Yap....(Micronesia).      After a week in Dubai staying at the the Le Meridian Beach Resort and Spa we flew on to Manilla for three nights Staying at the Pan Pacific, From Manilla we flew to Guam in the Pacific. 

At Guam we had a couple of hours to wait before our next flight, we were flying down to Chuuk lagoon for 10 nights aboard SS Thorfinn. After Chuuk Lagoon we had to fly back to Guam and then down to Yap. 

We spent the Christmas week of 2003 on Yap, we stayed at Traders Ridge Hotel, a beautiful Colonial building, and had 7 great nights here. The hotel is in the main town of Colonia, the town consists of half a dozen shops and several hotels and a great floating restaurant, in fact it is a "Junk" that was sailed there, the food is good and cheap. 

While on Yap we dived with "Beyond the Reef"   http://www.diveyap.com/ situated in Colonia harbour. We had come here specificly to dive with the Manta's, we were on our third dive day before we saw them underwater, we had seen them breaching the surface from our boat and were beginning to get a little worried we may not get to see them underwater. 

The visibility in the channel was not very good which was to be expected i suppose but finally they arrived and gave us a good show, they loved the bubbles from our exhaled air so much we watched them hover very close and above one of our group for about 20 minutes. There was plenty of other dives on offer here but we had come for one thing, the Manta's. After Yap it was back to Guam for an onward flight to Manilla. 

While waiting for the flight out of Yap we were able to take advantage of Traders private lounge at the airport, this lounge is for the guests of Traders Ridge, there were refreshments free of charge and adaquate seating with reading material to hand.