Getting to & Exploring Guam (US Territory) - Adam Koralik

figure it out hello this is adam carlick with flying and eating today let's go somewhere and do something and make sure to like comment and subscribe hey guys it's adam here and today's adventure i'm currently in chicago and we're going to be heading out to guam yes guam is a real place i've heard it as a punchline in movies and stuff like that all the time and everybody doesn't really know it's real it's a part of the united states it has been for over a century but not too many americans ever really get to go to it think of it it's like japanese hawaii except it's part of the u.s we'll talk all about it when we get there but it's an awesome place i'm looking forward to going back i have not been there in a few years now getting to guam is not the easiest route so we better get started all right we are here at o'hare and as always i'm gonna use the clear lane and board one of my many flights got the security no problems i'm in the sea gates which means left of the dinosaur as you can see not that many people flying right now i actually i'm actually one of those weird people that likes flying at like six in the morning that's what my flight is i enjoy it because dude look at it it's it's so empty it's just relaxing i love it one little trick i try to suggest to people is this is bringing a bottle of water now you can't get a bottle of water through security i understand that drink it bring an empty bottle at least at o'hare they have water refill stations that way you have a plastic bottle on your trip so you don't have to buy water everywhere you can just refill it for free and drink that and if you get stuck in an airport for a while you have something to drink out without having to buy anything empty plastic bottle cheap and easy thing to bring along and if it gets damaged who cares you can throw it [Music] by placing the away fitting over the lock and pulling on the strap until it clicks so i thought it would take a second here since we're actually at iah which is the first time we've been to the houston airport in this series not my first time here but nice airport big one um the reason i didn't even express the entire route we're doing here getting to guam is not as easy as it used to be it used to be you would just fly to japan and then change points there but the japanese aren't letting people do that right now because of the pandemic so you have to go through the other way which is hawaii um but the way that uh the flights work there just isn't enough time for that when leaving directly from chicago so go chicago to houston houston honolulu honolulu to guam it's a lot of flying but i love it so currently to get to hawaii uh you need pre-travel clearance just because of covid restrictions i already did this but after you get a qr code and all this stuff then you wait in a line and then they approve you and give you a nice little wristband this is totally unrelated but as we wait papado good chain down here recommended so i had my qr code i was all set had my id no big deal took me all three seconds and after that they just give you a nice wristband says united on it and yes i'm still wearing one from the virgin islands i love wristbands i'm sorry i'm weird move your mask before putting on your oxygen mask thanks again fly with us i'll be back with more details about today's flight once we're there [Music] we've arrived at hnl honolulu it's out there that's hawaii i don't really have any time to talk because my next flight's already boarding so i'll see you in guam [Music] ladies and gentlemen looking for passengers thomas anderson mr anderson if you're on board so i have arrived in guam i'm exhausted you try going from chicago to houston to honolulu to guam in one go it's a bit exhausting anyway so now that i'm here things have changed a little bit i haven't been in a couple of years because the pandemic things have changed a bit plus i came in domestic technically you know a gun from hawaii this is of course america so you don't go through the normal security process uh when you do if you like coming from japan for example uh you'd have to go through customs which i always took great advantage of because i have global entry so we go right through that now uh it's like you know covered protocol stuff so you have to fill out a couple of forms one they always had to do was a customs declaration of just are you bringing any weird fruits or vegetables you still do that one but now there's like a health advisory one which you can do digitally or on paper they give it to you on paper as well you can fill it out on the plane or like people who inevitably don't have pens you can do it here and now we got to get in the line and go enter the territory so i have completed the customs process uh i think the woman was very surprised to find out someone from chicago came all the way here in one day anyway so as you can see welcome uh this is kind of emotional for me because the last time i was here was with my mom like right before she passed away we obviously didn't know that was gonna be a thing and uh it's cool that i got to have that trip with her but uh so yeah it's just it's a little weird being here by myself but it's you know it's still cool so now what i'm gonna do guys