Palau

A marine lake in the Rock Islands sealed from the ocean since the last Ice Age, home to millions of golden Mastigias papua jellyfish that have lost their potent sting and drift in slow pulsing spirals through the sunlit water column.

Palau's compact commercial capital on Koror Island, connected to Babeldaob by the KB Bridge, packing the country's best restaurants, hotels, dive shops and transport links into a low-rise town that remains the functional centre of Palauan life despite the official capital move to Ngerulmud.

A landlocked marine lake within the Rock Islands, sealed from the sea when sea level fell at the end of the last Ice Age, whose upper freshwater lens turns turquoise when disturbed — giving the appearance of liquid limestone.

Palau's largest traditional bai — a monumental open-sided meeting house of carved hardwood beams and palm-fibre roof — standing in Ngardmau State on Babeldaob Island, its ridgepole extending 30 metres across.

The scar of the 1944 Battle of Peleliu — where American and Japanese forces fought for ten weeks across a small Pacific island — preserved as an outdoor museum of coral-bunker fortifications, tank ruts and military wreckage on Peleliu State.

A labyrinth of hundreds of forested limestone karst islands and sheltered turquoise coves in Palau's Southern Lagoon, famed for cliff-grotto snorkeling, cliff diving, and some of the world's best kayaking.