Male, Maldives
The Maldives is pretty far off the beaten path for most of us. I have never met anyone who had been here before, so all I had to go on was what I had read in guide books. We were only here overnight, so we didn't get much of a chance to see the smaller islands, and were mostly confined to the main city and the airport island. I saw no evidence of damage from the Tsunami.
And as we approached, I could see that the city was not nearly as large as I thought. It was mostly low-rise apartment buildings with typical Asian styled shops on the ground level.
It was a pretty slow pace in the streets. There were lots of people just hanging around, sitting under trees, and whatever. No one seemed too excited to see us.
You can pretty much walk everywhere on the island, and you are never far from the water. The ocean was very "clean" looking, and had an amazing bright turquoise colour.
The fish market was the best thing to see. There were plenty of big fish to be seen, as opposed to smaller (boring) fish that I am used to seeing, like the ones we saw in Muscat.
They were taking these big fish (tuna?) right off the boat and piling them on the sidewalk. Then some men would come over, and argue a bit, and then take one of the fish over to the market.
Of course, eventually it came time to find some beer. It was recommended to me to head over to the airport island, where I would find a hotel with a pool and lounge. On the way, I walked along the shore, and was again impressed by the incredible colour of the water.
Even more cool was that in the water, right next to the shore, were a large variety of colourful tropical fish. This picture hardly gets the point across, but sheer number of fish was impressive.
At the pool lounge, a great time was had by all. I spent almost $200. Eventually, all the Canadians were invited to leave, and we were kicked off the island and sent back to our boat.