is i'm going to take you around and show you part of this little piece of america that i think most americans don't even realize that they have access to uh i guess i'll do a little micro review on the plane we got several little meals we got this little like basil uh tomato cheese sandwich it was fine it was nothing and then some sort of grilled chicken macaroni thing which was actually really good but it might have been because i was just really really hungry at the time i ate it but either way it was fine now my buddy brian yes i got i got guys everywhere my buddy brian's gonna come up he's gonna pick me up and we're gonna head on out and go get some food somewhere else despite the propensity for mcdonald's on this island no we're not going there i just i love that i mean mcdonald's you know chicago whatever but truly you are in america when you see a mcdonald's so when you walk out of gum you'll see advertisements for jamaican grills and a bunch of different stuff actually one thing that's really interesting is so they have kfc here duh but one thing that's surprising about fast food here is that they have a lot of local versions of stuff because they try to cater to a lot of asian tourists you'll also see this everywhere it's pronounced half a day half a day like half of a day and it's just what says like welcome something else that's really i think worth noting when you're here when you leave the airport if you need a ride to you know a hotel or whatever they have cabs you can do cash based cabs and all that they don't have uber here uh but what they do have is their own app called stroll i recommend downloading that it's just uber but their own local thing so i'm with my boy brian from guam what's up man and he took us where are we we're kings now tell me about kings i guess it's like the the local version of or like an ihop yeah yeah kind of like a hawaiian yeah hawaiian ihop that's not really local but to be fair to be fair what we're looking for here is things like tomorrow omelets and tomorrow hashgram but tomorrow is the local thing so this is like what i was telling you guys before there's even if they're a chain there's always some local version of it mixed in brian here was pointing out some local things now we're not gonna do these here specifically we might find these in other places but can you pronounce these for me okay this is pronounced tsunam tanala katni and it's just a it's like a seasoned beef right there it says with cabbage okay this is cotton pika it's a [Music] lightly marinated chicken and what about that third one uh cotton beef shank see i i would like to get them but he's saying there's like better places for that so we'll we'll make that happen later probably yeah yeah and oh you guys are trusting me you're going to hear about mexico doss at some point that is going to be he's not the same place we're talking about but he says that and i mess up just trust me you guys are the he kind of accidentally convinced me to get the trump hash scramble because i was like have you ever had this or the trump red rice he said this and then he was like i was like what is he's like it's all right so that by default gives it to the tomorrow hash scramble food has arrived and i don't quite remember what i i ordered because i guess it's somebody's birthday over there hey happy birthday half a day it's half a birthday yeah yeah somebody just had a birthday anyway our food has arrived i got uh they got the chamorro scramble with a couple little sides of rice and some toast what'd you get here uh the chorizo crisscross fries yeah like waffle fries waffle fries well go ahead enjoy this is actually really good it's like got a nice mild spice to it i know that sounds like a contradictory term but it's actually really solid it may not look like much but it's actually really good and this is white rice you happy with yours yours looks like you have what i have plus waffle fries yeah yeah that's always good man yeah if i was to it is it looks like a good choice if i was hungrier i would be much more envious he's full he also takes better care of himself than i do i should be sleeping instead of eating that's the power of the fat man we also i also ran into people from the flight yeah that was funny i just went like i just i saw this i saw this lady i saw this lady for the flight i was like yo you were on my flight and then like the three other people she was with one of them's like oh yeah dude i remember you no they're just like what's this i'm i'm kind of tired so i'm not all there it was funny though because on that point i did i sure was like boom um but the thing is on the flight from honolulu to guam i was probably memorized a little bit because i i had a bulkhead seat so you're near the emergency exit i was kind of in a tight situation but like right in front of me there's like your own little apartment of space where no one is so i just stood up and stood there for like an hour and a half so for like an hour and a half of like a seven hour flight everyone on in coach is looking at me just straight on looking at me so i'm sure that the one girl who pointed back at me was probably like yeah the freaking weirdo who's just standing there the whole time so when i hit record in the previous clip the goal was to talk