The Maldives

Finally we've left India, all absolutely exhausted, feel dead.  It's finally a relief to be somewhere more comfortable and easy to manage.  In my opinion, 4 weeks in India is too long, even if you're staying at nice places.  So, here we are in the Maldives, blue water, clear sky.  It's a long chain of islands made up of atolls which are speckled with coral reefs and on each individual island there is a resort.

  The Maldives is a tourist friendly place where each resort is geared to having people from other countries visit.  Everything is super expensive and so you have to be careful in what you buy, even to the point of starving yourself in the resort you're at.  For example, a meal in India for 4 people in an expensive place, could be $25 while a meal in the Maldives for 4 people, could be $180.

  People from all around the world visit the Maldives, but particularly honeymooners.  At our resort, it is mostly Chinese and Korean couples.  They're all very nervous in the water and won't go in without a life jackets and full wet suits.  They tend to have easily upset stomachs on boats.  We were on a boat with about 20 other people and we saw at least 8 people throwing up and everyone else looked queesy.  There was a container in the corner of the boat where you could deposit your sick bag once you had used it.  About 3/4 of the way through, it filled up and it was probably an 8 gallon container!  Some British, Germans and Russians come to the Maldives and seem to not have any trouble in this department!

                                          Star shaped shell that we found on the reef.