What I wish I had known about Pohnpei (FSM) before going...

I had planned to spend 5 and a half days on Pohnpei but ended up staying only two days because my flight from Kosrae to Pohnpei had gotten delayed by 3 days previously. With hindsight I feel glad about having had additional time on Kosrae at Pohnpei’s expense. I feel that 5 and a half days on Pohnpei would have been too much time for me.

I chose to stay at Joy Hotel in Kolonia. Joy Hotel is very centrally located, but then Kolonia is a really small town so pretty much anywhere in Kolonia is central. It’s easily possible to walk around the entire town in about 60-90 minutes and see everything that’s there, which really isn’t all that much. Joy Hotel is just okay. The restaurant serves good food at reasonable prices. The onsite tour and dive shop doesn’t offer services anymore due to a lack of customers.

Joy is one of the cheaper options on Pohnpei, but still not good value for 80$ per night. The manager told me that he rarely gets tourists these days. Overwhelmingly his main customer base is people coming to Pohnpei for business. (In the 90ies there used to be two daily flights to and from Pohnpei. Japanese tourists used to come in relatively large numbers for scuba diving back then, but not anymore. Nowadays it’s only a couple of flights per week.) My room was large, clean, and reasonably comfortable. It was also quite old-fashioned and worn out. The small A/C unit had a really hard time keeping the room cool.

If I had had more than two days on Pohnpei I would have probably decided to move over to the Village Resort which is located a 10 minute taxi ride outside of Kolonia. A single room is at least 25$ more expensive there than at Joy Hotel (starting from 105$), but the place is far more pleasant. There are great views over the islands from the restaurant, and I got to see some of their nice rooms too. They serve good food and great cocktails. It’s worth mentioning that the Village is the ONLY official tour operator on the island these days. It’s been confirmed to me by several people that at this time there aren’t any others, but the situation is in constant flux so you never one if/when another operator will spring up again. It’s probably best to ask around after arrival.

I did one day trip with the Village Resort which was very professionally run. My preference would have been to take the round-the-island tour they offer which includes a visit to the ruins of Nan Madol, some waterfalls, viewpoints, and finally a bout of snorkeling. Village Resort runs this tour, as well as any others they offer, based on demand, and price the tours based on the numbers of participants on any given day. On the only day it would have been possible for me to do the round-the-island tour I was the only person interested in going, which would have resulted in me paying a premium for an individual tour (125$ instead of 75$ if there are at least 2 people going). Instead Village offered me to go on a day trip outside the reef to visit Ant Atoll (Ahnd Atoll) with 4 other of their guests who had already signed up for this tour. I decided to do just that and it turned out to be a very nice trip.

Going to Ant you travel outside Pohnpei’s reef for about 45 minutes. It can be a pretty rough ride if the sea is not calm as it turned out to be the case on our return trip. There was a rain storm over Pohnpei which whipped up the waves pretty high. Travelling at speed in the motorboat the rain felt like Poseidon punching me in the face the entire time. I put in my earphones, cranked up the music, and enjoyed the wild ride, but it wasn’t for the faint hearted or easily seasick. At Ant you have an entire coral atoll to yourself, with very nice beaches and good snorkeling and scuba diving. It’s certainly not unique to Pohnpei, but a nice enough day out. I do regret not having made it to Nan Madol in a way, but to really get something out of it you need to go there by boat, which in turn means taking a tour, and that was simply not available. I did visit a waterfall close to Kolonia called Liduduhniap on the day of my departure, which was just that…a nice but not extraordinary waterfall with a swimming hole at the bottom. It was 10$ to get there from Kolonia and back by taxi.

Travelling around the FSM Pohnpei is a good place to buy supplies as Kolonia has a good choice of reasonably well-stocked supermarkets. However, none of them had sunscreen in stock which I had run out of. (Fortunately the more expensive resorts, like the Village, usually sell them).

All in all I enjoyed my two days on Pohnpei, but definitely less so than my time on Kosrae previously. (see separate post coming up soon).

amazingly expensive. Thanks for the heads up.
Even though Southeast Asia is getting more expensive? Its still a quarter the cost of FSM (used to be a tenth).

Glad I can visit the place vicariously through your journals.