Our sister website just added their first Micronesia Travel Guide to their lineup. It provides an overview of the land, weather, flora and fauna, highlights, holidays, practicalities, and transportation options to and around the region. There’s an historical dateline and a few fast facts. Micronesia now joins 15 other travel destinations profiled by our partner websites.
Until now I’ve been promoting the 6th edition of Moon Handbooks Micronesia through my site. That edition was published in 2003 and unfortunately there won’t be another. Moon Handbooks Micronesia has gone out of print. Similarly, Lonely Planet South Pacific no longer covers Micronesia. It’s an expensive region to research, and with guidebook sales in freefall due to competition from the internet, researching guidebooks to areas like Micronesia has become a labor of love.
Fortunately for travelers, a new guide titled Micronesia and Palau has just come on the market. This book was researched by former Peace Corps volunteers who obviously weren’t motivated by making money when they went to Micronesia. A team of seven writers is involved and the information is fresh. Unlike Moon and Lonely Planet, this new guide to the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau doesn’t cover Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, places which don’t have a Peace Corps presence. Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Nauru are also missing. For those places you’ll need to buy a used copy of one of the older books. Even so, Micronesia and Palau does fill a void and I hope Other Places Publishing and the authors profit sufficiently from this first edition to motivate them to produce a second edition when the time comes.
