Just when I was able to get some sleep the island of Guam got hit by a magnitude 6.7 earthquake at 7:51am this morning! According to the news reports the center of the earthquake was located 125 miles west-southwest of Hagatna and at a depth of 54.4 miles.

The earthquake was fairly strong as I’m pretty hard to wake up once I’m in a deep sleep. The earthquake lasted between 5-10 seconds from what I can remember and it shook everything in my room pretty hard. I was debating whether to run out into the street when it didn’t stop after a few seconds, but being the sleepy head that I am decided to lay in bed and just hope it stopped without getting much stronger.

The buildings on Guam are all made of reinforced concrete and are built to withstand a good beating due to the fact Guam is located in an area on the globe that receives many typhoons. Because of this, and the fact there aren’t many high-rise buildings on the island, there was no reported damage to any buildings. I’m pretty sure if an earthquake of this magnitude hit a major city in some other part of the world there would have been some damage created from the earthquake.

Here’s some links to news reports of the earthquake I found online:

http://www.kcra.com/weather/16219476/detail.html
http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v3/news.php?id=331956
http://www.guampdn.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080510/NEWS01/80510005/1002/NEWS01

It’s exactly 3:58am here in Guam and I’ve been tossing and turning in bed trying to catch some zZzzZz’s with no success. It’s probably because I drank that Hazelnut Iced Coffee from McDonalds at around 11:00pm tonight, which I knew I shouldn’t have done.  Ever since I first tried it three days ago I’ve been craving for it and couldn’t resist not getting one tonight! So here I am contributing another post to the “Miscellaneous Ramblings” category of the blog, brought to you by McDonald’s Premium Iced Coffee.

There has been some things I’ve been wanting to incorporate into the blog, one of them being videos. I already have the MiniDV digital camcorder, now all I have to do is find a free and decent video editing software online; so if anyone has any suggestions feel free to email me or post a comment here otherwise I’m going to be looking for one on the net. I’m going to be taking out my camcorder tomorrow (or actually today) to a popular surf spot on Guam to test out. Hopefully I’ll have some good surf footage so I can practice my video editing skills tomorrow and post a video for you guys.

I’m still debating whether it would be better to host the videos on my own server or at Youtube, but I’m heading on over to Youtube right now to open up an account so I can test it tommorrow when I have my video ready.  After that it’s off to search for a video editing software on the web!  So until then “Esta Later” (means “See You Later” in Chammorro)!

Lowfares.com makes it simple to find cheap airline tickets, hotels, vacation packages, and car rentals online. With just one search you can compare travel deals from popular travel sites like Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity, Cheap Tickets, Hotwire, and much more! Comparing deals on the various travel sites is as simple as going to the Lowfares.com website, inputting your travel information into the online form, select which travel sites to search, and comparing the results.

There are so many travel sites on the Internet that we figured travel shoppers could use some advice on where to find the best rates for cheap hotels, flights, and other travel-related accommodations. That’s what we do at Lowfares.com by helping you find the best travel deals on the various travel websites. We’ve been partnering with dozens of top travel websites since 2002 to help you find the best travel deals possible! Check out Lowfares.com today!

With the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China just 3 months away I started doing some research online to see if it would be possible for me to make it to the Olympics. It would be a great opportunity for me to travel to China and cover as much of the Olympics as possible for Traveling Project.

Well, within a few hours of my research I noticed that hotel prices in Beijing around the time of the Olympic Games cost between 6x to 10x as much compared to the regular rates. Hotels in Beijing that would normally cost approximately $50 per night are around $500 during the Olympics! I’m pretty sure all other types of accommodations are inflated as well during the Olympic Games. Below is a screenshot I took of the rates for one of the hotels in Beijing:

Seeing the inflated prices pretty much killed the possibility for me of going to China during the Olympics. When I started doing my research I was already hesitant of even considering traveling to China for the Olympics because of the short time frame I had to prepare for the trip, but I thought to myself, “What the heck, if the prices are reasonable then I might as well go for it”. Well they weren’t, so no Olympic Games in China for me. You can be pretty sure wherever the Olympics are going to be 4 years from now I’ll be there to cover it for Traveling Project.  You can quote me on this!

I went to the northern most point on the island of Guam to a beach called Ritidian Beach this past week. The location of this beach was really out of the way from civilization, but the drive to the beach made for some spectacular views of Guam’s untouched northern coast during the last leg of the drive when I descended down from the cliffs to the coastline. I don’t think anyone lived in the surrounding area, and the only reason people would go there was to spend some time at the beach. While walking along the beach I noticed movement in the sand, and upon closer examination there were hundreds of hermit crabs like the one pictured below all along the beach. I’ve been told by the locals that there are huge crabs called coconut crabs on the island that can grow the size of car tires. I doubt I’ll ever get to see a coconut crab but I’ll keep my eyes open for one just in case!