Detailed Trip Report Federate States of Micronesia (Chuuk) August 2018

As the lazy guys at LP stopped covering the Federate States of Micronesia in their guidebooks a decade ago I think it might be worthwhile to share a detailed report of my recent trip to Chuuk. I will cover Pohnpei in a different post.
Guidebooks are hard to come by. FSM was covered in the 2006 LP South Pacific & Micronesia so if you can get hold of that book it still gives you a worthwhile overview. On Amazon I found another book called “Micronesia and Palau” which was published in 2010. That book gives a better introduction to the history and culture of the islands but the practical information for planning and sightseeing proved disappointing. It contains even less info on that than the much shorter LP. There is another guide called “Micronesia’s Eastern Caroline Islands” published in 2012, I did not try that one.

How to get there? To get to Chuuk you have currently two options. United Airlines flies the expensive Island Hopper from Hawaii to Guam four times weekly. The other option is Air Nuigini which connects Chuuk to Port Moresday three times a week, Pohnpei once a week (Thursday) and Tokyo twice a week (Wednesday and Saturday). The Tokyo flights have just started and the tourism office is hoping for more tourists from Japan that way.
Where to stay? Chuuk has two hotels geared for divers, the Blue Lagoon Resort and the Truk Stop Hotel. The guy who set up the Blue Lagoon basically brought wreck diving to Chuuk, it is styled as a resort a few kilometres south of everything, away from the road in a well-tended garden. The buildings look nice, everything looks fairly nice but also somehow sterile. If you want to go to Chuuk and be as far away as possible from Chuuk at the same time then this is the place for you to go. Single rooms start at 131.25$ and double rooms at 147$. If you end up at the Blue Lagoon and want to see more of real Chuukese life, head to the small supermarket close to the dive shop. It is meant for the employees not the tourists, there is also an unmarked staff kitchen but I am not sure if you are supposed to eat there. Truk Stop Hotel is the other hotel with a dive shop. It is right at the end of town, with a restaurant, a bar by the ocean and a pier to get into the water. From the feeling I liked it a lot more than the Blue Lagoon. Standard rooms start at 125$ for singles and 140$ for doubles (170$ for triples). There are three more hotels that all suffer from the same problem, they do not induce anything like a holiday atmosphere as they have no beach access, not even real ocean views and could potentially be in every other place on earth as well. Their advantage is though that they are cheaper. The L5 is right in front of the airport and rooms start at 89.25$, the High Tide Hotel (where I stayed) is a one minute drive or a three minute walk from the airport and rooms start at 64.50$ (The room was good, wi-fi was okay, the service was good, the people nice but badly informed on all things touristy). The Kurassa Hotel is two kilometres east of the airport and thereby a bit away from everything. Rooms start at 65$ for singles and 75$ for doubles. The Lei-Side Store (right next to the airport) rents out some apartments, 142.50$ for a 1-bedroom unit, 194.50$ for a 2-bedroom unit. Make your choice. ;-)
Security situation: If you are in the region before getting to Chuuk you will hear about its reputation. Everybody tells you to be careful, people will call it “rough”, people are supposed to be hostile to outsider and so on. When you get there you will soon realize that people are super-friendly. Whereas Pohnpeians are fairly reserved and do generally not approach you with any questions, people on Chuuk will smile at you, say hello to you and come up to get to know you. Hostility to outsiders, I could not find it. Instead of being “rough”, Chuuk seemed seriously friendly to me. If you talk a bit with people though, you realize that the rough side does exist. You are told not to walk around town at night (I would have done that without any hesitation on Pohnpei for example), the police drives around with pick-ups with five-six policemen on them in the evening (shining their flashlights into the corners) and a policeman I spoke with told me about many fights that were happening in town, people would use spearguns on each other and he would go to the hospital fairly often to talk with injured people. Whereas I was told Pohnpei had two murders since independence, according to the policeman Chuuk had plenty of them. He blamed people from the outlying islands for the trouble. After sunset the roads a noticeable less frequented but they are not deserted and I think as long as you stick to the advice not to venture out at night you should be fine.

