Manila

Since I first applied for a job in Palau, one of the big things that I wanted to do if I moved to this side of the world was to travel to Australia. The Court is very generous with vacation time and I have been saving my vacation time and planning a three week trip to Australia. I booked tickets to Sydney back in March, but the specifics of where I would go and what I would do took longer to plan. Australia is a very large country with a lot of interesting places to see. There is no way I could every see everything in three weeks, so I opted to focus on one area. There was the outback, but that was not something I was interested in seeing for my first trip. There is the famous Great Barrier Reef and the Gold Coast, but I have world class reefs and beaches out my front door. I decided to focus on the populous southeast of Sydney and Melbourne. I'll spend five days in Sydney and then two days in the Blue Mountains. I'll next rent a car and drive down the coast of New South Wales and Victoria stopping to see the sights like Wilson's Promontory. That will take another five days before I finally arrive in Melbourne for a four day stay. I'll take the train back to Sydney, have another day there and then fly back.

Bookending the trip are night stopovers in Manila in the Philippines. Friday I worked all day and was actually very productive finishing up a few appeals before my vacation. After work, I finished packing and then drove to the airport. One of the great little things of Palau is that there is no fee to park at the airport, so I left my car at the airport and it will be perfectly safe and free when I return. The line to check in and through security was atrocious, but once I got to the front it went smoothly. The Continental Micronesia plane was nice and I had a good window seat. On international flights they still feed you which is an unexpected surprise, even if it is airplane food. The flight was only two and half hours and we arrived in Manila a little past nine. I collected my bags and safely made it through immigration and customs.

At the baggage claim, I recognized that one of my fellow travelers was the Ibedul, the high chief of Palau. While the western-style government of Palau runs the country, the customary system of chiefs still exists as part of the government. The Ibedul is the highest of the chiefs and still exhibits enormous influence. I was amused at seeing the Ibedul because that meant I had seen the two highest chiefs in Palau in the same week. Traditionally, the Ibedul was the high chief of the lower half of the Palau islands and the Reklai was the high chief of the northern half of the islands. The fought many wars to determine who was highest chief in all of Palau and eventually the Ibedul came out on top, but the Reklai is still second overall and the high chief of the northern portion. On Monday, I had appellate hearings at the Capitol. For lunch, the Chief Justice invited me to lunch at the one lunch restaurant in Melekeok village. It's a new place right on the water with a gorgeous view and pretty good food. When we walked in, the two attorneys who had just appeared before us at the hearing are eating at two of the tables. One of the attorneys was eating lunch with the Reklai. CJ has family ties to the current Reklai and the chatted a bit (in Palauan) before we ate. At the end of the meal we went to pay and the waitress tells us that the Reklai had paid CJ's bill, which included me. So, the Reklai paid for my lunch. To take a further tangent from this tangent, at the afternoon appellate hearing all the judges and attorneys were Palauan and they conducted the entire hearing in Palauan. CJ leaned over during the hearing and told me he would fill me in later. Otherwise I just sat there trying to pick out the few English words.

Leaving the Manila airport I got a taxi to my hotel. LB had gone through Manila back in March when she visited New Zealand and they had stayed at the Marriott in Makati City. They had stayed there because the Australian Navy people we know in Palau stay at the Marriott. It is a very nice hotel right in the middle of a large shopping area. After I got checked in, I settled into my room and went to sleep. Saturday morning I got and found a little coffee shop at the mall where I wrote the beginning of this entry. I walked around a bit as the shops opened and browsed the stores. I returned to my hotel and checked out. My plane to Sydney didn't leave until that night, so I had the afternoon to roam the area. At the mall there was a movie theater. I haven't seen a movie in a theater in nine months and with all the big summer movies out I really wanted to see a movie. I found a movie theater in the huge mall complex near my hotel and saw a matinee showing of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. For those of you wondering, yes it was in English with no subtitles. They speak excellent English in Manila, all the signs are in in English and I didn't have any trouble communicating with anyone. It was a real treat to see the movie, I hope to catch a few more while in Australia. After the movie, I wandered the mall complex which is a series of malls all strung together. They have every western store imaginable, including all the fast food chains. As it was Saturday afternoon the mall was packed with a ton of people. It was a little disconcerting at first to be surrounded by such a teeming mass of people. A few weeks ago I was on Kayangel where there is less than two hundred people total and all of a sudden I'm in a mall where there was more than two hundred people in the corridor I was in.

I took a taxi to the airport and after at least a half dozen security checks and immigration I finally made it to the gate for my Qantas red-eye flight to Sydney. I had never flown Qantas and I was impressed by them. The food was good and the service was efficient. It was a seven hour flight to Sydney and it went very smoothly. I arrived safely in Sydney ready to begin my Australian adventure.