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All posts for the month February, 2018

Maldives

Posted by Jim St. George on February 11, 2018
Posted in: Asia, Maldives. 3 comments

A selfie in the unbelievable water of the Maldives. Think we’re having fun?

Mark & I both observed that going into our six nights in the Maldives we felt as though we were kind of “checking off a box,” as in you have to go there at some point and since Sri Lanka is the closest country might as well do it now. It’s not that we weren’t looking forward to it, it was just that it seemed unlikely we were going to be that excited by it. Six nights later and it may now rank as the most fantastic, beautiful, perfect resort we’ve ever stayed at. That’s saying something. If you’re fortunate enough to travel in tropical islands – the Caribbean, the Greek islands, whatever – you’re always looking for that beach that’s just like you see them in the travel magazines. We found it.

Our own kind of semi-private beach with a little path headed up to our stunning suite

First, you have to acknowledge that the resorts here are ridiculously expensive. We did the whole six nights on Hyatt points earned long ago, staying at their Park Hyatt, the top property in their chain. Even with free lodging, though, we knew it was going to be an expensive stay; when you’re captive on an island like that (the Park Hyatt has the entire island; there’s literally nothing else there) you pay top dollar for food and drinks. And to make it worse the Maldives is a seriously Moslem country where alcohol is banned for those entering the country. That ban is lifted in resorts so you can drink, but only what they sell you at their prices. So yeah, expensive even if the room is free.

But wow, was it worth it. It started good enough, with a weekly manager’s Happy Hour on our first night that included free drinks for an hour or so along with local entertainment. We had an entry-level room and it was beautiful. On the second day, though, we were told that they were going to upgrade us the next day to a suite, a two-bedroom place with a veranda, private pool, and semi-private beach. Wow, wow! We’re not sure why us (it could have been random, or it might have been related to a certain staff person who seemed to really like having a gay couple staying there…) but now we were living large.

Mark sitting under the covered veranda on a day that was on-and-off rainy with our private pool. Sweet!

What do you do at a luxury resort on the most beautiful tropical island we’ve ever seen? Not a lot. Reading, sunbathing, swimming, napping … that’s about it. Even on the one day it rained, pretty much all day, you could sit in luxury and just drink it all in. In an unusual twist we made a bunch of friends. Our experience is that the more expensive and exclusive a resort the less likely you are to meet people; you have more space to yourself and people just stay apart. Here, though, the bar was a lively place through the afternoon and evening. Several people at least had “all you can drink” packages and some of them took good advantage of it. In our case the resort also allows you to buy an “unlimited” package on a daily basis and, as the price was less than the cost of wine with meals plus a cocktail each, we bit.

So we met James & Lidia, a fun couple from London on their slightly delayed honeymoon. Our little friendship didn’t start so well when James, an investment banker of some sort and heir of some sort, claimed to be a big fan of both Donald Trump and Brexit. Mark tactfully called him a damned idiot and then we got along great. Joe & Cassie were a fun couple from Australia who just happened to share the names of a great-great-uncle and aunt whom I remember fondly from my childhood. Probably best of all were Chas & Patty, a great semi-retired couple from St. Louis; inveterate travelers and very much on our side in the Trump flare-ups. Late in the stay we met Eran and Rhianna, a young Manhattan couple escaping the New York winter. Oh, and you can’t forget the Turkish dentist. Actually, we never talked with him and in fact I’m not sure he even spoke English (and I’m sure I don’t speak Turkish). You couldn’t miss him though, a big, bulky, heavy-set, unattractive guy who spent a week there with someone who sure seemed like a hooker. And in fact Joe said one of the staff people told him “Yeah, he comes here every so often with another one.” Colorful!

Entertainment on our first night. That’s the beautiful Cassie in the blue dress with her husband Joe taking the picture.

OK, though, back to the islands. Some interesting things about the Maldives. With fewer than half a million residents, it has the smallest population in all of Asia and is also the smallest in terms of land area. At the same time it is remarkably dispersed, with the northernmost island some 530 miles from the southernmost. As a result it’s not easy to get around: from Colombo we flew into Malé, the capital, caught a connecting flight about ninety minutes south, and then caught a boat for about 45 minutes to the resort.

