{"country":{"title":"Palau","name":"Palau","slug":"palau","flag":"🇵🇼","subtitle":"","summary":"","prose":["Palau is made up of more than 500 islands. It is located a six-hour flight south of Japan, an eight-hour flight north of Australia, or a twelve-hour flight west of Hawaii—take your pick. Beyond Palau, you’ll only find more ocean and tiny islands scattered throughout the Pacific. Since it’s not a major tourist destination, we felt like we had the islands mostly to ourselves and really embraced the peace and quiet. The main activity in Palau is diving, and we managed to complete five dives in only two days—which was intense and exhausting.","The famous Blue Corner dive site was the main attraction for us, and after a bit of uncertainty, we were finally able to make it happen. Blue Corner isn’t open for diving every day due to the strong currents, so we kept our fingers crossed that the powers in charge were having a good day. We also explored several shipwreck dives, as there are many remnants from World War II left underwater from when the islands were controlled by Japan.","The color of the water was a mystical mix of green and blue. We stopped on one of the islands for lunch and visited the “Milky Way”—a lagoon-like area between clusters of islands filled with mineral-rich mud that you can swim down and scoop up from the bottom. There were several beautiful yachts anchored nearby, but the area still didn’t feel overly touristy."],"pop":"18k","lang":"Palauan, English","adv":1,"vis":0.03,"rar":95,"daysOnGround":5,"mapsUrl":"https://maps.app.goo.gl/oYj99KW5iDbCR8sS9","countedDate":"19 Jul 2025","countryNo":117,"firstArrival":{"date":"2025-07-15","airport":"ROR","from":"GUM","carrier":"UAL","num":"193","duration":"39m"},"hero":"1752892965576-DRAKAQGS306UI3EPBNBB/maxandhailey_travel_palau-blue-corner-diving-iro-maru-dive-koror+-+3.jpeg","art":"palau"},"ui":{"words":{},"copy":{"recap":"Five dives in two days — intense, exhausting, worth it. Blue Corner was the one we came for; it isn't open every day because of the currents, so we crossed our fingers, and the powers in charge were having a good day. We dove shipwrecks left from World War II, when Japan controlled these islands, snorkeled Jellyfish Lake, and scooped mineral-rich mud from the bottom of the Milky Way lagoon. It never felt touristy — we had the islands, and that mystical green-blue water, mostly to ourselves."},"facts":[{"idx":"Millions, stingless","h":"Swimming through jellyfish","p":"In Palau's Jellyfish Lake, golden jellies cut off from the ocean for millennia have all but lost their sting — snorkelers drift through pulsing clouds of them by the million.","chip":null},{"idx":"2009","h":"The world's first shark sanctuary","p":"Palau declared its entire ocean territory — roughly 600,000 square kilometers — a shark sanctuary in 2009, the first nation on Earth to do it.","chip":null},{"idx":"Stamped in your passport","h":"A pledge written by children","p":"Every visitor entering Palau signs the Palau Pledge, stamped straight into the passport — a promise to the nation's children, drafted by the children themselves, and the first of its kind anywhere.","chip":null},{"idx":"445 islets","h":"A lagoon of green mushrooms","p":"The Rock Islands are hundreds of mushroom-shaped limestone islets, undercut at the waterline and wrapped in jungle — Palau's one World Heritage site, and reason enough on its own to fly here.","chip":"Rock Islands: visited ✓ — the UNESCO chapter"},{"idx":"~300 residents","h":"The world's tiniest capital","p":"Palau's capital, Ngerulmud, has only a few hundred inhabitants — the least populous capital city of any sovereign country on Earth.","chip":null},{"idx":"Yap's bank vault","h":"Where stone money comes from","p":"The famous giant stone money of Yap was quarried here in Palau — Yapese crews sailed some 400 kilometers by canoe to carve the discs and raft them 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