"Veem" <ginmill01@cox.net> pounded away at his keyboard resulting in:

I've been to Palau twice, Yap never.  Neither trip was recent.  

The first trip, we stayed in a hotel and dove with Fish and Fins.
They were good.  When you stay on land, you are faced with long boat
rides to get to the dive sites.  By long, I mean one or two hours
depending on where you go.

The second time we stayed on a liveaboard.   Were I to go back, I'd
take the liveaboard route again.

Dan Bracuk
If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.

Good.

Of course.

I like Yap Divers out of the Manta Ray Bay Hotel.  Why?  Because they were
the first and because they run right off the hotel dock, which means you
walk from your room to the gear storage room to the boat, a total of 50 feet
or so.  The dive shop wall has a mural of all the identified mantas
captioned with the names given to each one.

As for Palau, you have a choice of three or so land based operations (Sam's,
NECO, and Fish&Fins) and a few liveaboards (Aggressor, Ocean Hunter I & II,
and I think a Japanese boat as well if they're still running).  Sam's is the
most popular and is outfitted for trimix and rebreathers, but the other two
are also quality dive ops and might not have the crowds that Sam's attracts.
I've found NECO to be more safety conscious, but that was a single
observation on a day when our NECO boat driver deemed it too rough to get
out of the channel and around to Blue Corner, so we did a lesser dive while
watching the Sam's boat successfully navigate the passage.  We parked next
to Sam's boat during our lunch break and it sounded like the Sam's divers
had a better dive.

Still, the next time I go to Palau, I'm doing a liveaboard (probably the
Aggressor) to maximize the diving.  While there are a number of hotels and
restaurants on land and some tame nightlife (guitarists at the PPR pool bar,
watching a game at the sportsbar-like Rock Island Cafe), I believe that the
ease and availability of liveaboard diving outweigh the land attractions and
probably make a better economic decision as well.  For photo/videographers,
a liveaboard is even more important for having camera tinkering facilities
and safe storage in between dives.

Again, the Manta Ray Bay Hotel.  Trader's Ridge is nicer, has a pool and
great food, but it's up the hill instead of on the water and that means
there is a commute to the dive boat.  Sure, it's a quick van ride, but it's
a commute nonetheless, and IMO a real PITA in Yap's hot 100% humid air.

The PPR (Palau Pacific Resort) is the luxury hotel on Yap.  There are a few
motel-like alternatives (Desekel Hotels), and native-style accomodations as
well if you like that sort of thing (Carolines), but you can't go wrong with
the PPR (just don't use their house dive op, which caters mainly to Japanese
divers).  They're right on the water, so any of the dive ops can pick you up
from the hotel dock if you prearrange it and weather permits (we got nicked
by a typhoon when we were there, so weather did not permit and we had to bus
it to the dive shop dock each morning - you already know my feelings about
having to commute to dive in Micronesia).  There's a pool there and they
have some incredible, albeit expensive, food.  But if you don't mind the
cramped cabin and living with the same group of divers for a week, I'd
recommend a liveaboard.

Swimming?  Continental Micronesia (formerly Air Micronesia) is the only game
in town unless/until Palau Air gets off the ground.  You can avoid Hawaii by
flying into Guam from the west (Japan or Bali) but you can't avoid going
through Guam as it's the hub airport.

Once in Yap you can try a hop over to Ulithi for a really remote experience.
Then you can use Pacific Missionary Airways instead of Continental, but you
still have to take Continental to get to Yap.  I haven't done that sidetrip
yet, but my local shop has done it twice so I've heard and seen enough to
know that it's probably too remote for my tastes.

According to Lonely Planet, there's also some sort of supply boat that makes
long trips between the various Micronesian islands, but I doubt this is a
serious alternative to flying for the majority of us time-limited dive
travelers.

Again, I really like Manta Ray Bay Hotel and Yap Divers.  Bill Acker was the
man who put Yap on the dive map.  He's American, but married to a local, and
he's been there since the 70s.  The hotel is a bit funky (waterbeds in some
rooms) but clean and functional and the rooms are large and air conditioned.

In Palau, I'd go with the Aggressor or the Ocean Hunter II, or stay at the
PPR and dive with Sam's if I decided to stay on land.  My plan is to head
back there for a week on the Aggressor in March of 2008 if my business stays
afloat that long.

Feel free to throw any other questions at me.  I'm one of the few people
that has spent an entire week on Yap (most just do the half-week trip as an
add-on to Palau) and I dove with Bill and his wife every day so I got to
know them a bit.  In Palau I did a 'fam' trip that took us to visit all the
hotel and dive options on the island and I keep in touch with a couple
people that lived there for a while.  I'm very fond of both places, as they
offer remote and pristine Indo-Pacific diving, yet don't have a lot of the
issues involved in traveling around Southeast Asia.  Money is the U.S.
dollar, everyone speaks English, tropical diseases are nonexistent, there's
no political turmoil that would potentially affect travelers, and no beggars
or aggressive trinket sellers running after you everywhere you go.  In
short, Micronesia really might be paradise.  Enjoy your trip.  I'm envious
already.