April 6 2007 The Maldives

The first question most people in the US ask is WHERE? The Maldives are a collection of hundreds of tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, south of Sri Lanka. They are more-or-less on the equator, breathtakingly beautiful, flat, and have tourism as their primary industry. They are an independent country, 100% Sunni Muslim, with a rather repressive government. The resorts are treated as European enclaves, where bikinis are no big deal. In most cases it is not possible for tourists to visit the islands where people actually live, except for the capital, Male.

We are staying at the Full Moon Resort, in the North Male Atoll. This is a charming little resort. It has its own little island, as most resorts in the Maldives do. The buildings are lovely, the Spa is fantastic, and this is perhaps the prettiest hotel room I have ever been in. We have our own beach cabin, set back in the palm trees, nice and private. A rear deck looks out upon bougainvillea plants, palm trees, and the beach; the actual room is huge by most hotel standards, and the bathroom is a hoot. I’ll post a picture of the shower; it’s truly the most incredible shower I have ever seen. Surrounded by stone walls, the shower itself is open air, with plants, pebble drainage, and a slate tile floor. I started laughing when I first saw it; it’s just outrageous.

It’s a bit of an ordeal to get here, even from Hong Kong. Most of the tourists are from Asia or Europe; it’s simply too far from the US to make it a practical vacation destination for that part of the world. Even from HK it take almost 10 hours to get here, mostly because of the necessity to change planes in Malaysia or Sri Lanka, and the infrequency of flights. Once you land in Male you have to take a boat or a sea plane to your resort. We’re only a 10 minute boat ride from Male.

We arrived very, very late on Wednesday night. The next morning we awoke to bright sunshine and lizards skittering across the sand. We ate breakfast and had time to lie on the beach for awhile, before we went to talk to the concierge and sign up for some activities for our stay – things like sunset fishing, dolphin watching, and snorkeling trips. While we were making our plans a sudden gust of wind and flash of lightening ushered in a tropical storm. It’s basically been raining off and on ever since! What can you do? I’m not going to let it ruin my vacation. I’ve had two fantastic spa treatments so far, and I’m doing at least one more before we leave. I may even talk Lee into a romantic “couple’s bath” in scented water at the spa. At first he was like “I don’t want to” (he gets a bit squeamish about these things) but this morning he seemed to be wavering a bit. After all, I’ve promised him that I’d go on a catamaran with him!

Even with the rain we’re having a lot of fun. We’re going to go snorkeling this afternoon (if you’re already wet what does it matter?); I may check out the fitness center. Lee is busy fussing because he can’t get to the 3M VPN system here and he can’t check his email.

April 8^th

Today we got a day of sunshine, and we were grateful! It’s amazing what an extremely rainy day in the tropics does to your sense of weather-proportion. Yesterday it rained all day. I have to admit it wasn’t that hard to put a brave face on things. This place is just gorgeous, and I managed to waste a lot of time getting wrapped in seaweed. I would say this place’s spa is definitely as good as the one in Arizona, and the treatment rooms are even better. The room where I had my wrap done was just amazing. When you get wrapped and rubbed with various concoctions you have to rinse off between the different applications. At the spa in Arizona I had to wander down a pathway to the shower. Here the therapist opened a door in the treatment room and wa la! My own private open-air shower. Incredible!

We’re getting very good at spending our evenings at the open air bar, watching the storms blow through while we sample exotic drinks. The first night I stuck to gin and tonic, but it’s been downhill from there. Yesterday I tried a daiquiri, and today a mai tai! What’s next – Long Island Tea or Singapore Sling? Oh the possibilities. Lee tried a margarita one night, but I’ve learned my lesson. Margaritas are to be sampled only in Texas, or perhaps some nearby southwestern state. Like pizza at Shakespeare’s, some things have been perfected at a particular locality and there’s no point in trying to replicate the experience any place else.

We reveled in the sunshine today. We spent the morning at the darling pool. It’s not an infinity pool, but it does have a dramatic waterfall at one end. In the afternoon (after my spa manicure) I went out and snorkeled for a bit. The snorkeling around this resort is nothing much, except for some cute fish and some scary-looking sting rays. But the snorkeling equipment that I rented is so good, it’s a pleasure to just go out in the very calm lagoon and paddle around.

This evening we were supposed to go on a “sunset dolphin cruise” but alas! Another storm blew in and it was cancelled. So instead it was back to the bar, where we listened to a Philipino group play Beatles songs, while rain pelted down and a faint rainbow disappeared in the darkening sky.

I thought of one other thing – last night for dinner we ordered a picnic on the back porch of our little beach cottage. It was really fun. The picnic came in a real old-fashioned basket with straps to keep the plates and eating utensils in place, and a separate drawer for the wine glasses. The picnic we ordered consisted of a bunch of different salads and turned out to be so much food that we ended up eating it for lunch today as well. It was just so pleasant and relaxing to sit on our private little porch eating dinner. Afterwards we went for a walk on the beach. Very romantic…probably my favorite thing we’ve done here so far.

April 10^th

Well we’re almost back in Hong Kong. The Maldives was nice enough that I wished we could have spent a couple more days there. The last two days we were treated to almost perfect weather, in spite of having another cancelled excursion (reef snorkeling) because of a sudden burst of wind. We did get to go fishing one night. In the Maldives they fish with a hook, bait and a line; no lures, not even any tackle. You just drop your line, weighted with a sinker, over the side of the boat, using slightly over-ripe tuna as bait. It took some getting used to. After awhile I could feel the fish nibbling at the bait through the line. The trick was to jerk the hook hard when they nibbled. I did catch a fish, but it was just a little thing. A couple of people on the boat caught some nice-sized fish. It was fun…and the sunset was really nice!

The next day we went to a nearby island to go snorkeling. The snorkeling was great. We waded out from the shore to an opening in the reef. On the other side was a huge drop-off, all kinds of fish, and coral. Sadly the coral was heavily damaged by an El Nino ocean warming event in 1998, and has only started to recover. There were still all kinds of things to see though. We used lots of sunscreen and wore tee shirts, but I still burned the backs of my legs.

The Full Moon has lovely facilities, and we agree that it is 75-80% well managed, but there were a few irritations that it would have been so nice for them to avoid. For the most part the service in the restaurants was great, but we had a couple of waiters that were especially slow, or sort of incompetent. The last day our flight didn’t leave until 10:20 PM, so we had the whole day to kill. We checked out of our room in the morning before the snorkeling trip, so we had to store our luggage and hand baggage. We needed access to the cashier’s office several times, and it seemed like every time we went there the cashier was no where to be found. Lastly, the hotel had the great idea of providing a courtesy room for guests, so that they could shower before their flights. It was a good idea, but we ended up waiting for a room for over 30 minutes, and when we got there, it had wet towels from the previous occupants. It seems like things like this could be fixed, especially at the prices we were paying!

But, I’m glad we went. The people were friendly, the ocean and island just beautiful. I was able to store up lots of sunshine to get me through some cloudy Hong Kong days until its time to head off for the US in a week!