Dear Diary - Day 7

Well, we said we'd do it and we did. I'm no Jacques Cousteau but with my little old Ixus even I managed to capture a few fish! A great day! This place is nothing less than awesome!

It's boiling hot! I have purchased something called "Ocean Potion" to relieve the pain. It claims to have stuff called lidocaine in it. Sounds promising. If it doesn't work for my sunburn I could try snorting it or rubbing it on my gums and pulling my last few teeth out with a pair of pliers.

We're about to retire to the Grill Bar to watch the sunset, have a few ice cold beers and we might even hang around for the Spanish Evening and the Return of the Ruskies... In the meantime, whilst we're in the realms of Natural History, here's a gecko and a fruit bat....

And so, without any further ado... it's magic wristband time!

Heading for Half Way...

We lost another day today… we should have known better, but no, not us wise old birds. Our mothers used to make sure that we were adequately protected from the sun when we were kids, but now, in the full bloom of middle age, here we are… cerise… or crimson… or whatever the fluorescent equivalent of fire engine red is called. It’s certainly more angry than pink and it bloody hurts like hell.

Having booked to have a two-therapist ‘Chavana Massage’ yesterday in the glow of rude health, we sheepishly crawled back to the Chavana Spa this morning and apologized to the lovely Chinese lady with whom we had made the booking. We explained that, given our radiant agony, a two-therapist massage would probably feel similar to having knitting needles poked in our eyes. To emphasise the point I dropped a demure off the shoulder reveal. Bless her… apart from covering her mouth with her hand and taking two steps back, she seemed to be sympathetic.

A point to note is that the Ayurveda Indian health place with all that weird shit that I was quite looking forward to has been replaced with the Chavana Chinese health place. I guess they get more Chinese visitors than Indian visitors. But as we’re all human beings I cannot understand how one person’s health regime should be any more, or less, beneficial than another’s. I have drunk beer around the globe and I can honestly say that the effect is consistent. On the other hand, I suppose that the consequences have been radically different.

In an attempt to dull the stinging pain, and disappointed that we had cocked up our two-therapist massage opportunity, we fell back upon our magic wristbands. They have more magical powers than even I imagined and here I am in the late evening air, downloading video files and image files; listening to music and typing this nonsense.

The second tragedy of the day is that the video camera’s lens shutter has stopped functioning and half-closes at a jaunty angle. A tug with Sims’ eyebrow tweezers didn’t do the trick. It has probably got sand in it… bugger.

We took a walk along the jetty this morning and watched loads of fabulously coloured fish doing what fish do. This place kicks Oasis Tropical Fish Shop in Salford into touch. These boys are heeeeeowge! Well, perhaps not to someone who wears breathing tanks and wrist computers and stuff… but they are impressive to me. We saw a turtle… or a mobile rock… or a stonefish… or something that looked like a stone and moved. Tomorrow we have decided to go snorkeling to try to get up close and personal. That should be a laugh.

For lunch we had fish and chips. Chung’s Chinky Chippy on Oldfield Road would put them to shame in a television cook-off. You’d think that, being a nation of people floating on little bits of sand surrounded by sea, they’d have the art of cooking fish down to a fine art. Apparently not. The only fish they seem to eat is Tuna. And deep fried Tuna is like chewing on deep fried tyre rubber. Thank God we didn’t come here for the food!

We had an amusing incident tonight when a group of five brick-shithouse Ruskies with their five corpulent wives and thrice as many kids turned up at the bar for the “Spanish Evening” which, apparently happens tomorrow night. Through the obvious anger, the vitriolic shouting and the children running about like their arses were on fire, the poor people who had paid $214 for a “Romantic Lobster Dinner” sat quietly staring at their candlelit romantic lobsters. It was made all the funnier because the Sri Lankan and Maldivian staff obviously didn’t speak Ruskie and the Ruskies didn’t speak anything but Ruskie. There was a lot of pointing at the scabby bit of laminated paper that says what happens where and when. In the end the Ruskies left in disgust. The lobsters held hands, kissed gently and then got eaten.

And so, on that high note, I shall drink the last beer in the non-all-inclusive and damn expensive minibar and join my goodly woman who is asleep and glowing like one of those kids who used to advertise a particular brand of breakfast cereal. 

The End of Another Day...

The days seem to be moving too
quickly. Another evening draws in. After a great deal of linguistic shenanigans I hope that we have beer in our minibar tonight. In the meantime here we sit...



Waiting for our non-all-inclusive steaks. It's $15 for a steak and $214 for a romantic lobster dinner. It's probably that expensive because they have to identify particularly romantic lobsters and, let's face it, that cannot be an easy task...

Dear Diary - Day 6

It’s a bit disappointing coming to the Maldives and being inundated with rain, but just as surely as something is biting my legs, this place is Paradise. So far we’ve had two sunny days… and that has got to be better than Salford.

I know that people on Trip Advisor go on about the number of stars Meedhupparu claims to have, and just how unworthy it is of the stash of sticky-backed gold nursery school accolades it proudly advertises. But, in my experience, a five star hotel in Moghadishu has all the trappings of a 1-star Bangkok brothel. I couldn’t really care how many bloody stars it has; but rather that it gives us what we’re looking for. And this place does. In buckets.

It’s certainly not a gastronomic wonderland; but cooking for 400 people of mixed origin cannot be easy. The food is edible, and apart from seeing one cockroach in a salad we have had no cause to complain. We didn’t actually complain about the cockroach; Sims just said to one of the servers… “… There’s a cockroach in your salad.” They acted promptly and swapped the salads around. And the cockroach went on an all-expenses paid holiday to somewhere else.

