McDonalds is undoubtedly the best thing about Guam !
Now you may think I'm being unreasonable and I'm sure Guam has better claims to fame, however, I live on an island that has no fast food chains and for the last 3 months (since I last got off the rock), I've been dreaming about a Big Mac.
We arrived from Chuuk at stupid O'clock (about 3:30am), and got a cab to our hotel in Tumon Bay. An earlier check-in had already been negotiated so we crashed until late morning. We unraveled how the tram system worked (efficient & $10 for a day pass), jumped aboard, fleetingly noticed we were the only non asians and headed down the hotel strip. The Tumon Bay area revolves around good old American eateries (BK, KFC, TGI's etc etc) and designer shops(Gucci, Chanel and the ilk). It also seems to be overrun with Japanese, Taiwanese and Hong Konganese tourists, along with a smattering of US military personnel. Jo at 5' 5.5 felt like Gulliver. All this I glimpsed as I focused upon my main goal – to find a McDonalds. “There's one” I screamed, and having terrified our mild mannered (we never felt intimidated or threatened here) fellow passengers we leapt off the tram, ran inside and along with a restaurant full of the aforementioned “anese” people, ate Big Mac and fries. It was 11am, my personal mission during a stay was complete, now what to do for the other 1.5 days ?
We caught the tram to the Micronesian Mall and 10 minutes later I had bought a wedding ring – what a crazy world in which we live. This was a major coup as we have been trying to sort one out for months, so to celebrate we went to the cinema to watch Piranha 3D, which contained lots of womens breasts (not always attached to the women) and prehistoric mutant piranhas, all reproduced in 3D – all the components for a great film.
I attempted to find some new shorts, finally concluding that I have a waist size that no longer exists. In the US mens waist sizes appear to start at 36” and work their way up to a about 900” (must be all those Big Macs Mmmmmmmmm), whilst here as they cater for a mainly asian consumer if you have a waist greater than 28” you are considered obese and really shouldn't be scarring your fellow humankind by venturing outside ! Giving up on that idea we amused ourselves in the ABC store – shelves of spam, novelty condoms, 'whitening' soap, superhero elastoplast, edible bugs and jerk marlin, then headed back towards the hotel. After a brisk walk along the beach whilst watching the giant white plastic swans full of 'anese' people we chilled before chomping on more American fare at TGI's.
The following morning started with our other US food ritual – breakfast at Denny's (All American slam). We then had to head to see one of Guams claims to fame – the worlds largest Kmart. Once undertaken we headed to the hotel and chilled until the early evening when we headed to the airport for the next leg of our journey – Palau.
I know there is far more to Guam and that we never left the glitzy Tumon Bay, but for us it was on one hand an inconvenient stop over as we waited for the next available flight to Palau (they only run 3 times a week), whilst at the same time it was an opportunity to chill for a couple of days in what is otherwise a fully loaded month long holiday.
