Rock Island/ Jellyfish Lake tour group and other questions

Hi there!
I just contacted Sam's Tours and they say that they need 4 people for the tour to happen. Sadly, there's only one of me and right now they say they have no other bookings for the dates I'm interested in.

I could do the tour either on January 2, or 3 or 4.

So if there's anyone on here who'd like to do it with me that would be great!

Also, out of those two motels: DW and New Koror Hotel, which one is more centrally located? Meaning, closer to shopping, eating, etc...

I'm planning to stay in Koror until January 4th, and then rent a car and drive up to Palau Beach Bungalows and tour the island myself.

And speaking of car rentals, I've emailed every company I found on the Visit Palau website, but only one got back to me with rates and when I tried to book a car, I got no response from them.

Any ideas as to where else I could try? I'm going to start calling next, but if there are any places that any of you used before and can recommend, I'd rather try those first.

Thanks!
Anna

Hi Anna,

As far as your trip out to Jellyfish lake etc - have you looked into any other shops? Neco or Fin and Fin's may have trips going out those days. All will be about the same price. Impact tours is another option if you don't mind going out with all the Japanese tourists. They are generally quite a bit cheaper than the other places.

As far as hotels go - I lived in Palau for a couple of years and in my opinion Malakal is where its at - not downtown Koror. The dive shops are all down in that area as well as a couple great restaurants and bars (Drop Off - Neco's bar, Krammer's, and Bottom Time - Sam's bar). There are a couple cheap hotel options in that area - there was a recent post that talked about one cheapie in this area (I cant remember the actual name at this point). If you were adamant about New Koror Hotel or DW - I would definitely go DW. It's about mid way between Malakal and downtown.
The 'shopping' in downtown is nothing to write home about - and even from Malakal its only a 20-30 minute walk into town to the main shopping center. If you want a storyboard hit the Jail for the best options and prices (i'm serious).

Palau is very safe and you do not need to worry about walking around at night despite what the locals will tell you. I found they have a very skewed perception of safety there.

Have a great time - and grab some fish tacos and Red Rooster from Krammer's for me!

Oh.. and on the car issue... ask the locals at Drop Off, Sam's or Kramer's where to rent a car - there are a couple local places that have a few cars to rent out.

Thanks!

I'll be taking the intro to diving course at Sam's and I thought it would be easier to book everything with one place than spread myself around. Especially since Sam's has been so good to me, answering all my stupid diving questions and such. They also recommended DW :-)

I have the car sorted. US$30.00 a day. I hope that's an acceptable price.

I don't mind a Japanese group at all. In fact, I live in JP (I'm not Japanese, though). It might be fun, actually. So I'll try those other tour outfits and see what they say.

By shopping I meant souvenirs and postcards - I'm a huge postcard collector. I don't care much for bars, so that's a non-issue for me.

Once again, thank you so much for your reply!

Anna

Edited by: twocats

This is the one thing I didn’t like about Sam’s – they treat single travelers like second class citizens. Anyways, I was in Palau in early November. I didn’t pre-book anything, and it was no problem to do a different day tour with Sam’s each of my 4 days there. Often, they couldn’t tell me what trips were going until the afternoon before. So if you have some flexibility, it shouldn’t be a problem to find a trip to Jellyfish & Rock Islands the day before you want to go (with Sam’s or any of the other outfits as mentioned above). Also, January is high season so it should be even easier. Try the kayaking if you can. The Nikko Bay trip with Disneyland lake was as good as the Rock Islands.

Thanks JoJo!
I booked the trip with the Japanese outfit, but they warned me it will be a rather big group. I prefer a smaller group, so I'll try Sam's once again. I can't wait until the day before, because then I'll have to pay some sort of a cancellation fee to the other company.

Out of curiosity, how big were your tour groups at Sam's?

When we were there in February of 09 we did two tours with Sam's - the first was the Planet Blue Kayak with 6 people - the second one - it was just my husband and I for the Rock Islands snorkeling tour. We were surprised that they would do the tour with only 2 people but I got the feeling business was not too great. We booked both while we were there.

I do not know why people prefer those three companies. IMPAC Tours or any of the Korean or Taiwanese companies is the best guarantee that any tour will happen - they have so many tourists. Moreover, IMPAC will attach someone for you speaking very good English. This is the Japanese mentality. If you book couple of tours you get discounts and some gifts like cookies and etc. I do not know about the Korean or Taiwanese companies. Plus the period, you would like to visit Palau coincides with the New Year's holiday season for Japanese and there will be many of them there. The negative side is that hotels would have higher rate because of that.

We stayed at DW and it was nice if you use it only for sleeping. The restaurants were about 10 min. away from the hotel.

Edited by: mumoko

Mumoko, I think I've explained above why I wanted to do the tour with Sam's. I'd rather have a smaller group than be in a herd of 20 or so people. Also, I've booked my diving lessons at Sam's. Is it that hard to understand?
Also, maybe you've missed it above, but I did say I went ahead and booked the tour with Impac.

Group size really varies at Sam's - depends if there's a big group (Navy was in town the first couple days so they were really busy). On my trips, we had 3 & 6 people the two times I went to Rock Islands, 3 for the land tour, and about 10 for the kayaking.