Where to eat? The advice not to venture out after dark makes eating dinner at your hotel a tempting idea. As with room prices the Blue Lagoon and Truk Stop are the most expensive, and the High Tide, L5 are a bit less expensive (dinner from 10$). Between the High Tide and the L5 is the Lei-Side Restaurant which has similar offerings. Staying at the High Tide I checked out all the restaurants in the vincinity (High Tide, Lei-Side, L5) and liked the High Tide Restaurant most. L5 styles itself as a bit more fancy with its Honolulu-linked Café Laufer. During the day you can get pre-cooked food at small stalls in town or some supermarkets. The Shigeto Store has a small fast food area. I would have liked to check out the J Square restaurant (close to the supreme court) but never was around there during their opening times. Bananas are cheap to get.

Other stuff to know:
Departure tax is 30$, you will not get your boarding pass without paying.
SIM cards are available at the telecom building. They cost 10$, data and phone packages are more expensive than elsewhere (I ended up not buying one so I do not remember the details).
There are two ATMs on Weno Island, One at the Bank of FSM (did not work with my VISA card) and another one (Bank of Guam) inside the telecom building a bit north of the airport. The Bank of Guam has a building in town but there is no ATM there. If you can, better bring some cash in case there is trouble with the ATMs.
The post office is next to the High Tide Hotel and international postcards are only 1.15$ in Chuuk instead of 1.20$ in Pohnpei. Seems they have not gotten word of the last price rise yet. I think they also have a few postcards but I am not sure about that anymore.
...to be continued...

What to see and do?
The Chuuk Visitors Bureau is on the second floor of the airport at the moment. Open from 8:00-17:00. They have a small brochure, a map of Weno Island and a really nice map of the wreck sites around Chuuk. They are really friendly but cannot hide the fact (and do not try) that tourism infrastructure is fairly limited.
Well, the main thing to do in Chuuk is wreck diving. For the uninitiated, Chuuk (called Truk back then) was a major harbour of the Japanese forces in WWII. One day American forces led a massive attack on Japanese installations and ships and for that reason Chuuk Lagoon is littered with about 50 Japanese wrecks in depths that divers can reach. Some still with skeletons, tanks on board, aircraft inside and so on. Given that history, I understand that Chuuk is a mecca for wreck divers. Hurry up, the ships have been lying there for 70 years now and they are not getting any better. There was one partial collapse already this year. As I am not diving you need to find information about that somewhere else, contact the Blue Lagoon or Truk Stop dive shops. You can get a glimpse of the wrecks with snorkelling. The Truk Stop charges 35$ to take you out with the divers to snorkel but only some of the wrecks are shallow enough for that to make sense and the divers decide which wreck to go. The Blue Lagoon offers a most-day trip (9:00-15:00) for 84$ that takes you to one or two wrecks, one downed aircraft and a beautiful small lagoon island all for snorkelling. I had only two full days that I wanted to spend otherwise, with a third day I would have done that trip. No lunch is supplied, you have to bring your own.
Where else on Chuuk can I snorkel? If you take a boat I suppose options are plentiful, on land I found good snorkelling right in front of the dock at the Blue Lagoon and ok snorkelling at the pier of the Truk Stop. A bit south of the Truk Stop is a semi-submerged wreck (not from WWII) that gives you a bit of the feeling of wreck snorkelling, better go at high tide (yes, all you divers, you are right, I miss out on something). There is another wreck that might be suitable for do-it-yourself wreck snorkelling but I did not try. You can see that wreck from the Japanese War Memorial close to the A&A Family Market. The lady on whose land the memorial sits is very friendly and normally charges 1$ to maintain the memorial. It is an important place for some Japanese visitors who want to pay their respects to relatives lost in Chuuk.
The second most impressive thing about Chuuk is just being there. I like it and the main area of Nepukos is interesting and full of energy. It seems a bit like a big marketplace with plenty of boats coming and going to the outer islands. People spent the day on Weno and in the afternoon/evening they head back to where they live. I was watching all the boats longing for my own outer island adventure.
On blogs and other reports I read that Chuuk feels like a big slum and that even the main road would be in terrible condition. Things have taken a turn for the better it seems. The road is now in very good condition from the airport down beyond the Truk Stop hotel and all the way to the Blue Lagoon it isn’t really bad. From the airport eastwards it has plenty of potholes but is doable in a 2WD.

