Northern Mariana Isl. Travel Blogs

Warm Tropics and Hot Topics
Jul 5, 2007 (6 photos)

... the official language of Saipan is English, its currency the US Dollar and, while domestically independent as part of the Northern Mariana Islands, it devolves foreign and defence policy to Washington. Yet everywhere you care to look, and even many places ...

Flying to the Hard Rock Café
May 23, 2008 (12 photos)

... cafe.aspx?LocationID=77&MIBEnumID=3   Saipan is the largest island of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a chain of 15 tropical islands belonging to the Marianas archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean with a ...

Sapian
Mar 25, 1975

In the morning we went and had breakfast. When we finished eating Ardie and I got out suits on and went swimming in the pool. We met a girl whose name is Amy. She was about five years old. Mom and Dad had gone out and when they came back Mom taught me how ...

Guam to Saipan
Mar 24, 1975

It was a comfortable night. I woke up and Ardie wasn't feeling at all good so we packed up and took Ardie to a medical center and Dad and I went looking for some books. We drove around and everyone wasn't open. When we got back Ardie was still waiting but ...

Saipan
Mar 26, 1975

In the morning, when we were about to leave, the wife of the family and the three kids came over and talked to us. When they left, we started out. We stopped for breakfast at the Hotel Hafa Adia. After breakfast we looked into the shop there and Ardie and ...

Scuba Diving
Mar 1, 2009 (7 photos)

Suka and I got off to a typically slow weekend start. We decided to go scuba diving. We had more of the pork spare ribs for breakfast. Once we were out of the apartment, we went to the post office on the regular check for communication from Immigration. ...

Sunday's Recreation
Oct 13, 2008 (7 photos)

This morning we went to Coffee Care for breakfast and had a wonderful Wahoo Hash on our way to go hiking. We decided to go explore the area around where I came out of the boonies previously. We drove out to the end of Wireless Ridge and walked out to ...

Saipan Again!
Sep 29, 2008

We got to Saipan a little early. Immigration, luggage claim, and customs were a breeze. Suka was waiting for me. We're back in the usual apartment from previous trips. The power in Saipan is reliable these days. CUC rented some new generators from a ...

Full and Sleepy
Mar 6, 2009 (3 photos)

Uneventful days since the caving. I got my upgrade notification for the Minneapolis-Boston leg of my return on Monday. I also got an e-mail from Northwest with six system-wide one-way upgrade vouchers. Suka will definitely come to the States in first ...

Dinner Party Day
Oct 6, 2008

So today was all about relaxing and preparing for the dinner party at Alan's and Stephanie's. I started off making Suka "queen for the morning" (her words) by making breakfast and cleaning up while she sat around reading. I cooked pancakes, sausage and ...

Back in My Wife's Arms!
Feb 21, 2009

We landed on time. Apparently the turbulence I experienced approaching Japan, on the Narita-Nagoya flight, and leaving Japan was pretty widespread. The immigration official told me that several people from the Philippines on the flight in front of me had ...

Fighting Jet Lag with Hashing
Feb 21, 2009

What better to fight jet lag than outdoor exercise, right? That was my thinking when I arranged for Wolf to pick me up for the Hash. I saw a bunch of old friends at the Bank of Guam. We started the run up on Tapochau in Chuck Jordan's coffee farm. It ...

Birthday Evening
Mar 7, 2009

A couple things I forgot, first. On Wednesday, Gwansanim, the church leader of Judy's church that we went to lunch with the Sunday I arrived, invited us to lunch at Coco, a steak place in Garapan with pretty good lunch specials. That was nice. Also, ...

Making Korean Dumplings
Oct 4, 2008 (3 photos)

Thursday we went to the street market. It was very quiet, at least relative to how I've seen it in the past. The economy here is having troubles. Java Joe's is actually hurting from the fact that there is reliable power again. They would get a continual ...

