Top 9 Discoveries While in Guam

Traveling is a way of learning for me. When I visited Guam there are discoveries worth knowing. They are the following:

Top 1 – Magellan discovered Guam like Philippines

Ferdinand Magellan discovered Guam in March 6, 1521 and after 10 days it reached the Philippines in March 16, 1521. Both countries has been under Spanish Colony for more than 300 years.

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Top 2 – 99% of Foreign Workers in Guam are Filipinos

Because of its proximity in my country Philippines, the island became a second home of some of my countrymen. When I reached the airport, I saw signs and directions in my country’s language “Tagalog” which signifies one thing, there are lots of Filipinos lives in the island as residents and workers.

Top 3 – Asan Beach Park

This beach is where US soldiers landed to reclaim the island from Japanese in 1944. And not far from the shoreline, one of the Philippine National Heroes named Apolinario Mabini lived in the area during his exile period.

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Top 4 – The capital city (Hagåtña, formely Agana) believed as Oldest ‘European’ City in the Pacific.

It is considered one of the oldest cities and even as First European City in the Pacific.

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Top 5 – Guamanians are US Citizen but they don’t vote during US Presidential election.

Guamanians get American citizenship by birth under Title 8 of the U.S. Code. But they are not given the full range of opportunities that native-born Americans are given.

Top 6 – Tumon Bay is the most-visited area in the Island

As I mentioned in previous post, Tumon Bay area is the most visited part not only in Tamuning but in the whole island because of Tourism industry and because of its beaches that surrounds the bay.

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Top 7 – Guam has lots of Japanese Visitors

Guam is a US Territory but for me it was surprising that there are lots of Japanese visits the island. Hotels even has their own Japanese linguist for travel agents. Tourist companies hired Japanese speaking for their Japanese visitors. If you will do business in Guam related to Tourism Industry, make sure you have someone taking care of Japanese clients.

Top 8 – Chamorro – Guam’s Indigenous People 

One of cultural facts of Chamorro is the Latte. I learned the similarities of how Chamorro live their life before. Through its houses, I can say that Guam and Philippines are tropical countries and not far from each other, their houses built through palm trees. In my country we call it as Nipa Hut the difference was Chamorro used pillars called Latte, while we don’t have latte but I can see nipa huts stand in wooden pillars as their base are hollow and empty same with Chamorro houses.

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Top 9 – Guam is Largest island in Micronesia

The island nation is roughly the shape of a footprint. It is approximately 30 miles long, and its width varies between 4 and 12 miles at various points.

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Whatever… : Traveling and/or Reading?

I usually post photos and tell something about it in this site but for this specific theme I just really wanted it to be free, like telling stuff about anything. Since this will be the first post under this theme, I just wanted to say something about learning our world and our life through traveling or reading.

We usually heard that “traveling is better than books written telling about our world, history, politics, cultures and even its economics”. I maybe biased on my opinion as being favor on the saying. But I think traveling has some points it wanted to emphasize why the said epitaph is quite commonly heard not only from explorers, travelers and adventurers but also to common people. Because right now our world are getting smaller and smaller and a lot of people in our time has the capacity to move around and more options are available to travel.

On other hand reading is one of the most inexpensive way to know about our world and the life on it. Reading materials continue to give us great knowledge because it is a great medium to open us in our very complex society. Yes there are other means of learning such as recorded video and audio. But most of the detailed information are  recorded in books and other reading materials, though it takes more time compared with watching videos and listening to audio.

So what special with traveling? If reading gives us the idea, traveling gives us experience and memories that is more profound and powerful learning experience. Yes, maybe we can missed some detailed things but we learn other things which most of the time very unique to every individual.

Reading can give us an overview or introduction of a lot of things, experience through traveling gives us hands-on or actual culture experience and because we had done  it understanding is more attached to us.

We have different reasons or purposes every time we travel but even its different, the unique learnings help our rationalisation become better. Traveling is similar to experimenting, our world thought before that it was flat until someone traveled the world and proved it was round. Most of the time we break the theory through experience and reading sometimes can’t help us on that.

Reading materials are free form materials for facts, opinions and even imaginations. But travel experience is 100% facts because it actually happened. We can immediately forget what we had read but our experience stays longer and most of the time stays forever.

I actually both love reading and traveling, to let the time passed while on the go I tried my best that there is something to read on. For me they are both important. I read to learn some guidance specially to foreign land, without reading it feels like going somewhere in the dark, reading is half percentage of learning and traveling is the other half. They compliment with each other.

Note: I thought this post will be just few lines until I realised its been a little bit long. I have to finish it here.

Until then.