Trip to Yap and Palau - Part 2, Yap

We spent a week in Yap and two in Palau, the "we" in this case being Nick
and Julie from Grand Cayman and my wife Jennifer, a non-diver, and me. Nick
and Julie are professional photographers so they're going to put up the
photos from this trip, but this'll probably take them a while so I thought I
'd write about it while memory serves.
At 5am on a Wednesday in January the bellman at the Tampa Airport Marriott
collected our bags and trundled them down to the Continental Airlines desk.
Twenty-eight hours later we checked into the Manta Ray Bay hotel in Yap,
where it turned out to be midnight on Thursday. Continental had brought us
via Houston, Honolulu, Guam and Palau; their planes were clean and on time,
their staff polite and helpful, our luggage came with us and we were given
large quantities of that special food that only airlines know how to make.
There are 2147 islands in Micronesia, scattered over three million miles of
the north Pacific. Yap is known as the most traditional; there is an
elected government but the island is really run by the tribal chiefs, who
like the status quo. The tourist literature always mentions stone money,
bare breasted women, betel nut and manta rays and we were anxious to see
them all. The stone for the money is quarried in Palau and fashioned into
disks with a hole in the center. The largest is fifteen feet in diameter
and a foot thick and although there is plenty much smaller none that we saw
seemed convenient for pocket or purse. The bare breastedness of the women
is mostly confined to traditional dances and such in the villages, so if you
're thinking topless waitresses, think again. We went on a village cultural
tour with a group from the hotel and witnessed people in traditional dress
dancing and weaving and suchlike; lots of bare breasts I'm happy to report.
At the end of the festivities a young man shinned up a betel nut tree, a
bare trunk about twenty feet high with nuts and foliage at the top, and
threw down some of the fruit. Nick, who is a Man Of Iron and Has No Fear,
wanted to try this, so the bemused villagers showed him how to arrange the
cord around his feet and up the tree he went. All the way up.
Unsurprisingly no other visitor has ever done such a thing. Afterwards a
lady prepared betel nut for those who wished to try it. Here's how: take
the end off the nut, which is about the size of a large olive, split it
lengthwise, scoop out and discard the core, sprinkle powdered limestone on
it, add a piece of cigarette, (optional), close the nut, wrap it in a pepper
leaf and pop it in your mouth. As you chew a bright red juice is given off
and you should spit this out from time to time. If you persist in this
activity, over time your teeth will become stained red and back home you'll
be able to alarm people by smiling at them. Having observed the expressions
of those visitors who tried this delicacy I decided not to.
We took a tour of the island; nice views but otherwise there's not a whole
lot to see although there were some oddities like the textile plant which
employs 300 Chinese, and the bleak looking building where, we were told,
Filipino ladies give "special massage".
The Manta Ray Bay hotel, with twenty-three rooms, provides basic lodging for
divers and on this level it works quite well. The rooms are large, there's
plenty of hot water and the air conditioning works. The restaurant, an airy
room on the third floor, serves three meals a day and the service is quite
good but the food is poor. The local staff at the hotel is charming,
friendly, helpful and kind which is more than I can say for the ex-pat
members of management. About half a mile away is the brand new Traders
Ridge Resort, a very handsome small hotel with a pool and pleasant grounds
and public spaces. We had dinner there one evening and although the service
was amateurish the food was good. Were we to return to Yap this is where we
'd stay.
Under the same ownership as the Manta Ray Bay is Yap Divers, right there at
the hotel and much the largest operation on the island. They have five
boats, pump their own nitrox and have rinse tanks and a gear storage area.
There is a morning two-tank dive and they were amenable to scheduling
whatever we wanted for later in the day; we were assigned to a 30-foot boat
called the Manta, which was fast and comfortable and had a canopy for shade.
The quality of the diving you get is to a significant extent dependent on
who your dive guide is. We had Alex, who was quite outstanding, and his
partner Nico who drove the boat and led some of the dives.
The focal point of the diving is, of course, the manta rays. On our first
dive Alex settled us down in the sand at about 70 feet where we waited, and
waited, and waited. And then the mantas came, looming ghostly, silent,
huge, swooping over us, watching us with those big dark eyes, turning,
coming in low, a foot over our heads and then soaring away. It was pure
magic. Had we gone straight home afterwards I would have counted the trip
worthwhile. Just as well, for after that first day we saw no more mantas in
Yap. Saw plenty of other tings, including sharks, white tip, black tip,
grey reef, Moorish idols, clown fish burrowing in the anemones, crowns of
thorns, a banded pipefish and the elusive mandarin fish. These tiny
beautifully marked fish live deep in the coral and emerge at dusk when
Julie, Nick and I hunted them assiduously, with good photographic results.
The mantas are an experience not to be missed, but the diving in Yap does
not otherwise match that of Palau either for profusion of sea creatures or
variety of sites.
Continental's Air Micronesia is a nocturnal creature. It brought us to Yap
at close to midnight and, at 1:40am on Friday morning, it spirited us away
to Palau, where we settled into the Palau Pacific Resort.

Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers www.mantaray.com

Trader's Ridge Resort www.tradersridge.com

"Anthony" <JAWPW1@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:Rv2cnaPGAODeDaKiXTWJjQ@comcast.com...

