
So wanna hang out while i share a load of artifacts from #Guam? The unincorporated territory of the US is in the news what with global sabre rattling… I lived and worked on Guam in the early 1990s in various tourism endeavours and have much knowledge of the place as i stay sorta up to date with news of various Micronesian islands (#hideawayplans).
First artifact is me with co-workers at S.S. Neptune which is an undersea viewing boat which plied Apra harbor amongst US Naval vessels, Japanese sashimi-fetching boats, various pleasure crafts, the wreckage of John Wayne’s old yacht and a couple other tour operators doing scuba diving or similar tours to our 6or7/day tour.
Basically, i’d greet the guests (pax) coming from hotel by coach bus (all booked by tour operators) and check off names – keep in mind, most of the guests were Japanese and most of the rest Korean – get them onto a shuttle boat (twin outboard, 26 ft or so) and give em safety briefing with the life jacket, tell em about mangrove and ww2 incidents in the harbor, few jokes blah blah and then tie up alongside the glass hulled Nepture “sub” and move em over and down into the viewing pod, put on a cassette of oceany sounds and hang out with the people while the boat came up off reef, tied off to a buoy and divers went down and chummed all manner of interesting and colourful fishes, and brought various sealife (namako, hitote…) and posed for photos through the portholes. I took many photos (analog) and learned many strange vocabulary words. Sometimes when slow, i’d go dive for the last tour of the day which was a blast cause most all was under 20ft, a (relatively) prime location and freedom to bend normal dive rules with flips and tricks and goofballery.
Then get em back on the shuttle, cruise harbor a bit, flip off other boats, listen in a radio chatter and maybe do some flowerstick juggling and then always this trick with a rubber snake which scared the sh!t outta people everytime.
Related: Somewhere is a photo of me in the Pacific Daily News (Guam’s paper of record whose web traffic i suspect has increased exponentially of late) when the ship was dry docked and we were all marshalled into industrial, chemically, grunt work. Remember: Got my hair fulla toxic paint so went and shaved except for a Tintin-esque flair upfront. I was wearing a white jumpsuit and facemask.
I added marketing tasks to my duties. All tourism is/was basically package tourist coming for short stays and would book “optional tours” from their provider at each of the dozens of hotels – mostly along Tumon beach which is Guam’s main tourist area. I’d go chat up the desk tour agents (all Japanese), restock brochures, help at signup events, industry events etc.
Lost touch with all the folks i worked with there – we did put on an engaging tour and had some good party times together.
Update: reconnected with one co-worker from this time (not pictured above) and found a photo of my Grandpa and his wife visiting the tour (can see the “viewing pod” & found the newspaper article about cleaning the boat on July 4th.
Pingback: Guam Dossier, part 3 – Dive bars & Massage panoramas, 1996 — Dave Olson Creative Life Archive
Pingback: Media: Cleaning Neptune (holiday) / PDN, Guam, July 5, 1995 — Dave Olson Creative Life Archive
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