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Richard Jernigan -> RE: Kevin Burke (Jan. 13 2012 6:07:13)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
I traveled to Pohnpei (among other FAS capitals and Yap) several times and marvelled at the Pohnpeian and expat Filipina girls as well. Real island beauties!
Another great memory was of the place I stayed: Bob and Patti Arthur's Village Resort. It was built on high ground, and the island breezes precluded the need for air conditioning. What I remember most, though, were the Sunday brunches. Bob and Patti had as delicious Eggs Benedict as I have ever tasted.
Cheers,
Bill
We used to go diving on Pohnpei fairly often, but we stayed in town to be closer to the night life. However I have fond memories of steak au poivre, giant mangrove crabs and bananas Foster at the Village.
We were five residents of Roi-Namur, the northernmost island of Kwajalein Atoll. In days of yore the residents of Roi were all bachelor males, and earned the name Roi Rats. By the time I got there a few women lived on Roi, and by the time I left it had become downright civilized.
When I got to Roi it was fashionable to have a Pohnpeian girlfriend, and to visit her from time to time. Turned out if you changed girlfriends, knife fights between the girls were more likely than not. Rats were not attacked, just the new girl friend. Pohnpeian girl friends became less fashionable.
Our first trip to Pohnpei was in about 1992. The person responsible for picking the dive operation chose Phoenix Divers for reasons he never explained satisfactorily. Phoenix was run by expat Japanese, who had watched enough World War II movies to hold their cigarettes in that funny way I never saw in Japan. The clientele were Japanese. Five Roi Rats, two Japanese couples, and two young Japanese sisters made quite a boatload.
One of the workers on the boat was a 22-year old Japanese girl who had left home at age 18 to go to Madrid to study baile flamenco. She was a real beauty in her absolutely minimal bikini. Her Spanish was notably better than her English, so to annoy one of my buddies who had a serious thing for Asian girls, I monopolized the conversation in Spanish. She was moving to Palau, and had a little time off between jobs, so I invited her to dive at Kwajalein, and we put on a little show for the folks. As far as we could determine, she was the first Japanese person to scuba dive at Kwajalein Atoll.
On the boat at Pohnpei, the Japanese divers sat in a semicircle in front of their Japanese dive guide while he briefed them, and followed him in neat single file in the water. We Rats ignored our Pohnpeian guide's briefing while fooling with our camera gear and took off in all directions in the water. Our guide fortunately had that Pacific "live and let live" attitude.
The Japanese tourists were scandalized by our anarchic behavior. Anchored for lunch one day, Mike M., who had been on his university high diving team, repeatedly climbed up on the high superstructure of the boat, and put on a show of fancy back flips, etc. while we stood at the rail and held up 8, 9 or 10 fingers when he surfaced and made comments. The Japanese watched open mouthed.
The two Japanese sisters had been all over the Pacific, were excellent divers, and swam like dolphins. They had university degrees, but worked as "office ladies" We got on familiar enough terms for me to say, "But aren't girls in Japan supposed to be married at age 25?"
"Oh, yes," was the response. "But we're afraid that if we got married, our husbands would make us stop diving."
We Rats were having dinner at the Sunset Motel, overlooking the harbor and Sokehs Rock, and sipping a few beers. Actually, quite a few beers. A lot of beers. The two Japanese couples and the sisters showed up. The sisters must have been wearing perfume, because they were immediately attacked by swarms of gigantic black moths that had been hiding in the lath ceiling.
Otherwise fearless, the sisters were panicked by the moth attack and ran about the dining room screaming. The other Japanese just stood there. Being gentlemen, we Rats leapt to the rescue, resulting in overturned tables, a broken chair or two....well, you get the idea.
Little Mike's was in town, so he had to close up at midnight. We piled into the rental car and went to the out-of town after-midnight place. There was a cute little Filipina girl who kept walking past our table, glancing our way, while the Filipino guys gave us the stink eye.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I asked the Filipina girl if she wanted to dance. She and three of her girlfriends ended up sitting at our table, while we Rats received much worse stink eye from the Filipino guys.
All the girls swore they had no boyfriends, brothers, cousins, uncles or any such person among the guys glaring at us. All the same, I was a bit concerned as we made our way to the parking lot at closing time.
Sure enough, in the parking lot three guys walked up to us. I was looking for knives, but each one in turn took a big roundhouse swing at us. At the end of his swing, each one fell down and was too drunk to get up. Since we experienced no further opposition, the rental car was pretty crowded on the way back to the hotel.
RNJ
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