about the food it was solid but then we went off about pointing at people but like yeah he said he didn't finish but again he's an adult he decided not to eat a whole bunch of food before going to sleep i on the other hand do not listen to such advice so i wouldn't normally waste your time with this but as i said in the past guam heavily caters to the japanese so when you get into some of the hotels they're very clear about that uh like the amenities are typically a bit nicer uh it comes with things like slippers like if you've ever go to japan this is very common uh even though down to the floor is very similar to the way a japanese hotel is but then you have other subtleties like you know the toilet uh is like a heated one with the bidet and all that sort of stuff japanese style shower uh it's it's kind of interesting so this is my view everybody pretty nice this is why i love guam for a lot of reasons but i mean look at that beach look how no one's on it there's a couple of people but yeah this is this is my paradise this is america's paradise that america tends to forget it has so i thought while i'm here i would do a little bit of a better job telling you guys a bit more about guam because i've been here multiple times as odd as that might sound to a lot of people um and i thought it would explain a little bit of its history uh so in short this is part of the united states it's like the us virgin islands this is a territory the difference here is guam was owned by the spanish uh and then when the spanish empire basically was defeated by us one of the things we inherited was the island of guam uh we got it in 1900 uh and we kept it uh you know it it had its own people before that of course and it those people are still here they're called the chamorro people awesome by the way brian's one um but yeah so it obviously had issues during world war ii it was actually attacked and invaded the exact same day as pearl harbor it's just that it didn't get the same kind of attention um because americans tend to forget that this is part of their country uh ultimately uh it is still stuck in territory status it is the second highest populated us territory right behind um puerto rico and it's kind of interesting being here i've been here enough times now where i've kind of picked up on a lot of things and you know people have told me stuff about it so the thing is guam i kind of said this yesterday guam is kind of like an alternate version of the united states where japan won the second world war and what i mean by that is because of guam's proximity to japan it's actually only three hours south of japan it's actually a very quick flight up to japan i've even done that before too that's actually first how i ever came here was just i was connecting uh from japan um the japanese come here all the time uh for tourism uh this is like their hawaii except it's america so they well i mean hawaii's american too but like it for them it's leaving their country you know what i'm saying um so it's kind of interesting because basically what guam does is it caters to japanese interests and from my understanding the japanese really want three things when they come here which is they want to go atv riding so there's a bunch of like that you know nature and man conquers the jungle type of stuff uh they want to shoot you know guns so there's a lot of gun ranges and things like that but also uh they want to eat big american burgers uh which is an oversimplified way of saying like the food here typically caters to japanese tastes while embracing the fact that it is american so i will say some of the best burgers i've ever had in my life were actually here uh it's it's a fascinating little place especially as uh an american from the mainland like they're not i'm my i'm not like they're not used to seeing me unless i'm military which i am not because the other thing about guam is this is america's epicenter of its pacific naval power like this is our biggest piece of territory out west that is not um you know part of a military base i mean it has bases on it but this is all of this soil is the united states of america and this is three hours away from japan it's only a few hours away from china a few hours away from other parts of asia this is america's epicenter and the tip of the sword if you will uh in the pacific so it's it's got a lot of regional significance um and it's also just a wonderful place to be a little hard to get to obviously it took me i had to be awake for 28 hours uh going as you guys saw chicago to use the honolulu to uh to here it used to be easier to get here before the pandemic because you would just take one flight to japan and then one flight down to guam only a couple hours later but hey this is what we live in now ohayo gozaimasu which uh japanese good morning which only kind of feels that way because again guam is it just has that vibe uh i thought i would give you guys a little bit of a look at uh where i'm at i'm in timon i'm probably spelling saying that wrong but this is more of the touristy area normally this isn't actually where i would stay but since santa fe my hotel of choice no longer exists this is where i'm at kind of one of the perks i guess of the pandemic and i hate to put it that way is uh because japanese tourists