rain rain go away...
7:30 am
i'm sitting the my hotel lobby waiting for my escort to the boat and man is it coming down. i'm talking buckets. i asked the guy at the front counter if he knew what the weather was supposed to be like and he had no clue. sometimes it rains and then midday it could stop and be calm and sunny and then it could start raining again. totally unpredictible. i love the tropics.
i was hoping to hear the morning call to prayer like i did when i was here last year... suddenly erupting from the darkness and filling the thick morning air with solemnity. no dice. i'm beginning to realize how many preconceived notions i have of this place based on my last experience here. how it's influencing my opinions and expectations. gotta let go of that. i mean, it's natural, i suppose, but that was then and this is so completely now.
dhivehi vocabulary:
shukuria - thank you
bar haba - you're welcome
9:30 am
hasan picked me up from the hotel and accomapnied me to the water taxi that would bring me to the handhufalhi. i don't think he completely recognized me at first but when i reminded him of our time together exploring malé on his motorcycle he seemed to recall. poor guy had just been to india to get some gallstones removed. i guess that's what you do when you live here and you need surgery - go to india. anyhow, it was so good to see him again.
the handhufalhi is small which is fine by me - 5 cabins, realtively small dining area, large upper deck. i was told that there's only going to be 8 of us on board for the week. we're waiting for 5 more to arrive - no idea when that will be. so far i've met bruce and nicole who are dutch, i believe, and live in bangkok. really interesting people. bruce just finished up a 3 year contract with the u.n. doing hiv prevention work in bangkok. nicole teaches dutch and english also in bangkok. they just came from another liveaboard trip in the similan islands off thailand which they said was amazing. they filled my head with more amazing places to visit - similan, sipadan (off the n.e. coast of borneo), a particular wreck dive off eastern bali... there are so many places in the world i want to see. now that i'm diving that list of places just seems to keep growing. so far, of our crew, i've only met falah, one of the boat hands. real quiet guy but he seems nice. i'm looking forward to meeting everyone. with only 8 people and a week at sea we'll probably get to know each other pretty well.
for some reason i have a feeling that this boat trip will test my seaworthiness (knock knock). the waters where we're moored right now are alittle choppy and i'm already beginning to get just a twinge of disorientation. hope my sealegs find me soon. if not, at least i have bonine to help me.
7:45 pm
lazy day today... no diving. we're moored just outside of malé waiting on the last of the guests. i guess they're arriving tonight and will get to the boat around midnight. then we spend the night here - dive boats aren't allowed to sail at night for safety reasons (shallow water, visibility) and set out first thing in the morning. kinda sucks that we essentially missed out on an entire day of diving but since the weather was so poor i have a feeling that we didn't really miss much.
we went into malé today for a couple of hours. i love that city. a lot of business were closed because of the religious holiday. after hajj (the yearly time of pilgrimage to mecca) there are 3 or 4 days of celebration where a lot of people go home to be with family. still, there were a lot if people milling about in malé. we visited a couple of dive stores, went to the fish market, visited the shop that runs the dive tour for this boat. had a great time. our dive master ayya tells me that the people that work in malé travel up to 12 hrs by boat from their island to get there and that housing in malé is so expensive that you normally see 4-6 people living in 1 room which goes for USD200/month. good wage here is USD240-280/ month. so in order to work and live in malé you need to have lots of roomates to be able to save anything.
apparently last week a group of 11 whale sharks were spotted. which is great news but guarantees nothing. still, it's nice to know they're around. hope springs eternal! so now we're all inside while the rain pours down outside (and it's really coming down). i hope it clears up in the coming days.
i'm sitting the my hotel lobby waiting for my escort to the boat and man is it coming down. i'm talking buckets. i asked the guy at the front counter if he knew what the weather was supposed to be like and he had no clue. sometimes it rains and then midday it could stop and be calm and sunny and then it could start raining again. totally unpredictible. i love the tropics.
i was hoping to hear the morning call to prayer like i did when i was here last year... suddenly erupting from the darkness and filling the thick morning air with solemnity. no dice. i'm beginning to realize how many preconceived notions i have of this place based on my last experience here. how it's influencing my opinions and expectations. gotta let go of that. i mean, it's natural, i suppose, but that was then and this is so completely now.
dhivehi vocabulary:
shukuria - thank you
bar haba - you're welcome
9:30 am
hasan picked me up from the hotel and accomapnied me to the water taxi that would bring me to the handhufalhi. i don't think he completely recognized me at first but when i reminded him of our time together exploring malé on his motorcycle he seemed to recall. poor guy had just been to india to get some gallstones removed. i guess that's what you do when you live here and you need surgery - go to india. anyhow, it was so good to see him again.
the handhufalhi is small which is fine by me - 5 cabins, realtively small dining area, large upper deck. i was told that there's only going to be 8 of us on board for the week. we're waiting for 5 more to arrive - no idea when that will be. so far i've met bruce and nicole who are dutch, i believe, and live in bangkok. really interesting people. bruce just finished up a 3 year contract with the u.n. doing hiv prevention work in bangkok. nicole teaches dutch and english also in bangkok. they just came from another liveaboard trip in the similan islands off thailand which they said was amazing. they filled my head with more amazing places to visit - similan, sipadan (off the n.e. coast of borneo), a particular wreck dive off eastern bali... there are so many places in the world i want to see. now that i'm diving that list of places just seems to keep growing. so far, of our crew, i've only met falah, one of the boat hands. real quiet guy but he seems nice. i'm looking forward to meeting everyone. with only 8 people and a week at sea we'll probably get to know each other pretty well.
for some reason i have a feeling that this boat trip will test my seaworthiness (knock knock). the waters where we're moored right now are alittle choppy and i'm already beginning to get just a twinge of disorientation. hope my sealegs find me soon. if not, at least i have bonine to help me.
7:45 pm
lazy day today... no diving. we're moored just outside of malé waiting on the last of the guests. i guess they're arriving tonight and will get to the boat around midnight. then we spend the night here - dive boats aren't allowed to sail at night for safety reasons (shallow water, visibility) and set out first thing in the morning. kinda sucks that we essentially missed out on an entire day of diving but since the weather was so poor i have a feeling that we didn't really miss much.
we went into malé today for a couple of hours. i love that city. a lot of business were closed because of the religious holiday. after hajj (the yearly time of pilgrimage to mecca) there are 3 or 4 days of celebration where a lot of people go home to be with family. still, there were a lot if people milling about in malé. we visited a couple of dive stores, went to the fish market, visited the shop that runs the dive tour for this boat. had a great time. our dive master ayya tells me that the people that work in malé travel up to 12 hrs by boat from their island to get there and that housing in malé is so expensive that you normally see 4-6 people living in 1 room which goes for USD200/month. good wage here is USD240-280/ month. so in order to work and live in malé you need to have lots of roomates to be able to save anything.
apparently last week a group of 11 whale sharks were spotted. which is great news but guarantees nothing. still, it's nice to know they're around. hope springs eternal! so now we're all inside while the rain pours down outside (and it's really coming down). i hope it clears up in the coming days.
posted by michael | 9:42 PM
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