First Few Days in Palau

For those of you who don’t know what I’m up to here is a very brief introduction. At the end of Jan I went to my good friend Natalies wedding outside of Cancun, which was amazing! From Cancun I flew to Palau, which is in Micronesia, and only took 47 hours to get to. I’m working at the Palau national hospital for one month and fulfilling my last requirement for med school. I start this rotation tomorrow. After Palau instead of coming home I’m travelling with my friends around South East Asia for two months and coming back just in time for graduation. I’ve been in Palau for a couple of days now. As I mentioned the flight was quite the trek. I’m staying in a two bedroom apartment with my classmate Vanessa. Its only 500/month total, the place is clean and very basic with some space A/C units a kitchen, bathroom, living area. Its right above a flower shop smack in the middle of downtown Koror. Its worth mentioning that downtown is only one street with a couple of markets and some random department stores. The Island of Koror is pretty small, its possible to walk from one side to the other in about 20-30minutes, there are two other islands connected to it by bridges, one of these islands is where the hospital is. The best way to get around is by renting bikes, I negotiated a rate of $70 for one month for some pretty nice Giant mountain bikes. Our first bike adventure was venturing to the neighboring island of Malakhai, which proved to be small enough to explore in about 5 minutes. It does have a couple of recommended bars that we wanted to check out, one of which is called the “Rip Tide Bar”. I was told several times that this was the place to be, known for being a local hangout and sporting the only usable beach around, believe it or not as tropical as Palau is, there are no public beaches. When we rolled up on this place we walked in and stumbled into some strange possibly Vietnamese party. Every one was praying and there was a film crew documenting, we slowly backed out and ventured off. Maybe Saturday night. The next stop was the Palau Pacific Resort, which is the best known resort on the island. It's famous for having a manmade white sand beach surrounded in the picturesque setting that only Palau can provide. There is a membership fee of 200/month to use the beach and all the facilities the hotel has to offer. I was able to convince the concierge that Vanessa and I are married and got a discount of 150/month. This still may seem like a lot, but you have to realize that there isn’t really a place in Palau to just hang out and chill, no beaches, or even coffee shops. So this price is worth it, and so says everyone I have known that’s come here along with the guide books. We stayed at the resort for the evening and given the evening theme of blowing cash dove into their $35 seafood buffet that was out of this world. The next morning we repented by going to the grocery store vowing to cook for the rest of the week.