> The Manta Ray Bay hotel, with twenty-three rooms, provides basic lodging
for
> divers and on this level it works quite well. The rooms are large,
there's
> plenty of hot water and the air conditioning works. The restaurant, an
airy
> room on the third floor, serves three meals a day and the service is quite
> good but the food is poor. The local staff at the hotel is charming,
> friendly, helpful and kind which is more than I can say for the ex-pat
> members of management. About half a mile away is the brand new Traders
> Ridge Resort, a very handsome small hotel with a pool and pleasant grounds
> and public spaces. We had dinner there one evening and although the
service
> was amateurish the food was good. Were we to return to Yap this is where
we
> 'd stay.

I'm surprised you didn't like the food at MRBH. I understand Bill Munn went
back to the PPR, but I'd be surprised if Bill Acker hired a bad replacement.
What was wrong with it? I ate every meal there but the two dinners we had
up at Trader's Ridge and loved the food.

"Anthony" <JAWPW1@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:oDWdnZ3_s9Sjit2iXTWJhw@comcast.com...
>
> "Greg Mossman" <mossman@qnet.com> wrote in message
> news:vk0144pcflnub5@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> > I'm surprised you didn't like the food at MRBH. I understand Bill Munn
> went
> > back to the PPR, but I'd be surprised if Bill Acker hired a bad
> replacement.
> > What was wrong with it? I ate every meal there but the two dinners we
had
> > up at Trader's Ridge and loved the food.
> >
> This was in January last year, so the memory is not fresh. However i
> thought the food tedious, (that upside down cup of rice with everything),
> not much choice and a lot of fried stuff. Traders Ridge OTOH had an
> imaginative menu and the chef was obviously trying hard. Of course food
> quality is an individual thing and you might well like what I would not!

Bill was still cooking then. The only fried food I can remember there was
the addictive wahoo fish & chips for lunch. I had a delicious but too rich
linguine carbonara (no rice) one night, a special-ordered mangrove crab
another, and fresh fish with lemon-butter one night and passionfruit the
other. The last night we feasted on wahoo that the other divers in our
group caught while my wife and I went kayaking - it was served raw, seared,
and cooked a couple different ways. We spent a week there and the menu
seemed to rotate every three days to favor the majority of visitors who only
stay half a week. But each night there were 5-6 entrees to choose from and
everything I tried was delicious, though the passionfruit marlin was a bit
overcooked and Bill's wife's cakes are a mite dry.

The only meals we skipped at MRBH were two nights dining at Traders Ridge.
The menu was the same both nights, and, as for imaginative, most of the menu
selections "weren't available" the nights we were there. I believe our
choices were either steak or tuna. Their desserts were much better,
however. I understand that the chef there previously worked under Bill Munn
at the PPR.

Bill Munn since left MRBH to return to the PPR as executive chef.
Apparently someone there agrees with my tastes.

"Greg Mossman" <mossman@qnet.com> wrote in message
news:vk0144pcflnub5@corp.supernews.com...
>
> I'm surprised you didn't like the food at MRBH. I understand Bill Munn
went
> back to the PPR, but I'd be surprised if Bill Acker hired a bad
replacement.
> What was wrong with it? I ate every meal there but the two dinners we had
> up at Trader's Ridge and loved the food.
>
This was in January last year, so the memory is not fresh. However i
thought the food tedious, (that upside down cup of rice with everything),
not much choice and a lot of fried stuff. Traders Ridge OTOH had an
imaginative menu and the chef was obviously trying hard. Of course food
quality is an individual thing and you might well like what I would not!

"Greg Mossman" <mossman@qnet.com> wrote in message
news:vk0do1io214p47@corp.supernews.com...
> The only meals we skipped at MRBH were two nights dining at Traders Ridge.
> The menu was the same both nights, and, as for imaginative, most of the
menu
> selections "weren't available" the nights we were there. I believe our
> choices were either steak or tuna. Their desserts were much better,
> however. I understand that the chef there previously worked under Bill
Munn
> at the PPR.
>
> Bill Munn since left MRBH to return to the PPR as executive chef.
> Apparently someone there agrees with my tastes.

Did you do any actual diving?

"Anthony" <JAWPW1@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:J9-cnUc8Ns5ypN2iXTWJiw@comcast.com...

> > Bill Munn since left MRBH to return to the PPR as executive chef.
> > Apparently someone there agrees with my tastes.
>
> Did you do any actual diving?

No, I flew all the way there for the food.

Actually, I only got in six of the ten dives in our package due to a
middle-ear infection that warranted a trip to the exciting Yap State
Hospital. I missed out on Lionfish Wall, but nobody saw any lionfish there
that day. Next time I'll just add on a half-week there before a week in
Palau.

"Greg Mossman" <mossman@qnet.com> wrote in message
news:vk0kcrcl610se2@corp.supernews.com...
> Actually, I only got in six of the ten dives in our package due to a
> middle-ear infection that warranted a trip to the exciting Yap State
> Hospital.

That's a bitch.........I know how you feel as we lost a couple of days on
the trip due to infections, but not severe enough for local hospital I'm
glad to say!