Dinner and a Movie
Mar 2, 2009

Once we left Rose's, we stopped by Suka's friend Lin's house. Lin is Suka's replacement at Global. They have known each other for a long time. He has been part of her computer support assistance, as well. Lin and his wife just recently had a baby. The ...

Day Off for Discovery
Oct 9, 2008 (3 photos)

So the problems at The MathWorks were pretty serious. A circuit breaker blew out in the data center. No one realized until then that it was a single point of failure. They shut down everything in the data center overnight to do emergency electrical work. ...

Weekend Entertainment
Oct 12, 2008

A couple of the guys I see in the coffee shop pretty regularly were very excited by the news that a Russian supermodel pageant was on island. Actually, they were excited by the prospect of meeting Russian supermodels. They were admiring the promotional ...

Getting Into the Routine
Feb 27, 2009

I haven't written much because there hasn't been much noteworthy. It has been nice that Suka has mornings off. Sometimes we hike. Sometimes we just watch DVDs and have a leisurely breakfast. She needs to be at work by 1:00. Sometimes she gets there by 12: ...

Flying to Narita
Mar 9, 2009

Things went smoothly. I even got to the airport a little early, just barely beating three buses of tourists. I got my upgrade to Japan. I was notified a few days ago about the upgrade from Minneapolis to Boston. The long flight will be in the hands of the ...

Days in the Life
Oct 8, 2008

Monday we got off to a slow start. At 11:30 we went to the wedding luncheon at the Aqua Resort, where we had our reception, for Merycris, a staff member at Java Joe's, and Gerone. In the evening we went for a nice walk most of the way up to Garapan and ...

A Break in the Weekday Routine
Feb 28, 2009

Friday morning we went to the CNMI Treasury to pick up Suka's 2007 tax refund. Yes, that's 2007. Because of a lack of money, the CNMI wasn't giving tax refunds for a couple of years. Only an influx of money under dispute from the U.S. federal government ...

Where We're At
Feb 21, 2009

So here's a little catch up on the immigration status for those who don't know. The application in December included the Adjustment of Status that will convert someone on US soil to a different status, in our case a conditional spouse-based Green Card, ...

Sunday Brunch
Feb 22, 2009

We lounged around in the morning watching Sex and the City. Later in the morning, Suka's friend Judy called to invite us to lunch with her church group. Before lunch we went to a well-reputed coffee shop (as opposed to a coffee shop of ill repute?). I ...

The Hash, Of Course!
Mar 1, 2009

Suka was going to try to arrange to work in the morning so she could Hash in the afternoon. Unfortunately, once she realized it was the end of the month, she had to be there to do the end of month change over of inventory, pricing, etc. I suggested, and ...

Caving
Mar 4, 2009 (9 photos)

Monday was pretty uneventful. The most notable thing was that I ran into the guy I talked about caving with last week and we agreed to do it Tuesday. Oh, and in my evening work session I had a "Mocha Blast" that kept me awake until 3:30 a.m. As a ...

New Food
Oct 1, 2008

I'm getting adjusted to the time. Yesterday I felt pretty good. Today I feel totally on. Last night we went to see "Eagle Eye" after a dinner of Costco hot dogs. Costco also sells hard boiled eggs, so Suka had one of those, too. The movie was very ...

Heading Out
Oct 14, 2008

Well, I wasn't really ready to leave, but the time had come. Monday night we had an option of going to a birthday party, but packing and our last evening together this trip took precedence. Suka made a sam-style pork belly. Sam is a style of eating BBQ ...

Saipan
Mar 14, 2005

Saipan...

Happy Birthday to Suka!
Oct 9, 2008

Today is Suka's Western birthday. The way we count it, this is the day she was born. She turns 28 today, also by the way we count it. I gave her a digital camera. She tried to take a picture of a sunset and fried the sensor in her old one. She had ...

Hashing
Oct 5, 2008

So I dropped the car off at Global at 3. Kramden (Wolf) picked me up there so that Suka could have the car. The trail was pretty lame in and of itself. It was mostly roads. It only had one boonie section. It was a little surprising where it ended up ...