Saipan TR (ongoing - with pics)

[Phil14312]

Like I mentioned here briefly before, I am on an internship with the Division of Fish and Wildlife in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).

I've been here a month and this was what I first wrote up about the place. I will try to keep this updated, but if you have questions or anything, I will definitely respond.

First impressions.

Saipan is a little of what I imagined it would be and a lot of what I didn’t imagine it would be. For instance, I did imagine that there would be some large resorts catering to tourist crowds. However, I did not imagine the tourist crowds would be overwhelmingly Asian. Being a commonwealth of the US, I figured there would be more tourists from the US, but so far, I would guess they comprise about 5% of the total tourist population. I did expect a very pretty place. I didn’t expect a completely gorgeous one. You know those TV commercials enticing you to fly to some remote, usually tropical destination, with beautiful water you can walk out in for a mile? I used to think it was all Photoshop. It’s not. I can see why people vacation here.








I also imagined that most people would know English (as it’s the official language), but I did not imagine that most people would speak English very poorly. So far its been moderately difficult to communicate with most people. The natives all speak either Carolinian or Chamorro in their homes, which makes English their second or third language. The Korean and Japanese who have immigrated to the island speak either poor English or very very little English. I’ve managed to overcome this, given that I have no experience speaking any Asian language. I don’t want to exaggerate this aspect of the island, as I do realize that at least everybody can speak some English, so all in all it could be a lot worse.

My internship doesn’t officially start until Monday, so my job from Wednesday until then is to find a moped and find an apartment.

My first day here I walked about a half-mile to the Saipan Grand Hotel and caught a free shuttle to the DFS Galeria, a very high-end mall in Garapan. The mall shuttles people all day everyday to and from the major resorts on the island. Luckily, they don’t charge, nor do they care if you are staying at the resort or shopping in the mall. The first two days on the island I scheduled my life around this bus.

After a 20 hour trip, I crashed in the hotel at about 10:00 PM the night before and was up at a surprising 7:00 AM. The first thing I noticed about Saipan was that its hot. And humid. At 7:00 AM or anytime really. Walking about 5 minutes to the resort made me start sweating profusely. When I got to the Saipan Grand, I learned that the DFS shuttles don’t start until 10:00 AM, giving me over 2 hours to kill.

I ended up walking across the street to a little Japanese Deli called Ebisuya. The place would become my eating grounds for the next two days. I got a fresh baked piece of bread and a rice/spam/hotdog (I think) dish that hit the spot. With a liter of water the total came to about $4. Not to shabby.

After taking the DFS bus and unloading at the mall, I started walking towards the car/scooter rental places. Of the 3 in Garapan, 1 did not sell mopeds and another was neither renting nor selling their mopeds for at least a week until parts where shipped in for them. That left Choi motors, run by the shrewd Mr. Choi himself. The cheapest mopeds he sold was $700. My choices in that price range was either an old Katana 50cc that looked in ok shape or an even older Katana 110cc that looked pretty abused. I settled on the newer/smaller one, figuring that my fiancé would only be here for a month and while 50cc isn’t ideal for trucking the both of us around, we could make do. I was most concerned about the thing breaking down for the 3 months I’m here, so I chose the one in better shape. Unfortunately, all my attempts at haggling were thwarted. I did manage to get Choi to throw in 2 helmets for the $700. And I got a new battery. The thing runs real rough when you first start it, burns oil pretty bad, and makes some foreboding rattling noises as well. I think I probably got ripped off, but I didn’t really have a choice, as I needed to find an apartment and couldn’t do that without wheels.



I really couldn’t justify staying more nights in another hotel, as I was paying $50 a night, when monthly rent might be $500 or so. I called a couple places, but everything was either too far to Lower Base (the area of the island where my internship is) or too expensive/not furnished/crappy. I ended up renting an apartment for $350/month plus power/water. The rent is not bad, but electric here is brutal. If I ran the AC the entire time, I’d probably have a monthly bill upwards of $200. Right now I’m pleased, as there is a nice breeze flowing through the place which means I won’t be running the AC that much. I do have a TV with like 15 channels, 9 of them in Korean or Japanese and that goes down to about 1 for most of the day (BBC). The place is clean and comfortable with a big enough kitchen and it looks like its in a pretty secure area. Overall, given my level of desperation, I’m pleased with the apartment. Oh and it has wireless internet, a big plus. But so far it works well enough to be entirely frustrating as it keeps crapping out. Will update on the internet situation.