The Blue Lagoon is home to the Kimiuo Aisek Memorial Museum. You’ll find artefacts from WWII, various shipwrecks, a few ethnographic exhibitions and plenty of praise for the founder of the Blue Lagoon. The entrance fee of 10$ is fairly steep…only worth it if you really like museums…
Nefo Cave: Nefo Cave offers good view over the western side of the island and a bonus is the big Japanese gun hiding at the end of the cave. To get there follow the road uphill behind the hospital and walk as far as you can until the road ends at some big concrete water tank. There, you have to take a small path to the right and just hope that it is not completely overgrown. It is not far from the road. You enter the cave and basically cross the mountain inside. A torch is nice but your phone will do, it is not far.
Another place to hike to would be Tonachau mountain. To get there take the service road to the radio tower that starts towards the eastern end of the runway. The road takes a slight right turn there and you have to take a sharp right turn in front of the two-storey building. Follow that road. I ran out of time so I did not go up there.
Around Weno Island: I spend a full day basically walking around Weno Island. Tunuk has a nice catholic church, a bit further east the map of the Visitors bureau has Wichon Falls marked but it is a bit away from the main road and I was not in full explorer mode so I did not enquire how to get there. There is no signage from the road. The main points of interest in the east are Xavier High School which uses an old Japanese Communication Centre with massive concrete walls and heavy metal window covers as its main building. The other is the Japanese lighthouse. No one minds you strolling around Xavier High School but for the Japanese lighthouse you have to pay 5$ as an access fee (prices are high on Chuuk). Go to the far east of Sapuk village and take the road that goes inland there. Someone will approach you, collect the money and probably take you up there. Nice lighthouse, nice views. Shortly before the lighthouse there are three Japanese guns. I only took a cursory glance at the first one as I had already seen plenty, they did not seem special in any way and I had the feeling that they are on someone elses land and I did not want to pay another access fee. Be careful when you ask about the lighthouse. I asked some guy for the way and he offered to show it to me but he is not the landowner so I think his real intention was to get another five dollar out of me. Make sure you pay at the right place. There is a footpath from the lighthouse to St. Xavier, ask the guy who shows you the lighthouse and for a small tip he might bring you to St. Xavier. There is no shop in Sapuk, in fact I think the last shop selling drinks is around Tunuk. In case you are walking take that into consideration. 2$ bought me two coconuts and that saved me. From Sapuk to Wichap the road becomes ever smaller and for a few kilometres it is only a footpath. If you like less travelled areas go there.

Getting around Weno Island: Some hotels offer package deals room + car where the car costs anywhere from 40-70$. Well, it is always nice to have some transportation but if money is a consideration you do not need it for most things. Around town there are plenty of taxis and some even go to the Blue Laggon. The standard fare is 1$. Walking to Sapuk I saw a few taxis even going that far but this is an area where you definitely cannot rely on them.
Islands in Chuuk Lagoon: Weno has plenty of islands only a short distance away and there are a lot of boats going out there in the afternoon. In Japanese times Tonoas was the main island and has the most remains from that period. Unfortunately, none of the boats are public boats all seem to be run by extended families. There is no accommodation on any of the islands. The Visitors bureau is trying to set some tourism services up but so far with limited success. In fact they could not give me any option how I could spend some time one any of the islands other than taking a day tour. Your best bet is making friends with someone who lives there. For a day trip it might be worthwhile to ask around at the boats in the harbour if someone is happy to take you out for some cash.
Outer Islands: surely interesting but the same as with the islands in Chuuk Laggon, no infrastructure and even harder to get there.
I had only two-and-a-bit days on Chuuk and would have liked to spend more time there. Maybe next time. ;-)

Thank you for taking the time to write all this info up for us future travelers.

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