There’s an interesting mix of people here on Meedhupparu. Mostly Germans, Russians and Chinese.

The Germans are, pretty much, stereotypical. “Two Beers!’. Without as much as a please or a thank you…  we’ve paid to run away from Angela Merkel’s Europe so that we can treat people like shit. We like doing that. We have heritage in that department. And we’re doing that here… Which is stupid really when you think that the only engine-powered vehicle on the island is a Toyota flat bed with no doors. They can’t exactly say “…We make the BMW and the Mercedes Benz”.  Well they could, but nobody would understand what the hell they were on about.

The Russians appear to be on some obscure, but obviously dangerous, KGB mission; fuelled by alcohol and memories of The Battle of Stalingrad. However they are, generally, tempered by their exceedingly large wives. In tight-fitting bathing suits. Apart from the Russian prostitutes who pose in their lurid bikinis for photographs that Ivor will not dare show his mum back home in Vladivostok.

The Chinese are great. Firstly, they don’t drink. That’s a bonus as far as the hotel is concerned. Secondly, they are sartorially interesting. We spent an afternoon watching a young girl parading around in her wedding frock having her photograph taken by, one assumes, her new husband. This was followed by a neoprene diving suit shoot, an evening-wear shoot and then a shoot that involved a rather large pink wide-brimmed hat. Thirdly, and finally, they have all the kit. Cameras with lenses the size of Linford Christie. Plastic coral walking shoes. Embroidered his and hers shirts. White gloves. Anti-smoking paper breathing masks. The lot.

The live entertainment here is fantastic; if you like listening to a Chinese girl in her forties giving it her all to an empty auditorium.  I was half expecting a chorus line of Russian prostitutes in sequined g-strings and feather boas giving it ‘tits and teeth’ but no, we got Sing Sing doing what her name suggests - to an electronic backing track and an empty dancefloor. Poor girl. I could propose that it’s because the area surrounding the stage is the non-smoking section, but I’d be on shaky ground. If “Live Entertainment” is the holiday deal-breaker…. Go to Skeggie or Blackpool.

And we’re only on Day 6!

Tonight, as we casually entered the dining hall we were met by a team of people wearing joke shop masks and bed linen. The floor of the hall was decked with leaves, twigs and those fruit things that cripple you if you stand on them in bare feet. As I did. An Asian DJ was playing Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”…. over and over and over again. Aha! Of course! It’s Halloween…

… in truth it appeared to be a great gig for the table waiting staff who, devoid of their uniforms and with their faces masked,  could pull whatever kind of shit they wanted to on the unsuspecting guest. Our waiter, a rather charming gorilla with a white face, was as attendant as ever although the misalignment of the mask and his eyes meant that service was a little bit like being in a 1960’s drug movie.

So, after the hallucinogenic episode that was dinner, we went to watch the “Fish Feeding”. (21h00 every night… North Jetty… Be There!) And, after a lot of persuasion from Sims, I finally acknowledged that the thing that looked like a black “Creepy Crawly” swimming pool cleaner was, in fact, a manta ray. Bloody hell; they’re impressive things. In a dark, wide, and very flat kind of way. Not good stock for a chip shop I’ll suggest.

Without my trusty watch, and not having worn shoes for a few days, I am getting vaguely confused. What with the magic wristband I am, truly, in heaven. I have just realised that in every shot in this post there is a beer. Proof of the magic wristband at work. 

As I sit here in the dark, radiating heat from my bright red shoulders and legs, I can honestly say that this is the best place I have ever been to in my whole life. All that’s missing is a barbeque, some A-Grade meat, and a bit of charcoal…

And if one more fat balding pale person in long trousers says to me “…well this isn’t as good as Fuckinshuhuru where I went with Barbara two years’ ago.” I’ll shove a bottle of all-inclusive house vodka up their rusty starfish.

Dear Diary- Day 5

Morale still high. Despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that we grew up in a country where the sun shines, when it popped it's head out this morning we were off like a couple of Jewish foreskins at a bris.


The consequences of this madness are bright pink lines on Simsie's bum (despite the factor 1000 sunblock). I am sitting in the bar radiating more warmth than a three bar electric heater.

But, I went snorkelling and, surprise of surprises, saw fish! The fab thing, to a tropical paradise Luddite like me, was that I was in about 2 meters of water and 20 meters from the dry bit! This is truly paradise! Well, not like I'd like to spend eternity with fish, but hopefully you'll grasp the sentiment.

Perhaps this deep joy that I'm feeling has something to do with my level of expectation. I'm still in awe of the magic wristband that even got me a couple of beers in the swimming pool this afternoon.

One simply swims up to a counter and says "I'd like a beer please" and 'Shazam!' there one is. The challenge is to stop it getting contaminated with chlorine and urine.

I gave "our" barman (how very all- inclusive) a tenner tonight for serving me four beers after the magic wristband turns into a mouse's tail at midnight. He's a nice chap from Sri Lanka.

I must admit, the number of staff who say hello to you is, in my global experience, so prolific as to suggest that it is a part of their induction and that any staff member caught not saying hello and grinning will be fired, or shot, or both.

Tomorrow is only Day 6. As we sit here in the bar the approaching sky is black. There's another mother of a storm coming and, hopefully, it'll blow itself over by morning.

Right then, it's my turn to go to the bar... Magic wristband to the ready? Let's go....