On My Way to Palau

One Country Closer to the "Century Club"

There are some (usually older) travel geeks who keep track of how many countries they’ve visited, and for them the “century” mark of 100 countries is a high water mark. I’m nowhere near visiting 100 countries, but have noticed lately that I’ve only been traveling to countries I’ve already visited. I’m not complaining, of course, but when I got the offer to visit Micronesia’s Palau, I jumped at the chance.

When I told people I was visiting Palau, I usually received one of two responses. The main one being “where’s Palau” and the second-most popular being “oh yes, there was a very famous World War II battle fought there.” For those of you in the first category, I’m including a map of the area, which I borrowed from the website of our hosts, the Palau Visitors Authority Palau Visitors Authority For those of you in the second category, keep reading.

Getting To Micronesia Via Continental Airlines

To get to Palau we flew Continental Airlines and Continental Air Micronesia with routing from LAX to Honolulu, then Honolulu to Guam and finally Guam to Koror (Palau).

Suprisingly, the flights were not awful. I can’t stand flying truth be told. Being tall, big and above average in the chest region mean that airline seats are at best uncomfortable and usually pretty intolerable. Continental however had a decent enough pitch (room between me and the person whose reclined seat usually rests on my chest) to allow me to even get in and out of my seat, and to eat my meal without performing my usual contortionist dance.

Further the food service was plentiful and fairly pleasant. On the long leg (HNL to GUM) we were even served ice cream sundaes for our mid-flight snack. Oh yum.

And anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a video game addict. So the in-seat video games (on a domestic carrier no less) were a welcome distraction. The movies were on demand so you could start, stop, pause and fast forward through the movies at your own whim. Don’t you just hate having to start watching a movie half way through the film?

Fortunately (sorry Continental, please don’t reduce your flights after reading this) none of the flights were 100% full, so I mostly had an empty seat next to me, which was awesome. Just enough to let me spread out a little bit.

The flight schedule was great, getting us into Palau in the evening. We didn’t get to see much on our first night, but it was great being able to get a full night’s sleep right away, rather than having full day’s schedule on only airplane rest.