Best part about the apartment is the view:



I wasn’t planning on drinking, but then the power went out.

That about sums up the island experience last night. My internship “mentorâ€

[supafrey]

nobody said it so i'll be the first: great TR. keep em coming please.. they'll convince me to stop stupidly trying to build a roll and earmark a grand or two for some character building. good luck and try to find some place to play some f*cking cards.

[kompis]

good read, keep them coming

[Phil14312]

We left off with me things looking up, got a scooter to haul me around in and an apartment to live in. Well, of course something had to go wrong.

But first, I got to do my first sightseeing on the island Saturday and Sunday. Saturday I headed up to Banzai Cliff and Suicide Cliff. Both are now “peace memorials,â€

[Phil14312]

Sunday

I haven’t been in the water at all this trip yet, so I decide to head out to a dive/snorkel spot called Lau Lau. I throw my crap (mask, snorkel, fins, and weight belt) into a backpack. Since I’m a freediver, I use longer fins that scuba divers and these babies are making it real awkward on the scooter. Sometimes I miss a car, but then again, driving a hog is so liberating.

The last road down to Lau Lau is pretty frickin rough, but the scooter performs admirably and I pull of at one of the first entrances to the beach I see. If any of you haven’t seen a volcanic reef (I hadn’t), it’s usually rocks/coral that fringes the island, with a calm and shallow lagoon inside and deep water outside. I trek through the lagoon, but it’s slow going as the rocks are making it tough on my feet. I was surprised by how quickly the reef drops off into deep water. One second I’m in thigh high water fighting the waves, the next I’m in 30 feet of water. I’ve never seen anything like it, but as soon as I got situated it was pretty cool. I made some dives down to probably 40 feet and felt pretty good. The visibility was amazing. In California, a 20’ visibility day is about as good as you can get without heading to the Channel Islands. Here, a bad day is 40’ visibility and a good day is 100’+. You just get to see so many things there, corals and reef fish and crabs and cool caves.




The only problem I have is my weight belt. Weight belts help give you a little negative buoyancy so that you can dive deeper. In the water, the deeper you go, the more negative you become. So theoretically, at some point you are neutral density with the water. Go any deeper and you will sink and go any higher and you will float to the surface. Normally, I wear 10 pounds in a wetsuit (wetsuits add buoyancy to your body) and I’ve been meaning to up that to 12 or 14. Since I didn’t have a wetsuit, I put on one of the 5 pound weights, but it was far too much weight.

I was probably slightly negative at the surface. As soon as I dove I would sink. At 40’ I could rest on the bottom without moving at all. The trick with weight belts is to wear enough weight so you sink fast, but not enough that makes it to hard to get back up, or that becomes dangerous. I definitely need to wear less weight next time.

When I got out of the water, a native family was barbequing and drinking beers. As I was drying off, they kindly offered a refreshment and food. I ended up drinking and eating with them for the next 2 or 3 hours. They kept offering me food and drink until I couldn’t refuse. I ate the normal hotdogs and grilled chicken, but they also gave me Tapioca (which is also called Cassava I believe) and Breadfruit right from the grill. I also sampled Trochus, which is a sea snail. Good stuff.

The family consisted of Maggie and Eddy with all their children and nephews and such. Also there was Eddy’s best friend since high-school, Joe. Joe was quiet at first, but as he drank he started talking, a lot. The first thing he asked was who the better looking man was, Joe or Eddy. I declined to comment. The best part about all his nonsense, was every time he asked me a question, he prefaced it with a slurred and highly accented, “Excuse my words,â€

[Jernej Zorec]

nice stuff , looks like an awesome place,

and remember things dont go wrong, they just force u to find another way to get it right :D

[UrAteUp]

Great read Phil...thanks for sharing. Now why haven't you updated?

Keep in touch so we know your ok.

If you get kidnapped tell them THP won't give more then $1.75 to get you back.... Or perhaps we can give them 1 Canadian and a few UK'ers to get you free...

[supafrey]

finding friendly natives to fill you with fresh sea snails is basically the point of these trips. keep doing things like that and I promise you'll have good memories.

Try not to get betrothed to anyone you've never met before.

[Phil14312]

On Desperation

I bought my scooter out of desperation really. Well predictably, it broke about 5 days later, just after my girlfriend flew in. It sucks being here without wheels, which is why I bought it in the first place, but now I bought it and still don’t have wheels, and my girlfriend is now upset everytime we have to walk and get sweaty to go anywhere.

