Blogs from Maldives, Asia - page 12

As well as being a divers dream and a great place to snorkel the atoll is a pretty good place for all sorts of other water sports too....... read more

So this summer we are spread out all over the place - Cob is is Romania and has been there for a couple of weeks. He's working for a charity helping to build orphanages. He is in a remote part of the country without phone and Internet. Josh embarks today on a month long tour of Europe with his friends from college. He is aiming to hit the main music festivals in Belgium Netherlands and Germany before returning via Austria, Switzerland and France. No doubts lots of music and drink over the next 30 days especially as he celebrates his 19th birthday on 19 August. In the meantime we are in Machchafushi in the South Ari atoll of the Maldives. It is certainly everything you expect it to be. Landing at Male airport gives you an ... read more

Our team has been warmly welcomed in the Maldives. We have been treated with the utmost care and respect and we feel so grateful to be here! Just when we thought we couldn't feel more honored, we were invited to have dinner with the President at the presidential palace. We were informed that we are the first group that has been brought inside the palace by the current president! We truly felt very special. We spoke for a long while with the President and his wife, Madame Ilham, about the mission of Knowledge for People and how our training here is helping their country. The following day we continued our training. The 35 teachers and 20 parents have been working so hard with us. Eight days of training for 6 hours each day is not easy ... read more

Much snorkelling and book reading we did Staying in a tourist resort is not something we usually do when we are on holiday. In March, when we went to the Maldives, we made an exception though. When we started planning this trip we came up with the idea of going to both Sri Lanka and the Maldives. In the 10 days we had to our disposal we would be able to see enough of the Maldives that we don't have to return there in the foreseeable future and also get a glimpse of what Sri Lanka has to offer. When we read about the Maldives we soon realised that there is very little to see in the country and staying in a tourist resort would probably be the best option for us. The resort we stayed ... read more

Well, just when you thought a rest day would be dull with nothing to write about, along comes a dastardly cone snail to spice the day up! During one of our perambulations along the surf Sue bends down to pick up an interesting shell when she realizes it's occupied. Luckily she did as I recognised it as a cone snail. I won't bore you with details (but if you're interested then google away!) Basically they harpoon their prey, injecting a deadly poison to boot! This can be (depending on species) deadly to humans too (1000 times more powerful than morphine - at least you won't feel anything !) it's also known as the cigarette snail because that's the only thing you'd have time for before you expired! Suffice to say we looked more closely where we ... read more