Saipan TR (ongoing - with pics)

[Phil14312]

Great read Phil. So how are the beaches compared to Ca.? See any Great Whites while diving? Ever been attached by a shark (besides your girlfriend.. )?

The beaches are prettier, but they are not nearly as wide as CA. For instance, most of the big beach areas in LA (Santa Monica, Venice, Huntington Beach) have beaches that might be 100-200 yards to get from your car to the water. Here, it's like 10 feet. The biggest beach I've seen I think is man-made in front of the Hyatt and is probably 30-40 yards or so. On the backside of the island, there are few beaches, it's mostly just exposed shoreline. I believe it's probably because, geologically, the islands are still pretty young, so not enough sand making has gone on yet.

They don't have great whites here, in CA they do, but you basically never see them. Sometimes out at the Channel Islands guys see them more regularly, but most of the time you never see them. Here in Saipan, the top dogs are tiger sharks, which in many ways are worse than Great Whites because they are notoriously more aggressive. If a Great White bites you, it was an honest mistake. But a Tiger Shark can just come after you because it wants to eat you.

The spearfisher I was talking about earlier, Felix, has told me some crazy stories about sharks. In Tinian (the next island just south of Saipan), there are way more sharks and they are way more aggressive. This is probably because all the sharks on Saipan were hunted to very low numbers after WWII.

Felix was spearfishing Tinian with about 12 of his closest buddies (white tip reef sharks), who kept circling in close. He was fishing at a pinnacle with big tuna, marlin, mahi mahi, but Felix only had his reef fish gun (smaller, not capable of taking a 30+ LB fish) and was diving down and shooting big parrotfish. He would surface and put the fish in his fishbox (styrofoam cooler attached to you on the surface). Well the fishbox was leaking fish blood and guts. One time when he surfaced, something told him to turn around, and he turned around to see a big Tiger (13-14') coming right at him with it's jaws open. Fortunately, he had enough time to get his spear up and poke the thing in the face. Pretty nuts eh?

[Phil14312]

Soccer

It’s nice to come to a small pond and instantly be a big fish. I’ve been playing a lot of soccer here and am the best goalkeeper on the island. The national team coach wants me to come back to play for them. It would be pretty fun to say I’ve played in an international soccer match. And be the starting goalkeeper. They play teams like Guam, Mongolia, Macau, and North Korea. Saipan (or the CNMI) national team is close to competing, they lost recently 3-2 to Guam in golden goal overtime. I’m told two of those goals were pretty serious goalkeeping errors. To give you some perspective, Guam is ranked like 76th or so in the world. But I think that my high school soccer team could probably compete strongly with Saipan’s national team.

It would be pretty cool, but I don’t know if it will happen. The only thing I could realistically see happening is flying out to play in a tournament for them, which has been mentioned. We’ll see what happens.

As a huge football fan (being from the UK and all, and captaining a local team myself) you would instantly be my hero. Go for it!!

If you ever wanted something different and came to live in Saipan. My guess is that you would easily make the National Team. I'm assuming that b/c you are from UK and play soccer, you are better than me.

[Jernej Zorec]

i agree with geno,
and damn mebbe i should move there :D

do they have snakes and spiders there?

[Phil14312]

i agree with geno,
and damn mebbe i should move there :D

do they have snakes and spiders there?

Snakes: No
Spiders: Yes

[Jernej Zorec]

welll i suppose u cant get everything u want :D

[Phil14312]

I Run Good in Poker Bad in Life

As many of you might’ve read, I recently won a package worth $6K for the APPT tournament in Macau. I also think it’s my only true MTT win ever, so it’s pretty cool. I’m also in the black since June for a lot of dollars, mainly as a result of running like a Jamaican Bob-Sledder in poker the last couple months.

But I woke up this morning and my scooter, my only form of transportation, was gone. Just gone. Stolen. I drove it home at around 8:00 PM on Sunday night, when I woke up at 8:00 AM Monday morning it was gone. Soooooooo frustrating this whole broken scooter / stolen scooter situation. I may be getting my other one back this week, but it’s still tiny, sucks and will probably break the next day.

The plan right now is to beg and plead to borrow a friend’s car they aren’t using. We’ll see how that goes. Oh yeah it’s stick shift and while I’ve sort of “learnedâ€

[Phil14312]

I almost forgot the best part.

I'm talking to everybody today, kinda getting the word out about my scooter. It's a pretty small island, so chances are somebody will see it if it gets driven around. I see this local guy walk by my apartment building who I've seen a couple times before. We always give a "hey, whats up" to each other.

Well I seem him and give him the "hey, whats up" and then say you know my scooter that I park here (gesturing to the place it's always parked)? I told him it got stolen last night and asked if he saw anything about it.

Turns out I'm in luck. He's a witch doctor and he will help me find it. No shit, a real live witch doctor. So now I sorta regret ever talking to this guy. But he insists he will walk to Microbeach to get the things he needs for a ceremony and will come back later to tell me where I can find it. Great. I did have the forethought to come down and talk to him, after he asked which room I was in to come up.

So he doesn't know which room I stay in, but does know which balcony is mine, if he can put 2 and 2 together he'd know which room I stay in.

Oh, and then he asks to "borrow" 2 dollars to go buy some beetlenut. Awesome, I have officially been swindled. Of course, how do I deny a man who will know where my scooter is following a simple ceremony in a few hours? It's the least I could do right?

I'll keep you updated on the Carolinian Witch Doctor situation. Best case his ceremony works and I find my scooter. Worst case he is a crazy nutjob whom i've already given money to once and knows where I live. 50/50 AMIRITE?

[UrAteUp]

Phil,

Great read again buddy. Sounds like for the most part you are having a wonderful adventure.
Don't piss off the witch doctor. He might do something really bad to you...like make your penis stop working...or worse yet...make all your kids look like baby Genos...rofl.
Keep us posted and good luck.