can't really come in right now all the hotels are lowering their prices pretty substantially so guys like me can take advantage of staying in what the japanese usually stay in uh but behind me you can see various like asian restaurants and stuff that place back there meslodos trust me when i say we going back there normally i wouldn't feel compelled to point this out but since i was in the u.s virgin islands and they drive on the opposite side of the road despite being american i just wanted to prove to you that's not how it is in guam and here we go this is today's breakfast goal eggs and things this is a hawaiian restaurant actually that has a location here on guam happens to be right by my hotel which is gonna be super convenient this is a fantastic place and usually the line is like absolutely packed granted they just opened and uh also no tourists so i'm gonna take full advantage of this but over there you know you this is like the shopping mall type of area this is kind of hitting me a little bit because the last time i was any of these places i'm not even kidding about this like my mom and i hung out right over there we had breakfast right over there uh we went to meslidos together uh we'll talk more about that when i get there but it's just a little weird being here right now for me so as i told you guys before whenever you're here there's always like this is a hawaiian place it's got hawaiian stuff there's always local versions of things too and while i've had the tomorrow lokomoka in the past i remember it being pretty good i haven't had it on camera so yeah we're going to go ahead and get that locomoc is a hawaiian dish i'll explain more about it when i get it but the tomorrow version basically is a little different a little spicier has different sauces that type of thing good stuff i will admit i i really want a sweet like i want a crepe or a pancake or something like that but for you guys i'm going local so you guys can see local stuff food has arrived i got the sunny-side up eggs uh you can see there's various sauces and spices vegetables like onions there's a burger patty under this that's usually what's traditionally in there along with rice what makes this version different than the hawaiian version is mostly the sausages and other little bits of seasonings and spices you guys can see inside there because i took a couple bites got rices spices eggs meat it's great um it's a little spicier than a locomoco usually is when she warned me about that that's the tomorrow version usually is a lot spicier but i like spicy so no problem for me but just keep that in mind i am so happy with this this is so good it's got like i said it's got a burger patty in it i mentioned burgers earlier guam and burgers they know what they're doing this is flavor country guys i'm super super happy with this nice close-up look at the there's mushrooms onions chamorro sausage which is like a spicy portuguese sausage burger egg rice sauces absolutely fantastic might look like a mess but it is fantastic there's a reason i always go back to that place but i highly recommend it if you're ever there there's also hawaiian locations too but if you're in guam for sure check this one out uh but like i said i got a guam specific dish it's also one of those places this is kind of traditional here in hawaii i mean i've seen this in other places but usually island areas after you eat breakfast in a place like this they usually ask if you want a free cup of coffee to go the reason they do that is they're trying to entice you to give them a little bit of a bigger tip because you're like hey you're getting a cup of coffee which i always take advantage of because coffee come on why wouldn't i do that so this is kind of a downtown tumon which would be like the most city-like area within guam is this whole section lots of malls and stores and things like that lots of tourists uh this is naturally where they come to because all the big hotels are here uh and so this is the area that caters to all that type of stuff and so you'll see a lot of things like that a lot of malls here that you know frankly all the stuff's overpriced by american standards but the truth is they're not they don't exist for us they exist for japanese tourists to buy american stuff um superstore over there is a chain just like abc stores that's actually a chain in japan and hawaii but they also have them here actually my buddy brian works in one of those one thing that's interesting is when you're walking around here if you have a phone you'll notice that it's largely trying to connect to various wi-fi is all called like docomo and it might confuse you that's actually like i said this place caters to the japanese that's actually a japanese cell phone providing service uh in the effort to make the japanese feel very welcomed and familiar that's like the primary network here uh on wi-fi is docomo stuff just so they're like oh i recognize that okay yes let's connect to that that's the real one which is just kind of fascinating so closer up near the hotel we've got the mall texas sized flavor again they tried to cater to chicago chop house team on stick amusing for me but uh like i said they try to cater the japanese expect to see a mcdonald's a mcdonald's they will have along complete with ronald it's kind of weird for me it's not here at the moment but there were little tables set up here my mom and i sat right there and had an ice cream together i think that was the last time we ever did that i mean look at this okay so bus schedules and all that in japanese again they try to cater to the japanese make them feel very welcome comforted uh by the way guahan that you're seeing there if you're like what are people from guam called aside from being called americans guahans tomorrow's like the culture but guahan would be like the equivalent of like a texan you know it's just the word for someone from that state tomorrow barbecue i've been there they had um pretty good uh fried rice from what i remember a lot of bars and things again as i keep saying caters to the japanese over there there's things i think there's a gun range over there somewhere like all the stuff the japanese want is here including american big burgers but also like oh i need sushi i just need to feel at home comfort food it's all here as i said cater to the stereotypes it's it's all right there it also caters to russians by the way and then you've got you know again stereotypes a lot of people ask me adam you seem to go to guam a lot it's really far away like why would you do all that you know there's other islands there's parts of america that are much closer and there's hawaii you could go to hawaii hawaii is great hawaii is great it has a lot of great beaches and a lot of great views but you want to know why i come to guam look at this there's nobody here there's never anybody here now granted it's pandemic but even before the pandemic it was like this my own pool my own beach this is standard this almost always happens awesome the way it'll usually work is you'll have a pool that obviously has this border here it's not like you can actually go out here and then there's nature and then there's a beach some hotels will have the pool like right next to the ocean um so for now we're gonna hang out maybe a little bit here and then we'll head down to the water down there i've made my way down to the beach and follow this little path they have set up there and you can see very sparkling crystal clear water and again no one on it i'm not even kidding about this i mean granted again partially it's the pandemic but this is the tourist beach this is typically the busiest beach in guam and as you can see there's no one on it now again you can say pandemic and there is truth to that but even before the pandemic when i would come here i would stay at the santa fe which is down there somewhere and it was always exactly like this you'd have maybe a handful of people like you do down there but usually there's just nobody here the way i describe guam to a lot of people is i've said it a few different ways one it's it's like america if japan won world war ii lovingly not for all the negative things that would have come with that but oh you can see a plane up there uh i think that's japanese airline jal um but anyway the other way i describe it is everybody who's never been to hawaii hasn't envisioned an idea of hawaii which is usually tropical beaches sunshine pineapples you know palm trees and just niceness hawaii has those things but the thing they don't tell you in that vision is people you'll have people everywhere what i tell people is that vision you have exists it's called guam you see it here with your own eyes in this footage this is what it's like all the time here right now in celsius it's 29 degrees i'm the odd american that thinks in celsius fahrenheit it's like 84 degrees little overcast not too hot not too sunny absolutely perfect i guess i'm required to do this unlock us virgin islands where i still had my shoes on here no problem man i will go and i will swim in there they got little buoys and stuff set up so you kind of know where like like little deep spots and all that are it's nice man it's really nice i like the decor everywhere it's really really quite something i the really the problem for everybody is just the logistics of getting here i mean there's all sorts of you know issues with that i understand that it was easier before the pandemic because you would just change planes in japan um i get it i get all those things and that feels really nice um the other thing to factor into is time zones i probably should have said this when i landed but i'm a day ahead like so uh guam like as you guys can tell by the flags it is obviously part of america but given that it's on the other side of the date line this is actually the first part of america to start the day their their tagline is where america's day begins um because it's in the same time zone as japan and australia and all that well there's a couple hours subtleties but yeah but basically uh they're like almost an entire day out of the world so when you land from hawaii you go from like the last part of america in the time zones to the first part um so like you leave i think i left hawaii on like january 11th uh in the in like 3 p.m and you arrive in guam on like january 13th at like 7 00 p.m it kind of messes with you but the reverse of that is when you come back you gain an entire day so the easiest way to put this into example is on new year's day if you were to fly on new year's day january 