Adventures living as expats.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Under the Sea in the Maldives

It's not very often that Jeff and I go on vacations where we completely unwind and don't give a second thought to sightseeing or our next restaurant adventure.  On the contrary we usually schedule a few too many places and activities, never wanting to miss anything.  For this trip, we stayed on a small island that you could walk around in 30 minutes so missing anything was nearly impossible.  We spent 5 full days snorkeling, reading, napping, pondering our future, sipping wine, and overdoing the bacon a few times at the buffet breakfast.

When Jeff announced that he wanted to go to the Maldives for his birthday, I first laughed it off then discreetly looked it up online to figure out where it is.  I'd heard of it before, but always assumed it would be too difficult / expensive to get to.   Luckily a budget airline, Tiger Air, flies direct from Singapore so we booked our flights impulsively and soon started daydreaming about the pristine white sand beaches, clear water, abundant sea life, and brightly colored corals.


Where are the Maldives?
Our whole trip can be nicely summed up in this video that Jeff created.  After he posted it I've been a bit unmotivated to update the blog because you can't beat Jeff's video skills.  If you're interested in the trip narrative then read on!

It took us a few days to get used to completely relaxing, but this view sure helped!
Our first time on a sea plane!

On the second day we went on a whale shark snorkeling excursion and spotted 5!  This was the highlight of the trip (possibly the year too).
We were lucky to be the only boat swimming with this guy
We saw 1 HUGE whale shark; unfortunately, it was along with 3 other boats full of people.  The middle of the pack was a free for all fight, and we weren't quite ruthless enough to go in for pictures.  Two members of our boat got out of the water yelling at each other because one lady kicked a guy several time in the face.

We weren't so lucky with the Manta Ray excursion and only ended up seeing a few from the boat.  The current was really speeding along and every time we jumped in the water, the Mantas were out of site.  We did see few turtles on the trip though!
One of the friendliest turtles we've seen.
Reef shark swimming around our island 
Our resort had an amazing infinity pool.  There were several many times at the pool when we pretending to read but were actually watching people take hilarious selfies.  One photo shoot lasted about 20 minutes and involved the wife directing high fashion poses and taking 100's of pictures of her husband.  Jeff had to get in on the action as well.
New Facebook photo?
Double thumbs up for diving
Final view before we hopped on our departing plane.  
We came back to Jakarta feeling rejuvenated for another few months in the Big Durian!