Car

I am now the proud owner of a silver 1999 Nissan March. It's a small Japanese hatchback made for use in Japan, so the steering column is on the right even though in Palau the traffic drives on the right. It is an automatic and has roughly 50,000 miles on it, which isn't bad for used cars here in Palau. It is great sized car for the narrow streets in Palau and should serve me well. I purchased the car from a small dealership that is owned by a woman named Jane. Meghan bought her car from her last year, so I knew it was a good place to buy the car. Things work a little differently here in Palau. When I took the car for a test drive, it was low on gas, so Jane's husband gave me $10 and told me stop by a gas station on the drive. The radio had a blown fuse, so they had it fixed after I took it out. The next morning, I bought the car for $3400 cash. After some comparison shopping, that was a good price. In a year when I leave I should be able to sell it for close to what I paid, so in the long run I will only spend a few hundred dollars on the car in addition to gas and upkeep. Gas is a little more than back in the states, around $3.33 now, but we go a lot less distance so it lasts longer.

The roads of Palau range from pot holed dirt roads to the beautiful new compact road on Babeldaob. The main road is decent in most stretches, but can be bumpy at times. On the side streets there are randomly scattered obstacles across most of the streets such as enormous speedbumps and drainage channels, both of which are practically invisible until you're right on top of them, and either of which are capable of doing serious damage to speeding automobiles. The national speed is only 25 mph, so no one is going fast enough for it be a huge concern. There main road through Koror has a rush hour in the morning and evenings. Granted, it is nothing like a big U.S. city rush hour, but it is still a bit odd to be in rush hour on Palau.