main city takes about five minutes to explore. It consists of one street with several buildings on it. Reminds me of tiny rural American towns built around gas stations. A storm drain, covered with concrete slabs, runs along the street.

The city also has a remarkable monument in the “garden of sobriety”: a drunk in the form of a cobra, crawling on hands and knees with his guitar, under the inscription “Don’t drink & drive.”

The style of the hand-drawn poster isn’t all that different from what you’d see in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

Palau is, frankly, not that big. But it has 16 states. And every state has its own license plate design. What’s more, each state also has its own sub-varieties: regular plates, government plates, and so on. Nowhere else in the world can you find so many different license plates per square kilometer.

The island’s roads are sprinkled with two kinds of signs: Do Not Pass and Pass With Care.

Little posts with retroreflective white squares are set up along all the road shoulders.

A sign calling for equal rights on the roads.

The children look like Bic pen mascots.

In residential areas, the sidewalk is separated from the roadway with a raised dotted curb.

Hydrants are protected with posts on all four sides.

Laundry drying.

The island’s typical trash can consists of an empty kerosene tank.

There are elections coming up, so every intersection is decked out with campaign ads.

An old Japanese streetlamp.

Gazebos dot the entire island.

To keep up with all the other countries, they decided to build a new capital in the middle of the forest here. And began by erecting a structure resembling the White House. There’s nothing else around it but forest.

The edge of the world.

There’s a fish-filleting brigade operating on the edge of the world. They take perches, turn them into flounders, and stick them in the freezer.

I’m not sure what else there is to add.

* * *

The self-importance of the security personnel at the airport is inversely proportional to the significance of this small nation. They confiscated and destroyed my deodorant, which had travelled with me through a hundred other airports. The reason: the deodorant wasn’t in a clear zip lock bag. Be vigilant in Palau!