En route to our island paradise

Two other quirks. The country is the world’s lowest, with an average elevation of just five feet above sea level and it also has the lowest high point of any country in the world, just under eight feet. (Quick quiz: if the Maldives is the country with the world’s lowest high point, what country has the world’s highest low point? Give up? Lesotho, in Southern Africa, a country we went to way back in late 2000.)

A picture of one of those Maldive bats – an Indian Flying Fox they’re sometimes called – we cadged from the Internet

And then there’s the time zone weirdness. The Maldives are pretty much directly south of Mumbai (and just barely north of the equator) and when we got to Malé we were in the time zone Mumbai would be in if India didn’t do that weird half-hour thing. Easy enough. When we got to the Park Hyatt, though, the clock had moved an hour forward even though we’d gone almost directly south. What’s that all about? Turns out resorts in the Maldives get to set their own time zone and they typically like to move the clock ahead an hour so sunsets are at the more civilized time of 7:00 PM rather than 6:00. Odd to give resorts such sovereign authority but they were right; it was nice for the sun to rise and set a bit later.

OK, one more last thing about the Maldives. Bats. You wouldn’t believe it. They’re the biggest bats I’ve ever seen, maybe the size of a crow or something. But when you see them flying – and they fly all over, all the time – they are indisputably bats. Ugly, scary damned things, probably five or six times the size of the bats I used to hate back in Minnesota. One night Mark wanted to take a bath in a beautiful outdoor tub we had but the bats were so heavy right over him he had to get out lest one somehow fell on him.

As always, though, our week in paradise came to a close. Of course, other people leave the resort and go back to work; we’re off to Thailand for four weeks. Nothing to complain about there. To our surprise, though, we think we’re pretty likely to come back to the Maldives some day. Far from just checking off a country we absolutely loved it here.

Sunset

A little later the same evening. Those are the over-water bungalows, a lot more expensive than most units but I can’t imagine I would like them any better than the suite we had.

The next day stormy weather blew in but it really didn’t hamper our little holiday one bit

The big public beach, where on many nights they serve a romantical dinner under the stars to some lucky couple

Our beach chairs

Mark out in the water

Jim out in the water

Our pool and veranda with just a little raindrop or two

Nothing to complain about when you pay for the entry-level room and they give you this

The main pool wasn’t too shabby

Palm trees

And finally one memorable meal. On our second night we chatted a bit with the chef and learned he’s from Armenia. “Oh,” Mark says, “We love Armenian food!” So the chef says fine, he’ll cook us an Armenian meal the next night if we want it. We did. Great grilled meats and absolutely stunning veggies. That’s service!

Bentota

Posted by Jim St. George on February 5, 2018
Posted in: Asia, Sri Lanka. Leave a Comment

Here I am at Rana Seafood Restaurant, just a few steps outside our hotel grounds. We were up on the second floor, after crossing the railroad tracks you see in the background. The food was pretty good, the price was pretty good, and the setting was delightful.

Our (nearly) last stop in Sri Lanka was the tiny little town of Bentota, midway between Galle & Colombo, where finally we had a pretty good beach experience. Our hotel – Vivanta by Taj – was at the end of a small road and then up on a bit of a hill. The result was that the pool and all that had nice views over the beach but, if you wanted to, you could go down to a big, wide, beautiful beach. Unlike further south where we’d been the water here was swimmable without too much danger. So Mark & I both spent a bit of time, finally, in the Indian Ocean.

Here I am down on the beach. As you can see it’s a huge beach and I was pretty much on my own. I love sitting like that with a good book! Unfortunately there were tiny, tiny little bugs that must have been three-quarters teeth. They didn’t bother me too much at the time; they were so small you could just ignore them. Five days later, though, I’m still scratching them like crazy.

Otherwise, besides pool and beach, this was a quiet stop. We discovered two nice restaurants just outside the hotel grounds which is always a plus; the food is better than what you’ll get at the hotel and significantly cheaper. Sadly, though, we were there during the full moon. Here’s whats weird about that: in Sri Lanka, full moon days are public holidays known as “Poya.” Shops are closed, which is fine. Horrifically, though, the sale of alcohol is prohibited, even in restaurants. Fortunately we knew about this in advance and had gone into town the day before to buy some wine and then ordered room service in a room that was big enough it had a sitting/eating area. With advance planning like that it sure seems as though Mark & I could survive in the wilderness if we needed to.

