This is basically going to be a pics, vids, and audio clips post.
It had been a few days since arrival for me and there’d been a little social hanging out with others at the hostel. Not a lot, but two different nights some of us chatted and also there the board game Katahn or somehow spelled. Basically put down the board pieces randomly to make a country and then use card resources you draw to build roads and houses and do trades with others and the bank and stuff to get the most points for various things combined like longest road, most card points total, how many road/house/bighouse you made, yada. Fun and light to play game.
The hostel was amazing. Very clean, huge cupboard style lockers, weird wifi setup due to how Palau is arranged with its internet, deck under building upper floor so you could sit outside during storms, too, and a sweet and helpful and very laid back manager that lived there. You can’t find it on hostelworld.com, you need to use bookings.com. I can’t recall the name this second but you’ll easily know it when you pull it up on bookings.com. Pops right up clearly as a hostel… oh! Ms. Pinetree or similar. Anyhow, seems to be only hostel in Koror (it’s tiiiiiny town) and is very homey and laid back with lots of info on tours and stuff or just hang about.
New passport stamp!
Most people were there for the scuba diving, which is a no-go for me so far due to ears. Someday cheap place I’ll see if I can do it.
During one night of socializing with Birgit, a young German woman who stays at the hostel who sounds Australian with a German accent underneath here and there at random times (it was really weird at first because I was trying to figure out where she came from) I finally asked where she was from and such and it turned out a few of us were curious. She was German and had essentially learned English from her traveling. This interestingly mixed her English into Aussie sounding. I thought that was quite cute and neat.
Birgit’s the main person I remember from the hostel, though I had fun and nice talks with some others. We had same flight out along with Satish, an Indian decent American guy who was very polite and friendly. Also grabbed dinner together at one point, she was Katahan (sp? still too lazy to Google while I type this) player both times, we went on same tour I’m about to speak about below, and just passing each other with standard hostel “hello”s.
Dinner together, and then later with a large group of us on the night the three of us were heading to the airport, was at the one vegan deliciousness restaurant she had been to and could strongly vouch for and I had been curious about on seeing it while being driven into the hostel.
Tense talk during our dinner together, though, for a part. She started at one point asking if I’d considered stopping and detoxing from all the meds she’d seen me taking and trying local nature options, I tried to make a clear stress that I’m open to new and fresh-whatever the food/naturally made med was but that I was very against stopping my meds as they were and keeping going on them at that point.
This question and answer thing has come up a lot for us on a variety of meds and it always strikes me as so odd… It’s saying “why do’t you stop taking that medicine and take this other medicine”, because whatever it is that is more natural is helping because it is having the same medicinal effect. It’s basically just a new issue of medication, otherwise it wouldn’t help.
Again, I agree with many more nature-based approaches to health (to some annoyance in discussion with others on my end of having positive thoughts on them, so), the “change meds” paraphrasing one just always baffles me.
She also, when I spoke of some of my reasons for the meds (like my flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety issues, etc. as part of it all) she kept stressing that shouldn’t I address them and the reasons through therapy? I kept trying to make it clear that I take them to keep the issues better controlled and need them, but have been in therapy for more than a decade now and it has shown improvement… but the point of improvement we’ve reached is using various skills, continuing therapy work, and the medication level I’m taking right now.
Again one of those recurring odd ones… Very often people think if you’re on meds you should do therapy. I don’t mean the general consensus and statistically supported fact that doing the to together is better than only one or the other, especially only just meds. I mean, the either/or view… that because I take a pile of pills I must not be doing therapy work. Or that if you’re doing therapy you don’t need meds very much or (most often) at all. The fact that a combined approach has been repeatedly proven so far to be the best course of action for some mental health problems or mix of them and that a mega-number of us follow that doesn’t seem to come to mind or be able to put into mind with many people.
This isn’t a case of complaining or talking badly of her, mind you. She was a total sweetheart who I’m glad we’ve exchanged emails and will hopefully keep in touch as she travels, too. It’s those mindset/belief structures and questions/statements that come out of them that has been put into a lot of people and we run into a lot that I’m talking about.
A phenomenon in western culture that ended up in our dinner chatting that I’m talking about. Not her.
The majority of that dinner out was gabbing about various stuff about the island, travel, my being pansexual (though we discussed it as my being bisexual as mentions of my marriage and dating partners was in there that showed both sexes), finding love/relationships when moving so much in this lifestyle, where she was planning to go next and me, the deliciousness of the food (we were both vegans! which is another reason I recall her so vividly… a bunch of us were in the kitchen area of the hostel early in the visit and I heard the statement partly across the room where I couldn’t see through bodies that someone there was vegan. Holy shit two vegans in the same place at the same time. That does NOT happen often and on random small island in a hostel together was especially surprising)
Anyhoo, that tour… three of us went with the owner/manager Baba on a tour he drove us around in his car, waking him and essentially standing in front of him and all expressing “pllleeeaaasseee” and he agreed.
It was quite a neat tour and had fun, here is where it gets pictures, vid, and audio heavy. In order of visiting:
Next:
Leaving our shoes of out of tradition/respect:
Inside:
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Next, on our way to a lovely waterfall:
The waterfall we’re getting to:
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And next, with me wet and needing to sit on plastic bags in the back seat. Not the only one wet, but the only one wet in jean shorts that kinda retain water…
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We got to visit a beautiful bomb-destroyed lighthouse:
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And the end:
