Saipan Trip - Day 1

On Thursday my wife and I went to Saipan for a three-night stay. The flight was free, as we had saved up enough miles through Northwest Airlines to go there. But I was wondering if this trip would be anything like the trip we took a few years ago to Guam, when we felt like we never left Japan. The conclusion: it wasn't bad in that respect, but probably because there weren't as many tourists around as we had expected.

After leaving the small, old airport, our first impression of Saipan - other than the old concrete Japanese WWII military bunkers just outside the airport grounds - was that the buildings and houses seemed run down. A lot of buildings hadn't been painted in years, and some looked like they needed repairing. It looked more like what we saw in Malaysia during our honeymoon. The driver of the van we were in quickly drove past all of that, and we were on the other end of the island in a short 20 or 30 minutes, at our hotel: the Mariana Resort and Spa.

At first glance, the resort also looked run down, if the front entrance was any indication. Things looked better once we made it to the Center House. We checked in (with explanations given in Japanese), then a busboy in a golf cart kindly took us to a villa: a small cottage that would be our hotel room for the weekend. We didn't spend much time there, though. We unpacked a bit, then headed over to the spa area, called Mandi Asian Spa.

The spa was part of a package called the Lady's Plan (their spelling, not mine!). For $65 each, you can get unlimited usage of the spa area for up to 7 days, plus free buffet breakfast every morning. I was able to get a Lady's Plan, too, because I was with a lady.

The spa was nice. They have a jacuzzi, a wading pool, a flower bath, a warm reclining pool with a great ocean view overlooking the cliff that the resort sat on, and several massage rooms. That night my wife and I had a "cream bath" massage, where they put a bunch of scented cream stuff in our hair while massaging our head, neck, shoulders and arms. It was a good massage, but they made us sit upright on bamboo stools - quite uncomfortable, if you ask us.

The villa was a bit run down on the outside and in need of painting, but inside it was good. The bed was situated on a loft above the ground floor, and there was a nice stand-in shower as well as a bath for Japanese tourists. The room came with slippers, robe, toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, razor and lotion. There was also a hot water heater for tea (although we used it for instant noodles that first night, to save money). There was also a refrigerator with drinks and cola, but if we wanted to drink a can, it would cost at least $3! Needless to say, we didn't touch them at all during our trip.