The Maldives

This past weekend Jill and I took advantage of the 4 day weekend here in Hong Kong (we got the Friday and Monday off for Easter) to go to the Maldives.  We were fortunate enough to be able to stay at the Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa, and we had an amazing time.  It's probably the most scenic place either of us have ever been.

The hotel sits on an island all by itself (literally-there is nothing on the island besides the hotel), and it is not the most convenient place to get to.  Our flight left Hong Kong for Male (pronounced "Mahl-ay" - the capital of the Maldives and the only place to land for international travel) around 6:00 PM on Wednesday, and we didn't arrive to the hotel until 2:30 AM on Thursday.  It's a 6 hour flight from Hong Kong to Male (we had a 2.5 hr layover in Male), then another 55 minute flight to Koodoo, then a 30 minute boat ride from Koodoo to the hotel.  So, like I said, not the easiest place in the world to get to.

After a long and tiresome journey we were very pleasantly surprised when our escort to the room dropped us off at a room over the water (we didn't know prior to our arrival if we would get an over-water room).

View from the deck of our room

Jill cooling off.  It was awesome to be able to get into the water whenever you wanted.  There is a reef that surrounds the entire island, and the snorkeling was amazing.  In addition to an abundance of fish we saw octopus, needlefish, and blacktip reef sharks.  Side note on that -  I was out snorkeling by myself at one point, and Jill decided she was going to join me.  Her way of letting me know she was there was swimming up behind me, undetected, and grabbing my calf.  Let me just say that when you're swimming around in waters that you know have sharks,  being startled by something grabbing your leg is not the best feeling in the world.  Luckily we were in the ocean, so the mess from having crapped my swimsuit was easily washed away (I didn't really mess myself, but I did almost wheel around and start throwing punches at what I thought was a shark).

Rainbow over the hotel

   

The first day Jill and I did just about everything you can do on the island...which is hang out by the water, relax, and snorkel.   The first night we made a reservation to do a 4 course meal on the beach which was a lot of fun.  The scenery during the day was gorgeous, but it was almost as good at night because there is essentially zero "light pollution" so you could see what seemed to be every single star in the sky.  You don't really see the stars in Hong Kong...

Our second day was a lot of the same - relaxing and snorkeling...

Another Rainbow

And another Rainbow trying to form

We were moved from the water villa to a pool villa after the first day, but we weren't complaining because we had beach access from the room and a private pool.

This was the view from where we ate breakfast every morning

A lounge area near the bar

The second night we had signed up to go on a little fishing excursion.  We rode a boat out about 20 minutes away from the island and got to fish with hand lines for about an hour.  Unfortunately, we only caught one fish, but our guides on the boat caught a couple extra.  The cool part was that the restaurant at the hotel cooks your catch when you return, so we had extremely fresh barbecued red snapper, and white snapper sashimi for dinner that night.

You can probably imagine what we did on the third day....relaxed and snorkeled.

On Saturday night the hotel hosted a happy hour on the beach.  For entertainment there was traditional Maldivian music and dancing.  We did another dinner on the beach for our last night.

An addition to the reptile/amphibian photo series.  As always, I freed this little guy right after taking his photo.

We found out that due to the schedule of the local airline, we were going to have to leave the hotel on Sunday at 2:30 PM.  The unfortunate thing about that was our flight from Male to Hong Kong didn't leave until 10:30 PM.  We could've taken a later flight to Male, but the hotel wanted to play it safe because if there was any delay at all on our flight from Koodoo to Male we would have missed our flight home. 

View of the island as we were leaving...

The Koodoo airport...and I thought the airport in Presque Isle, Maine was small...

Because we had so much time to kill in Male the hotel arranged for a guide to show us around the city for a couple of hours.  Our guide was very nice, but in all honesty we weren't blown away with Male.  It's kind of dirty, it was very hot, and the limited amount of sites aren't all that impressive.  I don't know if we were just tired or what, but Male just didn't really do it for us.  We were glad we did it (better than sitting around in an airport), but by the time the tour was over were looking forward to the air conditioning in the airport. 

We got to see the office of the President of Male

A Mosque - The Maldives are 100% Muslim, and this was our first time in a completely Muslim country.

The President's quarters

Another Mosque

Our flight left Male on time Sunday night and we arrived back in Hong Kong around 8:30 AM Monday morning.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip for us and we are so lucky that everything worked out for us to go.  We would highly recommend it, but if you do go to the Maldives, go for longer than 3.5 days, and just know that everything (regardless of what hotel you stay at) is going to be expensive.  Also go in with the mindset that all you're going to be doing is relaxing...so bring a lot of reading material or be prepared to sleep a lot....because after snorkeling/fishing there's nothing else to do!  But that's what makes it such a cool experience.   

Hope all is well with everyone.  A big shout out to Abby and Ross for their wedding - congrats!

Til Next Time,

Luke & Jill