Mark with our room service Indian meal and the prized bottle of wine on Poya. Note that Boston Bear joined us that evening.

After three days in Bentota, then, we hired a car to drive us up to an airport hotel near Colombo for a very early flight the next day to the Maldives. Two things about that stand out. First, we asked at the hotel about hiring a car; they quoted us a price of $110 USD. That was insane, well more than twice what we’d paid for any other transfer in Sri Lanka and this was a pretty short drive. I went out of the hotel, then, to hire our own car and the first guy quoted a price of about $50 as his first (high) offer. It pissed us off to have the hotel try to rip us off like that.

And then when we made it up to the airport hotel they’d upgraded us to a suite which was as big and nice as nearly any room we’ve had in a few years. Strange to have that experience at an airport hotel. Finally, let me add how much we loved Sri Lanka, just a real paradise. Beaches, highlands, culture – we saw it all in our three weeks here. We have this sense that in a couple of years Sri Lanka will be a major tourist destination, so get here fast before it changes too much!

View of the ocean from the pool area. Not a bad place to hang out.

And indeed, that’s where Mark spent much of his time

How’s that for a beautiful beach?

Meanwhile, back at Rana Seafood Restaurant, the train makes its way leisurely up toward Colombo

Dinner at Malli’s Seafood was also up on the second floor, also right next to the train tracks where local trains entertained us coming and going

And a final shot from Malli’s. When you sat down they brought this coconut bread, some fresh tomatoes marinated in something-or-other, and the incredible melted butter and garlic. We usually avoid bread but this was absolutely worth an exception in our diet. Wow!

Galle

Posted by Jim St. George on February 2, 2018
Posted in: Asia, Sri Lanka, UNESCO World Heritage Site. 2 comments

The remaining walls around Galle’s Fort

From the bliss of Tangalle it was a couple hours northwest along the coast to Galle (pronounced gawl, or something like that), the capital of Sri Lanka’s Southern Province. Back in the day it was Portugal’s major port on the island and is still an important port for Sri Lankan trade. Perhaps just as important for today Galle has become something of an art center for the country; the day we arrived, in fact, was the closing day of some poetry festival.

Like so much of Sri Lanka, Galle bears signs of its long colonial experience, from the Portuguese to the Dutch to the English. The major stamp of that colonialism in Galle is the Fort, a World Heritage Site and the largest remaining fortress built by Europeans in all of Asia. The Fort was built on a promontory surrounded on three sides by the Indian Ocean. Today it is full of boutique hotels and restaurants and art galleries and all those things that tourists love. For me the best part was that in 45 minutes or an hour you could walk along the ramparts and watch Sri Lanka – and plenty of Western tourists – pass by.

Colonial architecture in the Fort

I somehow had the sense that this was a beach destination but I quickly learned that wasn’t at all true; this is a town for art and hanging out. Unfortunately there wasn’t really a lot to do here. The architecture in the Fort was interesting and the whole area had a nice vibe to it, but that takes a couple hours to experience.

The good news was that the hotel where we were staying had a relationship with a resort a bit north of the main town where we could go for the day. A big pool and right on the coast. As with Tangalle it wasn’t a place to swim; the currents are too strong and dangerous. But for the hours between breakfast and late afternoon a perfectly pleasant place to lounge. And to our surprise and delight the poolside restaurant was exceptional, exceptionally rare for a place like that but a welcome exception.

Mark lazing out on the coast. Not the best beach in the world (or particularly close…) but pleasant enough.

One more stop in Sri Lanka – this time a place that should actually have a beach for swimming – and then we’re off to the Maldives. Now that’s exciting.

Notwithstanding all the tourism and emphasis on the arts, Galle is definitely still a working port. The good news for us is that the fish you get in restaurants is wonderfully fresh and pretty inexpensive.

And of course very much a Buddhist country

More of the walkable ramparts around the Fort

The grounds and a corner of what was a huge pool at the resort we retired to for the day. We thought it strange that they didn’t landscape the pool area at all, but with the loungers and umbrellas all oriented toward the sea that worked just fine for us, too.

Our first night we went to the bar first and then the restaurant at an Aman Hotel just up the street from ours. Aman is one of the most expensive, exclusive hotel brands and we’d read good things about the bar. Sadly, the bar you see here was lovely but certainly didn’t live up to my expectations. The martini was small, weak, and not very cold. Sad indeed.