My best diving ever in Palau

Palau is just a short 3 hour flight away from Taipei. And in that 3 hours, we went from 17degrees to 27degrees. Ah.. paradise in the sea.

We set off Friday night, arrived in Koror, Palau early morning, took a 1hour nap and then the diving started.

Altogether we did 9 dives : German Channel, Blue Corner (twice), Blue Hole, St Cardinal, Chandelier Cave, New Dropoff, Big Dropoff. Snorkeled Shark City where sharks swam right by you, huge remora fishes swam minus their host shark - one of which tried to stick to Blues when he was showing off his free diving skills :) And the highlight was swimming with jellyfishes who have evolved to lose their stinging abilities.

I was a little spooked initially - been stung bad before. But these ones are really harmless.

The huge schools of fish, the sharks that swam lazily by you without fear of humans, turtles that ignore the harassment of divers. I grew so blase that I found myself stroking a manta ray (yikes!). It swirled around and bared its teeth at me. Tsk tsk!

Pix of me coping a feel of the Napolean wrasse after it gobbled my hardboiled egg.

We stayed at the Palau Hotel which is Taiwanese owned (naturally since I was in the company of a Taiwanese dive group) - it's a little old and smelt a little musky, but otherwise was clean and comfortable enough. The location is very convenient, right smack center of town.

I really enjoyed every bit of it. Kudos to Blues for pulling it all together.

Coco's pix - http://picasaweb.google.com.tw/cocoislandphoto/98030610palau#

Jack's pix - http://cid-4febe688e58ae2dd.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/20090306%20%e5%b8%9b%e7%90%89%e6%bd%9b%e6%b0%b4%e8%a1%8c

Blue's pix - http://www.flickr.com/photos/aniceday0101/