Goodbye Thinadhoo, hello Male'!

4/02/2012

After living on Thinadhoo for a month, I can say there are a lot of things I won't miss... But there are also a lot of things I will miss, including:

• The stars
• Being surrounded by the most intense shades of blue water
• Call to prayer
• The children
• Having children call out, "Miss! Miss!" from at least 50 metres away
• The cheap milo
• The cheap food
• The generosity and friendliness of (most of) the locals
• The culture. Comparing life back in Australia to life here... So totally different.
• The marine life

We left Thinadhoo at around 11:30am and wasted a good few hours eating and playing Scattergories before our flight boarded at 2:20pm. The flight was fairly uneventful and seeing Thinadhoo and the many reefs from the air was great.

After landing and finally making it to our hotel on Hulhulmale' (not the hotel on the airport island - we thought something was wrong when we walked into a beautiful hotel lobby after being told that we were only paying $40 for the night) we caught a ferry over to Male' to check out the place and find dinner.

My first impression of Male' was chaos. The amount of bikes on the island is insane. One of the men from the hotel accompanied us as a guide. He ended up taking us to a souvenir place and a rather expensive restuarant. I have no idea how much money he thought we had, but he was greatly mistaken. We ended up having dinner at an Italian place. It was amazing.

We had been told to be on the ferry back to Hulhulmale' by 8:30pm due to the protests that had been occuring. Well, 8:30 came and went - we were still eating. By the time we got out of the restaurant it was 9:00pm. We didn't see any protests, but the army was driving around. Needless to say I was glad to get back on the ferry back to a hot shower and an air-conditioned room.