Micro Blog: Arakabesang island, Koror state, Palau
Arakabesang island, Koror state, Palau (photo: Simon Sellars).

I haven’t updated this Micronesia blog for some time and there are a few reasons for that. Partly it’s because the business of being a guidebook writer can be so bloody exhausting at times. I was in Koror, in Palau, the other week, driving around in an unroadworthy car with a broken air conditioner (the only one I could find at short notice) in scorching, humid heat checking out 20 hotels in a day. Asking the exact same questions over and over: “Do you take credit cards?” “Do you do airport transfers?” “Is there a phone and TV in every room?” “Have I lost my mind, my tiny, tiny little brain?”

When you travel on your own and do this do after day you go loopy. You crave a decent conversation so you start talking to yourself. And then you discover you ‘both’ have nothing in common. That’s when the arguments and the tears start. And then you get drunk. Then you pass out and wake up the next morning to do it all over again. That’s guidebook writing; it can be an unglamorous job.

I hit Koror at a bad time. After that stinking hot day, I was woken by the loudest, most intense storm I’ve ever experienced. Drowsy and dreamy from sleep, I thought either a typhoon or a bomb had landed. Sheet lightning as far as the eye could see. Thunder to perforate eardrums. Belting rain for two days. That was it for hotel reviewing; it was impossible to drive or walk around. I spoke to some locals and they said the weather was extraordinarily unusual for Palau; more than a few made ominous rumblings about global warming destroying their island.

Stupid global warming: this meant I had to sit it out in my room, where I was so stressed about being behind in my work that all I could do was watch cable TV; writing a blog entry was as appealing as licking a cattle prod (which I actually saw some idiot do on TV). This trip has exposed me to American cable (it’s in virtually every hotel on almost every island) for the first time and by the time I got to Pelieliu, which had no TV, I was so glad to be away from the temptation to watch reality hospital featuring patients having half their face sewn back on that I actually sat down and wrote an outline for a short film script about a travel writer slowly going insane while on the road.

The juices were flowing again…