It's hot in the city...

In the city of Malé that is…

Daily life has been out of the ordinary for the last few weeks. As I am writing this I am at a hotel in Malé instead of on the boat. Still behind the laptop, that much hasn’t changed, but still, it’s quite different to hear the traffic down in the street instead of the grumbling of a 750 HP engine all the time.

Last week however, was bliss. Stefano and I had our fourth and last week of holidays for the season, which we really required for physical recovery, mental healing, emotional de-stressing, private time catch-up and and a generally much needed change of scenery. The end of the season is heavy, with more technical problems than we would like to have had, HR issues that required much attention, preparation for closure of the season and planning for opening of the next.

So first we went to Sri Lanka to chill. And chilling we did. From the airport we took a taxi straight to Unawatuna, a lovely, though touristic village on the South coast of the island. We found a small boutique hotel, recommended by yoga friends I met in Goa and I was hoping to find some nice yoga centre to get going again. Stefano trotted along, happy to go where I wanted to go, because it was my birthday and because he is the sweetest and most patient man on earth (which is well needed to be able to stand living with someone like me).

Unfortunately, the yoga place recommended by my friends had lost their Ashtanga teachers, who had moved their practices to Galle, a town 15 minutes away by tok tok. At the beginning of the week I thought I was motivated to go Galle at 7.00 am to join the group at the Buddhist temple in the Old Fort, which sounds like an amazing setting for early morning practice. By the middle of the week, I was very motivated to stay in bed until far past 7.00 am and by the end of the week I concluded that it was useless to pretend to have any motivation. I ended up doing one Hatha yoga session with a teacher at the hotel, found it rather boring, and then managed to get my ass on the mat twice more to do an Ashtanga self practice. Discipline factor: zero. Chilling factor: 10

Eating out was about the most physical activity we undertook. On the whole, we were actually a bit disappointed of what the restaurants in the surroundings had to offer. We came to Sri Lanka hoping to find lots of avocado’s, mangosteens, pork meat, steaks and seafood. But time and time again, after we had carefully chosen from the extensive menus, the answer was: sorry, out of season… Hardly any avocado’s, a couple of overripe mangosteens, beef gone bad, small crabs that were by no means fresh and averagely prepared pork meat dishes. The best food we actually had was at the local restaurants where we had roti and kottu roti. Of course, local food is always best, we should have known better. And the crabs, we know they are all shipped to Singapore for the famous Black Pepper Crab, so why bother looking for Sri Lankan crabs in Sri Lanka? We’ll just have to hop over to Singapore at the end of the season… ;-) We weren’t too upset though, because in the end we did find a good Italian restaurant and a couple of good local places, one on the beach, and for the rest we compensated by drinking Arrack, the local rum which some of you know very well…
Eating factor: 5. Drinking factor: 10

One day we managed to get our lazy bums in a tok tok and went to Galle for the day (no, not at 7.00 am) and we wandered around the old Fort constructed by the Dutch and the Portuguese a few centuries ago. We visited the old Dutch Reformed Church with lots of Dutch gravestones, we watched hundreds of uniformed kids come out of school, we walked the wall, we had roti and snacks in a local coffeeshop and we went shopping. All in all, it was a good day out.
Cultural factor: 5. Chilling factor: 10

The rest of the week, we spent hours on our balcony reading, falling asleep, watching movies, falling asleep again and reading a bit more. Activity factor: zero. Chilling factor: 10

Seven days after our arrival, we took a tok tok to go to the train station in Galle, the train back to Colombo, then a bus to go to the village next to the airport, another bus to get to the departure terminal, a plane to fly to Hulhule airport, a ferry to go to Malé and a taxi to finally arrive at the hotel. After a nice, chilled holiday, we were back, ready to tackle the last 8 weeks of the season.

One last night together at the hotel and Stefano went to the boat, this week his partner in crime is Darja, who is now part of the Seafari Maldives team. And while they are fortunately having a week without any technical issues and a very nice group of guests, I am working on a huge project plan for next year from the hotel room. We are hoping to find a place on land to start a support office, from which a lot of administrative work will be done instead of on the boats. We also need people on land to take care of the business which we cannot manage from the boats, such as paying bills (yes, everything is done cash in this part of the world – my War On Cash project days are long gone), buying supplies and meeting with our stakeholders. In the current situation, we only have two hours a week on land to do all this and if you consider that going to the bank to deposit some money easily takes one hour of your precious time (I had 100 people waiting in front of me when I went yesterday), there is not much time left for anything else. My objective for this week on land was therefore to investigate rental properties and write a proposal for our bosses on how to organize things for next year.

Depending on the outcome of this proposal, we will decide whether we will come back again or not.

So I spent a lot of time in the hotel room where I have access to wireless internet and every now and then I have to go outside to run errands (like queueing at the bank or picking up spare part for compressors), visit our partners on land and buy some food. I must confess it's more comfortable in the room than outside, it’s hot in the city these days…

I bought lots of nice imported products at the new fancy Fantasy supermarket so I don’t have to go out for dinner. I prefer eating in my room rather than eating alone in a restaurant, I find eating out alone somewhat depressing. Although perhaps tonight, as it’s my last night in Malé, I may treat myself to a tenderloin steak at Seagull… For now, I nibble at my brown bread from the European bakery with camembert, avocado spread and vegemite and I drink cranberry juice for lack of anything stronger… And finally after five days of 18 hours work per day, I had time to do something for myself, ie. write a blog.

I’m looking forward to being on the boat again with Stefano and do some more diving before we head off on our real holiday, or unemployed season, as you like. We still haven’t decided where we will go and when, but if we happen to come along your place, we’ll let you know.

Big hugs from the Maldives

xxx

Y