1st from guam to hawaii you would leave let's say you did it this year if i had left hawaii or left guam on january 1st 2022 you would arrive in hawaii on december 31st 2021 time zones i'm now walking out into the water yes i'm walking with my phone i know it's dangerous whatever i'll be fine but uh so the beaches here are very shallow they're very walkable up to a certain distance and when the water gets kind of a darker blue that's where it gets deeper we're probably not gonna go that far because i have no real reason to but at the moment i'm basically up to my waist uh which you know if i decided to kind of sit into the water i could kind of float around and swim a little bit really a good time but i'm trying to you know also not kill my phone so i was in there for a few hours man and as you can see you've even got a guy on the beach doing the metal detector thing down there but as you can see nobody here it never really changed a couple of times you gotta get a couple random people walk past the most we had actually was a group of volunteers who just come and clean up some plastic bits so if they find like you know cans or plastic whatever they just chuck them out you know in bags and take them off so just they make they keep it clean but that they were clearly like that's just their thing they do that every once in a while it's now the middle of the day on a friday it's supposed to be super busy this is that version of super busy in guam made the little journey from down there up here and uh just in case you've never been to an island or whatever a lot of the time especially here they have these like little showers that are outside and you might be like what's that all about that's if you got a lot of sand or whatever on you you can just kind of rinse it off so i already put my feet in that my current view and as you can see it's all my view go from fresh pool water to the ocean view we have some sort of little mermaid deal here happening here it's kind of cool some information then you get the nice view pretty cool a couple people starting to come out now not many i mean again busiest beach in guam right there i'm not being sarcastic it really is wonderful so if you're inside the pool and you're stupid enough to walk around with your phone this is the kind of stuff you would see uh there's a drainage system there really neat and you get this wonderful view all the way out there so you can chill right here and kind of hang your arms on the on this thing and then just like i'm kind of kicking my legs up and just keeping myself sustained while you stare out at the beach enjoy the climate controlled water enjoy the sun dude i'm by myself there's no one here and i granted that's partially because of the pandemic again but even before the pandemic this is why i would come to guam because there was nobody ever here it's awesome like and the thing is i'm not even paying much to be here because they had to lower all their prices because there's no tourists i'm like uniquely walking around inside that lobby and they were like oh we better open up the restaurant in case the one guy wants anything it's just like this is special and i again a humble reminder to my fellow americans you have a much bigger country than you ever seem to know go live in it appreciate it enjoy it it's amazing so i am craving some coffee uh however it right now is between one o'clock and four o'clock if you don't have to go outside don't because that's when it gets really really hot out the mellow warmth is kind of gone and then that like evening calm warmth is not here yet right now it's just like scorching hot so i'm staying inside for a bit uh but i want coffee but i'm a little lazy now fortunately the hotel gave me a bunch of coffees we got some nescafe these are actually filipino which is interesting um when you go to a grocery store here and we'll check out some stuff later in fact one place is probably going to give you guys a lot of nostalgia berries we're going to go to one place but a lot of the food here while being american again is imported from other parts of asia so coffee but filipino and we've got a this is our hot water maker like you have your own cooler how awesome is that there's another little random tip here for you so i needed a spoon to stir that up i actually always keep the little plastic forks and knife set they give you on a flight like this because you never know if you order a lot of takeout or whatever it's good to have this around this isn't so much a problem in the states like again in guam this isn't really an issue but in a lot of other countries i've traveled to like they just don't give you cutlery a lot of the time so it's good to just kind of have that thank you very much for watching please stay tuned to part two where i'll be taking you all around guam showing you a bunch of great stuff thank you as always for watching please like comment subscribe and i'll see you all later

Channel: Flying & Eating With Adam Koralik

Views: 40,328

Keywords: Adam Koralik, Vlogs, Travel, Trip, Flying, Eating, Food, Guam, Island, Islands, CNMI, Territory, Guahan, Chamorro, Saipan, Hawaii, Houston, Texas, Chicago, Beach, Vacation

Id: DFzeoFjD9O0

Length: 31min 51sec (1911 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 06 2022