Male, Maldives and Kuda Bandos Island 3-29-10

Hundreds of tiny islands spread over 26 atolls, sitting on top of, or REALLY near the equator, The Maldives. The capital city is Male. It is an island city totally surrounded by a concrete retaining wall. That comes in handy for tsunamis! The highest point above sea level can't be more than 5 feet. It is LOW and very vulnerable to storms. The tsunami in 2006, took out many resorts that have not been rebuilt. The global economic crisis has affected the Maldives as well.
The Country is 99% water and 99% Muslim.
You really don't see women walking in the streets of Male. We saw one. When we got off the "tendor" to go to our boat that was taking us to Kuda Bandos, an uninhabited island, we saw many men/boys hanging out. The intense heat makes for slow moving people and they crowd around shade trees. The thought of women having to have their bodies covered head to toe made you want to melt. We were able to avoid this "rule" because we only went onto Male for a few minutes and then boarded our small boat to the island for a half a day of snorkeling and exploring. To explore Kuda Bandos Island, you don't need much. It takes maybe 12 minutes to walk around the entire island. The water. Can you imagine severe clear? That is what it was. So clear you could see forever down and you really thought you were in shallow water! The reef there is very easy to swim to and just beyond the reef the ocean floor drops for many feet, but still clear.
The young man in the photos with us is John Cooney, originally from Birmingham, Alabama! He is on the ship with his jewelry line. It is called Forbidden City. He has studied all over and speaks 7 languages! We have enjoyed visiting with him and his jewelry is more like art than jewelry.
They had a sundowners on the ship before we left the Maldives and as you can tell it was crazy windy! The sunsets are a blaze of red and orange. We have 2 and a half sea days before we reach The Seychelles. We are crossed the equator last evening, so the heat continues. We will be in warm/hot climate for the rest of our trip.
We do have sunscreen, thank goodness. The mention in an earlier blog about getting sunburned was absolutely true. Kathleen wanted to "get some sun". We went to the pool for the very first time and stayed 45 minutes. In 45 minutes we were able to roast. She bought a jade cross necklace in Vietnam. She had it on that day. You may be able to see that cross on her neckline for quite a while!

Penang, Malaysia 3-25-10

Apologies for duplications of pictures. The internet is so slow and it is too difficult to go in and delete them right now. I will clean it up when we are in the USA.
We also toured a village. There are some pictures of a typical home on stilts. They use the underneath area for storage and eating and sleeping in hammocks. We also saw rubber trees and the man at the herbal hut "tapped" the tree for us and let us roll the liquid rubber in the palms of our hands and it actually rolls up like a bouncy ball. They had the large hand presses to make large rubber mats there as well.




































































Penang. Who knew it was our Captain's favorite port! Too late for us to know. Guess we will have to go back. Seems that the Chinatown here is the most authentic Chinatown in the world, even in China!!! This is where the first Chinese settled in Malaysia.
Since we did not know to go to Chinatown, we went to the Snake Temple, via the Batik factory that we saw in 2007 and a stop at an herbalist man's hut along the roadside. We bought Penang Clove Oil that is good for Rheumatism, backache, Insect bites, Lumbago, Stiff neck, Muscle Pain, Swelling, Bruises, Sprains, and TOOTHACHE!! The toothache is what sold us! Remember the teeth problems we had in 2009??
We toured a typical Malaysian village and then hit the road to the snake temple. The snakes are sedated from the incense they burn and should not bite...we hope! Kathleen was the only one in our family that would don the snakes! It was just awful, you can imagine the sweaty palms we had while the snakes were crawling on her! YIKES!! When in Rome?? Does this really apply here? Not really. They even had snakes in the trees that you had to walk through to get to the temple. Pictures will follow.