In all honesty, I’ve basically written off the $700 I spent on it. But, thinking about from an expected value way, it wasn’t a terrible purchase. Staying in hotels cost >$50 a night and I pay about $500/month in rent and utilities. And getting a scooter was almost the only way to find an apartment, so there was always a chance it would work the whole time I was here and I could sell it and everything would be happy.

But it broke and I’ve finally got it fixed, about a month later and with my wallet a $150 lighter. Except when I went to pick it up and bring it home, it simply stopped running while running on the street. 3 times. So I took it back and now will have to wait until Monday to see what the hell else could be wrong with it.

So desperation has caused probably the worst experience of the my time here. Fortunately, I found a larger scooter for $500 bucks that runs much better. I’m almost positive (knock on wood) that I can get my $500 back from this one when I leave in a month.

New scooter + bonus wild mangos collected:


Internship

My internship is actually starting to wind down, with only less than 4 weeks left. I’ve completed the busy work (data entry) that I had to do and have almost run the course on the website I was expected to complete. While I’m not a full blown web programmer by any means, I am proud of how well I learned to put together a rather professional looking site, I’ll let you know when it’s all done.

Now, I get to go into the field and do some freshwater sampling for invasive species by backpack electrofishing. Sounds pretty cool. I think the whole thing has been a positive experience and a good thing for my resume.

The worst part about working on Saipan is the power outages. Probably 60% of the time the power has been out between 8-10AM. Basically you become very very unproductive. But this past week and a half the power has been going out in the morning and at about 2-4 or so, which just completely kills most of the productive hours of the day. Pretty frustrating.

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.

[Phil14312]

I'd like to respond to some questions, as I've been here 2 months so the culture shock is wearing off in some aspects and I may be overlooking some obviously cool stories.

[Jernej Zorec]

thats pretty awesome tbh ecept the minor bad beats with scooter
and altho these small nations play pretty bad footie i would think they have more spirit for it than many big time teams

[Phil14312]

Spearfishing

In California, I like to do a little spearfishing and lobster diving in my spare time. It’s all freediving, no SCUBA allowed. I brought my gear over here because Saipan has some of the clearest water in the world. Unfortunately, while my girlfriend was here I found little time to spearfish. We would go snorkel around at the Grotto or at Lau Lau, but I never got a chance to actually bring my gun and do some serious diving.

Jumping in at the Grotto:


Diving at the Grotto:


More Diving at the Grotto:


Random Sea Cucumber Picture:



When she left, I got taken out on a small boat by one of the guys, Pete, who works at Coastal Resource Management on the island and his buddy from the Department of Environmental Quality, Ben, a local guy who drove the boat. We headed north on an exceptionally calm day. The first place we stopped I headed to where Pete had jumped in two minutes before. I was a little unsure of myself since in California, I am typically diving at 30-40 feet max. Here, the diving really begins at 30-40 feet and goes about as deep as you can go (some guys go 100’+). I couldn’t see the bottom, just a hazy blue everywhere, but made my first dive. I went down probably 40 feet, couldn’t see the bottom and went up. Turns out I was in a seriously deep area, so I eventually figured out where the shallower cracks and crevices were to check out.

I speared a couple fish, but found most of the decent size ones pretty wary. Pete had managed to show me up and take some big parrotfish and unicorn fish. At our last spot, a sort of pinnacle that rises up to about 40 feet from the deep, Pete jumped in about 30 seconds before me. When I got in, I saw Pete being schooled by 10-15 pound skipjacks. I watched as he shot one and took off to bring it back to the boat. I made my dive towards the school, but I must have spooked them because right as I got in range, they started to turn and swim away. I had one shot and took it, unfortunately my spear skipped off the shoulder (I could see the mark it left) of the skipjack and they were gone.

Meanwhile, a gray reef shark passed underneath us right at the top of the ledge. You mainly see Blacktip and Whitetip reef sharks, who are generally 4-5’, but pretty docile. Gray Reef sharks are about 6-7’ and are pretty aggressive, frequently taking spearfishers’ catch. Fortunately, he just cruised by, probably attracted by the screaming (skipjacks scream when speared) of Pete’s fish. I didn’t see him again.

I kept seeing decent size fish, but couldn’t really line anything up and Pete was already done for the day so I only had a few more dives left. On one of my last dives I hit the ledge at 40’, didn’t find a fish and as I turned around a school of 18â€

[UrAteUp]

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.. )?

[HalfSugar]

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!!

[golddog]

Phil,

Thanks for the updates. Always interesting to read of people's adventures traveling to cool parts of the world.