And, it's going fast and, I got a nautical theme...

I'm on a boat.

Yeah, it had to be said. Moving right along...

Vince bought some gummy bear-like candy he didn't like, so I now have two bags of them in my backpack (about a bag and a half left). Mikey and I also got some ice cream in the airport, which was a good decision. We went over to our gate, the plane didn't start boarding until probably 10 minutes after it was supposed to, but we got on, and I conked out for most of the flight. Landed in Colombo, that gate also took forever to get boarding, though at least I got to briefly check my e-mail first. From there we flew to Male, I sat between Matt and Mike which was... amusing, though they spent most of the flight with their headphones on, and I spent most of the time reading and writing stuff for Jake, Alex and Tay. Because I'm a geek. And oh, hey, there's food now, finish this in a little bit.

Friday, February 12th, roughly 1 PM local time

Restarting at 1:20...

OH WOW THAT WAS TASTY.

But, in sequence. So our plane to Male left late, it was waiting on a plane from Hong Kong, but we finally got into Male around 1 AM local time. (We went back half an hour to a reasonable time zone, now we're 10 hours ahead of home instead of 10.5.) We had to fill out arrival and departure cards, as per every other country, but this one had some extra warnings, like the prohibition of importing alcohol, “idols for worship,” and “items contrary to Islam.” That was uh, interesting. Went through passport control, which took a while, got our bags, customs didn't take long at all, and oh hey, THAT'S what 28 degrees Celsius and 90% humidity feels like. You learn something new every day.

We didn't know this was going to happen, but Saffah, our guide from Bluepeace Maldives, was there to meet us, which was great. We waited for everyone to get through customs and got onto a boat to head over to our hotel. Got off the boat, walked about a block, filled out some forms for the room, went upstairs, Mike showered, I showered, and let me just say. A western-style showerhead, with hot water and high pressure? It was beautiful. My last shower at Mussoorie was cold water out of a bucket.

I forgot to detail that. It's pretty common in Thailand and India, actually, you fill a bucket with water and there's a smaller bucket you use to pour it over yourself. Well at Mussoorie it was going to take ages to get hot water, and there was still some water left the last person hadn't used, so yeah. Cold water out of a bucket.

So I had an absolutely glorious hot shower and finally got to sleep probably between 3:30 and 4 AM. And woke up at 8:30 AM. Ugh. We went across the street, had a good breakfast of eggs, watermelon, pineapple, some little hot dog-like things, a small bowl of cereal and a meat and cheese sandwich, headed back to the hotel, found out there was actually free wireless, did that for maybe 30-40 minutes and it was time to go. We got downstairs, Saffah met Denny and told him to go over to the airport island and meet him there because it was less crowded. Well, we got over there and sat for a long time waiting, not sure what was up. The water here is absolutely BEAUTIFUL, by the way. Even when we got in last night, in the dark, you could see the bottom. Today you could see this stark divide, near the island it was sort of a light green-blue, and then there was a really stark divide, just a straight line, no gradient, and it went straight to a beautiful dark blue. In the artificial harbor on the airport island you could see little patches of various colors mixed in, it's really gorgeous.

Eventually Saffah met us, we got onto our boat that will be home, more or less, for the next four days, and away we went. The crew seems friendly. David and I talked about maps and things for a bit, I was filling out my little atlas with where all we've been. Nasseef, another guy from Bluepeace Maldives, is here with us. He taught me that that native language is Dihveli, Dihbeli, something like that, and how to say thank you. Apparently the language is a mix of Arabic and old Sanskrit. Then I started writing this and they had lunch.

Lunch was absolutely wonderful.

Some sort of fish sandwich in a roll, it had onions, something similar to caesar dressing, it was amazing. I had three, so good. Also watermelon and mango juice. I hope we eat this well every day. Now I'm just sitting in one of the lawn chairs typing on the coffee table. The boat's pretty great, the main deck has a couch, two coffee table-type things, three lawn chairs, and places to sit along the side, and then up top it's completely open and people are lounging out. I'm resisting the urge, mostly because my sunscreen is in my packed bag, not the backpack. I'm sure I'll have opportunity over the next few days.

Remember when I said the water en route to Koh Tao had a sort of gold-on-blue to it? There's something similar here, not all the time, but when the angle and the lighting is right. It's not gold though, almost a grey-blue, really like a metallic silver on top of the blue of the ocean. Again, it's absolutely beautiful, and again, I'm not sure the English language really has a good word for it.

Sea legs are gonna take a while.

Finished about 1:35 PM local time