The airport is in the south of the island. When you're descending into the airport, if you have a window seat on the left side of the plane, the first thing you notice is that there is a fairly high mountain, Mt. Tapotchou, in the middle of the island; Saipan is not a coral atoll. Since there is a limestone quarry near the top of it, it doesn't seem to be a volcano, either, although I did find volcanic rock at the northern tip of the island.

Most of the tourist development is on the west side of the island. This is no surprise, as most islands tend to develop on the west side for the sunsets. The beaches are also on the west side, as the eastern beaches get pounded by heavy surf.

There are a few smallish resorts in the south of the island, but the first main resort you'll find as you travel from south to north is the Pacific Island Club, or PIC. This isn't it, but rather the little pulloff of a park that is just to the south of it.

The Beach Road runs up the west coast of Saipan and forms the backbone of the tourism industry. The picture I used to make the "Saipan" banner at the top of the page I took from the Beach Road. Continuing up from the PIC you'll find a Subway sandwich shop and an outlet of the Filipino fast food chain Jollibee, on the right, and KFC on the left.

The aging Saipan Grand Hotel, where we stayed, is about a quarter of the way up the west side of the island. My 1994 version of the Lonely Planet Micronesia lists it as a top end hotel, but we were able to stay 6 nights in a smallish room with two semi-double beds for under $400.

Everything in our hotel and room - literature, signs, everything - was in Japanese, so it wasn't too hard to figure out who owned it, ran it, and stayed in it. Outside on the street, though, things seemed pretty Americanized, and the fact that the currency the country runs on is the American dollar has a lot to do with that feeling.

It would also be possible for Japanese, Koreans, and to a lesser extent Chinese to feel right at home, though, as many, many of the buildings on the Beach Road have signs in those languages. You will hear all those Asian languages spoken around you as you shop or eat your meals on Saipan.

The tanks are not that interesting themselves, but there are a lot of fish around them. This is good, because the bottom has only sand, sea grass, and sea cucumbers to look at otherwise off the shore in that area. We did see a beautiful school of long, slender, silver fish that surrounded us right off from our hotel, though. They seemed to be interested in surrounding us and did so several times.

This picture is a frame grab from my video camera; It was zoomed to the max, and, although I was trying to balance it against a tree, jumping all around. It's a poor picture, but the barrel and open hatch are clearly visible.

One thing you'll notice right away is that Saipan is chock-a-block with places to play poker. Can't say that I've seen that anywhere else. l mean, people the world over like to gamble and Japan has got its pachinko parlors on every other block, but I've never seen such a concentration of places dedicated to poker. Never went inside one and I never did see too many cars around them, but the sheer number tells you that there must be a lot of poker players on Saipan.

Looking north from Invasion Beach, you can see a lump or point sticking out, about halfway up the island. This is Garapan, the commercial center of the island. The high-rise building is the Hafa Adai Hotel, one of the most exclusive hotels on the island. I've included a zoom view of it as an inset. "Hafa Adai" means "hello" in the indigenous language, and you'll find the expression inescapable - it's even on the license plates.

At the main intersection of Garapan is the Galleria, with stores by every major designer. Gucci, Prada, Hermes, Bvlgari, Coach, they're all there. The Japanese are the world's biggest consumers of designer goods, and it's clear that that Mall was built with Japanese tourists in mind.

I don't know how many people show up on Saipan without reservations and look for a hotel, but I suspect not many. My wife booked our hotel on the Net and I wondered if there was much of anything around it, but you never really know until you get there. As it turns out, there really isn't much around the Saipan Grand. If you go to Saipan to lie around the pool, it's not an issue. If that's not your idea of a vacation though, it means that you would have to rent a car or take a bunch of tour packages, as there isn't much public transportation on the island. Sure you can take a cab, but the cab ride from the airport cost over $20. At that rate, a round trip to Garapan would cost $40.

We drove our Hyundai north past Garapan, and then along the coast past Tanapag, the scene of what has been described as the most intense and fanatical battle of WWII, and we continued just past the Hotel Nikko. The Hotel Nikko is perhaps the most exclusive on the island, to the point that they built an entire mall facing it to soak up the overflow of yen that oozes across the street. The Nikko is on Paupau Beach. My 1994 Lonely Planet says to look for a dirt road that gets you down near the beach, so I envisioned hiding the car among the reeds or something. But by now that dirt road is paved and there is a nice beachside park with picnic shelters and BBQ pits. We went there on a Thursday afternoon during Spring Break and had the place just about to ourselves. I know it says everywhere that the best snorkeling is out on Managaha Island, but I just didn't want to take the typical tourist fare and ride a banana boat there with a bunch of screeching Japanese twenty-something OLs. Besides, my Lonely Planet says that there is decent snorkeling to be had on Paupau.

Well the dirt road is not the only thing that has changed. I can say judging by the dead coral that about 10 years ago the snorkeling was probably OK. However, the rise in the temperature of the seas has taken its toll on the coral beds of the world, and I just thank God that I was able to see lovely coral (and photograph some of it) 10 years ago, because it's at least 70% dead now everywhere I go, including on Paupau Beach. The skinny is, if you want to have a nice picnic on the beach under the trees and have the place to yourself, Paupau is a good place for it. If you're contemplating renting a car just to go snorkeling there, take my advice: don't bother.

After Garapan, the entire island bends to the east, as you'll notice on the map above. When you drive to the northernmost point of the island you will find monuments by the Japanese and Koreans to war dead, including a bunker apparently carved into volcanic rock marked "Last Japanese Military Command Headquarters." After that you'll find the "Banzai Cliff" overlooking the water, pictured here. This is one of the places the Japanese families committed suicide as invasion by American forces was imminent.

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