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In Beautiful Muslim Maldives
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Pretty good day, excursion was a 45 minute submarine look at coral, fish, and eels. I chose this excursion to simulate the view you get from scuba diving, since we'll never scuba dive. It was okay, but there was an awful lot of waiting around and boat riding for the 20 minutes we got to sit in front of the coral--the other side of the sub got the other 20 minutes.
We also walked along the waterfront in Maldive, which was even more interesting. The country is wealthy and Muslim. The government buildings are elaborate, new, and expensive-looking. Everything they consume must be brought in by boat or air--there isn't any industry or agriculture. Of course, there's fishing. We went by the fish market in the early evening. The fishermen were selling from plastic clothes baskets or the granite tile floor in an open-air building. Some of the fish were still thrashing around. There were almost no local women in sight and I felt unsafe, or maybe I just felt a different kind of attitude towards women. Some of the local men wore wrap skirts that came down to their ankles with western-style casual shirts. They didn't have any underwear on (obvious from the back, the front had a double layer of cloth.)
The ship threw a deck party, the first of the cruise, with a huge buffet, lots of tables outside on the pool deck, and the band playing songs from the 50's and 60's. We did the twist but didn't win any contest, like the last time we did the twist, at Texas Tech when we took Jonathan and Sam. The ship was beautiful--they string lights across the top and down the front and back to the water line, so we look festive to other ships. I only noticed because another ship was also docked for the evening and they also looked festive. The ship can only do these outdoor dinners when we are docked for the evening. In this case, we cast off at 10PM.
We ate with 3 couples, two we'd met before. People here drink an awful lot. They either get much friendlier as the evening goes on, or they get really comatose. I'm usually stuck with the comatose ones as my dinner companions. Maybe that says more about me than about them.
We got more gossip about the other passengers last night at dinner. Lloyd is Dr Tinkle, 96 years young, and was a dentist. He's traveled on all the world cruises. He is a tiny little gnome and he often wears foreign costumes that I'm sure he acquired during his travels from real people, maybe as gifts. He is very cordial in the elevator or corridors when we meet him.
Usually passengers decorate their cabin doors, although we haven't seen any. This year someone stole a flag off the door of one of our dinner companions, and they heard of other petty theft from doors. Last year on the world cruise only 2 things disappeared: an IPOD and a diamond tennis bracelet, both of which could have been legitimately lost.
I'm pondering the meaning of life, being with all these people of leisure and wealth. It seems such a waste to travel like this, and yet there's really no other way I would be able to travel, with my health challenges. Many of the passengers have more serious health issues, such as impaired mobility, so I guess they're in the same boat. At least they make it to lectures and other daytime enrichment activities, while I'm still sleeping half the morning away. However, we are changing some of our excursion choices to be less "conspicuous consumption" and more simple tours of the cities we're visiting.
I don't think I've mentioned the way we move our clocks forward. On sea days, if necessary, we move our clocks ahead 30 minutes at 2 in the afternoon. This is a wonderful way to change time--better to lose daytime hours than sleep hours, and so great to do it in 30 minute increments. We should adopt this method at home. On the way back, I guess we'll gain time during the day.
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| 15. | In Beautiful Muslim Maldives - Male, Maldives Feb 18, 2007 (  1 ) |
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