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# Palau - some infos Country forums / Pacific Islands & Papua New Guinea / Palau
mvc68 08:51 UTC 02 Dec 2014 | Palau does have its own airline nowadays: Palau Pacific Air. They have started flying this November. Their website is still only partly completed (links below ). AFAIK they only fly to Hongkong yet and will expand their network in 2015. www.palaupacificairways.com http://worldairlinenews.com/2014/11/24/palau-pacific-airways-starts-operations-with-a-wet-leased-boeing-737-800/ Anyone using the information from the 2006 South Pacific LP which still had Palau covered: The road going around Babeldaob is paved and in very good condition. Some smaller roads branching off are paved as well, for example the one going north to the monoliths. No need to rent a 4WD as the old LP mentions. I rented a Mazda Demio fron IA Rentals for 28,5 USD without insurance. The cheapest I could find and it was running fine. Anyone heading to Peleliu: The government boat still runs twice per week in each direction. Currently they go from Koror to Peleiu Mondays (12 pm ) and Friday ( 2 pm). The boat goes back to Koror Thursday ( 10 am ) and Sunday ( 2 pm ). Frequent schedule changes and cancellations. It is only 5 USD per person and the trip is nice going past the Rock Islands. There are a few budget options to stay on Peleliu. Storyboard resort is the nicest off course but not exactly budget. Peleliu is great for cycling around and do a little exploring. Up on Babeldaob I stayed in the Palau Beach Bungalows in Melekeok. For 53 USD I got a clean bungalow there. The beach is not that great, but Palau is not a destination with top beaches anyway. Peleiu and Babeldaob are really quiet. For nightlife and Red Rooster on tap one has to stay in Koror, which is not very appealing from the tourist point of view. . Anyway, I recommend Drop off and Kraemers for a beer. I did not like Mingles much. The Palau parliament is in the process to allow for a casino and gambling on Palau, since they want to attracht more Chinese tourists. Will not do the place any good in my opinion. http://www.saipantribune.com/index.php/palau-lawmakers-vow-public-hearings-casino-bill/ |
hlai7233 09:52 UTC 02 Dec 2014 | Usually the biggest cost visiting a pacific island are flight tickets, how much are the flight generally costs? Is it a direct flight? | 1
wus 09:59 UTC 06 Dec 2014 | Hello mvc68, thanks for your tips! We'll be on Carp Island for 5 days shortly and since it is close to Peleliu we think we could do a day trip over to it. Carp Island Resort offers day trips over to Peleliu, but they are very expensive. We hope to find a cheaper alternative exploring Peleliu, do you perhaps know one? Also, Peleliu it is quite big so we will need some sort of transport once we're there. Can you tell us where we can rent bicycles? Thanks in advance! | 2
thegaryc 20:35 UTC 16 Dec 2014 | You would think if the airlines had any chance of being successful that they would have launched their website first in order to sell tickets. Thats basic business 101 | 3
plonger 10:17 UTC 14 Jan 2015 | Will they fly from Manila as there is only United at $600+ . I need to travel end of Feb 2015 | 4
wus 08:39 UTC 15 Jan 2015 | We stayed on Carp Island now as planned, but we did not make the daytrip to Peleliu as we found no cheaper way to get over there from Carp. Some other guest that we met made the expensive trip and liked it, although they found it a bit strenous if I understood them correctly. Apparently it was very hot:-) The first few days the weather was quite bad, with heavy rains and strong winds (stormy in one night), although it was of course always warm. We liked Carp island, we only missed some good snorkelling. The island is surrounded by a big but shallow lagoon with only sandy bottom, without any corals. At low tide a fairly large part of it falls dry, you can then walk out on the sand. Where it is deep enough that water covers it even at low tide, the bottom is grown over with sea grass. There are not many fish at all, some of the few we saw were mudskippers jumping around the base of the jetty at low tide. The island itself is covered by jungle and mangroves. There's a path through the jungle to the north shore where you pass through mangrove thicket, and very likely you will see some big mangrove crabs running away and hiding from you, and a big stone money. On one day we rented a kayak and paddled around the island, therefore we know that even on the other beaches there are no worthwhile snorkelling grounds. There's another jetty