Category Travel

Entries 61 Total Description

Takes you places.

Six Choice, Five Dollars

Oct 3, ’10 11:28 PM

Garapan’s Thursday Night Market

Most of the local restaurants set up tables checkered with steel catering trays filled to the brim with all kinds of greasy fare. Meat on a stick, whole fried daily catch, fried rice and saucy noodles. If you decide to order six choices you’re served Thanksgiving plate proportions of food in a deep bottomed styro take-home container, a pair of chopsticks and one napkin.

I took these photos last week, when the market wasn’t as busy as I’ve seen it. It had just rained and you could feel the day’s wet heat rise up from the black top. The carnival lights strung from under the tents turned the surrounding night even darker. The abundance of choice makes it hard to decide even for an off-the-wagon vegetarian like me. I pace the length several times, considering my options, always gravitating toward the Thai and Indian food. Now, I don’t have the gastronomic capacity for a spade full of dinner but Peter let me in on an unadvertised secret: three choice, three dollar, which seems to me a perfectly good deal.

We found a spot up Garapan’s walking mall, plunked down, and cracked into our convenience store beers.

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Decent Into The Cave

Sep 20, ’10 12:01 AM

PJ and my trip to Forbidden Island took us down into the green hillside into a beautiful sea cave. A short walk up over a small ridge brought us through a low carpet of mangrove-like plants. The trail abruptly ends inviting sandalled hikers to find their own way over ragged and jagged edged boulders up to a wide gap in the cliff.

There you’ll find a triangular opening sitting like an manhole between you and an orange (ancient reef) wall. It’s easy enough to shimmy about ten feet down into the cool still air of the dim chamber. On the far end of the room the stone is salamander smooth and lit by lively slithering reflections off the small pond in the floor.

In a place like this it’s hard to avoid thinking mythically or at least cinematicly. Dreamy shafts of sunlight brighten the underground pool. Hikers move under the mountain from jungle to seaside grotto then back to the heat and bright of day. The moment I was in I had the feeling of familiarity but not quite deja vu. It reminded me of the Mayan Actun Tunichil Muknal caves in Belize. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one and that others have felt the same way about it.

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Forbidden Island, Found!

Sep 19, ’10 4:21 AM

We never actually set foot on the island (it is forbidden after all) but the expedition was a resounding success. The Forbidden Island resembles a handsome hat tilted playfully to one side. It’s flat top is a perfect lawn of green grass where sea birds are safe to lay their eggs in the open, as if for an elementary Easter hunt. Its surrounded by rough black cliffs on all visible sides.

To get there take the fork in the road at Kagman’s natural edge and follow Forbidden Is. Rd. for a mile or so. Keep an eye out for cars parked at the trail head, the small brown sign has been taken by the jungle and easy to miss.

The trail, a slim, clay track, is patrolled by hundreds of red-helmeted millipedes, each tiny armored body carried afloat by hundreds of rolling legs. Pick your way through the vine choked forestland (be thankful Saipan is snakeless) to an outlook with a perfect view of the rocky coast. A ragged strip of beach, scattered with jagged boulders, tips into the deep blue Pacific water. Reefs have shaped the edge-water landscape into raised plates and sandy channels teeming with the UV blue an neon pink bodies of coral biting fish.

PJ and I brought our masks, so as soon as we got to Forbidden Island’s shallow pools we slipped into the easy water for some fish spotting. My favorite was the orange-spine unicornfish. This beautiful seal-gray animal has lightning blue stripes racing down its back and four dreamcicle thorns way back on its tail. From above the spot before it’s tail looks like a clown-fish swimming the other way. Have a look for yourself, they are amazing.

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Thirty Days, Sixty Days

Sep 19, ’10 1:01 AM

Mark the time. As of this post’s publication I’ve been on island for thirty days. From my perspective it feels like no time has gone by at all, or like all the time in the world has past. It’s been an absolute blast so far. My friends have asked me as I was nearing the four week mark what impression I’ve made of this place. My answer stays the same, it’s absolutely amazing here and I can only look forward to the next sixty days with enthusiasm.

But what will time bring my way? Work? Travel? Something approaching a tan? Whatever life has in store for me here I’m sure the weather will be beautiful.

Also, the Facebook thing

On another note, I’d like to thank everyone who clicked my new Facebook like button in the rightmost column on this page. It’s a little something new I’m trying out. By clicking the “like” button your photo is added to the box and you become a lker of the kvncsy.com sister page on Facebook. Eventually I’d like to integrate FB’s comment system with my own, and adding the little box there is a start. (I’d welcome links or advise from any crack shot Facebook/WordPress programmers on how to do that.)

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The Apartment

Sep 11, ’10 12:37 AM

The post introducing my little apartment lacked a photo of the exterior. Well, here it is in all of it’s glory. I live three floors up, behind the third door. Previously I had the floor all to myself, but as of a few days ago a neighbor moved in to the apartment to the right of mine. Except for some wall-quaking electric grinding/drilling sounds a few mornings ago, she’s been great.

Also for those of you who have asked for more photos, have you been checking my Picasa Web Albums? A lot of the photos I’ve taken are there along with many that didn’t fit into a post. So check ’em out.

TOMORROW: FORBIDDEN* ISLAND**!

Tomorrow PJ and I are doing the unthinkable, the unrecommended, the expressly forbidden. We are determined to visit… (Deep breath) Forbidden* Island**.

In preparation we have consulted a dizzy shaman who divined the island’s location and drew a map for us. According to the few decipherable scribbles, the journey will take us down a “dirt road” around a “mountain” to the treacherous stretch known only as “Forbidden Island Road.” From there, no man has returned [without having seen Forbidden* Island**].

When we return, nay, IF we return, I will make a post about it. An epic, forbidden* post.

* Island may not actually be forbidden.
** Also the island may not be an island.

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