in the northwest where we landed to make our lunch break, but there was nobody, it looked abandoned and rather desolate. You can paddle around the island in about 2 hours if you keep paddling (and if it's high tide so that you can paddle the shortest way), but we needed about 4 hours because we landed several times to have a look at the beaches and into the water to see if it's worthwhile to go snorkelling. Even without snorkelling, that kayak trip was nice. The beaches away from the resort looked exactly as I imagine a deserted tropic island beach - white sand, coconut palms, sea birds flying around all the time, stranded woods (and unfortunately also a lot of plastic bottles) and lots of coconuts floated aground and sprouting roots and one big palm leaf - very nice:-) One day I also went diving, to German Channel and Blue Corner. This was simply phantastic, very likely my best dives ever! (And I have over 300 under my belt, around the world). Never before have I seen so many sharks, big schools of mackerels, barracudas and manta rays on one dive! But I should not forget to mention that never before I have seen so many divers and diver's boats in one spot as on German channel (and again, I have been to other highly frequented dive spots before!). There were around 10 boats, and the manta ray cleaner station down there was surrounded by VERY MANY divers, perhaps 50, or even more. Fortunately they all "behaved" well, none was so stupid to try to get closer, they all kept at least a minimum distance. The other 5 days we stayed in the Guest Lodge in Koror and looked around the 4 islands connected by road with a car that we rented from the Guest Lodge for 35 USD a day. We made a half hour flight with Smile Air (185 USD p.p. with open door, so that we can take photos without any glass surface inbetween our cameras and the outside) which was VERY NICE. The pilot, a Japanese guy, was fair enough to tell us that he would not recommend to fly now when we first showed up as the weather was not so good then, so we returned later on the same day when it had become much clearer. I hoped to do another 2 tank dive with Sam's tours, but they are generally unable to tell which spots they will visit on the day before, and since I didn't want to go diving just anywhere I skipped that. That was a bit disappointing. Instead we then booked a guided kayak tour into Nikko Bay, which turned out to be quite nice. You get to see some of the rock islands nearby Koror, have multiple opportunities to go snorkelling in coral reefs with tropical reef fish, see several caves, some WW II relics (bunkers and wrecks) and chat with others that you meet on the trip while the speedboat brings you to the location. So overall we really enjoyed Palau. Compared with most of our other preferred holiday destinations in south and southeast Asia, Palau is of course very expensive. So think about the whole cost before you book any cheap flight (as we did:-) If you have any specific question, feel free to ask here. | 5
zuzka255 11:22 UTC 02 Jun 2015 | Hello, We found really good flight ticket from Europe to Palau ( great price) . We would like to stay 10-15 day in Palau - snorkeling, scuba diving etc. How much do you think we should save for this trip what budget are you recommending. We are thinking about budget holidays but still want to enjoy beach and the island. You mention above that Palau ma be really expensive so before we buy our cheap flight we would like to know from your experience what may be the cost of our holiday. Many THANKS for you help. | 6
wus 07:56 UTC 03 Jun 2015 | It depends very much on when you go and which accommodation you choose. We were over christmas which is high season. We booked the Carp Island resort 8 months ahead but looked for a cheap place to stay on Koror only about 4 months before we flew, and we then had to learn that most of the cheap places were already booked out. If you fly off season it can be a lot cheaper, so go ahead and look where and when you want to stay, and check prices and availability. That will likely be the biggest portion of you local budget. Restaurant prices were similar to Munich (which is on the high side for Germany - I'm not sure about Solvakia, haven't been there in the past couple years), food in supermarkets was more expensive. Diving is also very expensive, check the websites of the local dive shops. | 7
Thorn Tree 01:00 UTC 04 Jun 2016 | This topic has been automatically locked due to inactivity. Email community@lonelyplanet.com if you would like to add to this topic and we'll unlock it for you. | 8