Maldives

Me and my girlfriend CC had this holiday for 1 week at Maldives in September 2006. CC planned this trip as my birthday present! What a lovely lady!

Sri-Lankan Holidays (Flight + Resort Package)

We booked this flight+resort package through Sri-Lankan Holidays in Hong Kong and flew to Maldives via Bangkok, which made us a return leisure stay at Bangkok afterwards possible with no extra charge. Of course we needed to book the dive package ourselves. Our practice is to book our no. of planned dives in advance as this would save us extra money compared to at the spot prices.

Adarran Club (Dive Point)

We stayed our first 3 nights at the Adaraan Club and did 6 dives with DivePoint (the dive operator attached). It is normal to see 1 dive operator to attach to one resort in Maldives. First day diving was so so...check out dives..Second and third days large pelagics like white tips, black tips, eagle rays, giant clams, but no luck on spotting eagle rays, the must-see in Maldives. One conclusion we drew: there were too few people on boat for the dive operator to take us further to see more as there were only 3-4 divers on boat for every dive then.

A side story... with mixed feeling, I sold my Sony P-9 with housing to our local PADI divemaster Jalaal after our 3rd day dive with Dive Point. He said he always wanted one, a digital camera for his coming new born baby! I hesistated a bit as the days followed we'd have no cameras, but US200 was not a bad deal so I finally agreed. I believe I had done the right thing, at least, for the divebaby... oops... I mean the divemaster's baby!

Full Moon (Euro Divers)

So we expected a little more from Full Moon, a more luxurious resort, which we stayed for the next 3 nights and did another 5 dives with Euro Divers. This time, to our full satisfaction, we saw what we intended to see before landing. 2 manta rays, 6-7 meters in width, came to the Manta Point after we descended and waited for about 10 mins. This was an unforgettable experience, especially for CC as this was, according to her, one of her best-liked dive. Our dive master briefed us to stay quiet below water, and when the mantas came, we could use our regulators to make air bubbles from below them. To our surprise, these mantas really seemed to like this act of being massaged as they kept coming back to where we stayed for the cleasing and our bubbles! We didn't expect to give massage to strangers in Maldives, but for mantas... they are very welcome. On our return journey to the dive base on the same day, towards sunset, around 20+ dolphins jumped off the waters around 200m in front of our boat. We were in a romantic movie!

On another day, CC yelled out she saw a very large fish splashing off the waters when we got off the waters after our last dive that day. Our DM Atsuko san, a very nice Japanese lady, told us that it might be a blue marlin. "It was HUGE!", claimed CC. Unluckily this was only seen by her as other people on board were busy getting dried and changing clothes!

I heard people saying the Maldives would disappear very soon, due to climate change resulting in sea level rising up every year. Yet I had the luck to have more than 1 trip to this paradise. Though we spent only 11 dives total, we covered some of the major dive sites including Lankan (Manta Point), Furana, Devils Reef, Maagiri Caves, Emboodhoo Canyan, Faana Thilla, Vaagali Thilla, etc.

We had so much fun and only regretted a little selling our underwater camera and housing so early. We missed some of the best underwater shots on the mantas!

PS. Euro Divers offered us a 10% discount for our next dive with them.

Budget

US1211 (HK$9451) on Flight + resort package

US195 (6 dives with DivePoint)

US205 (5 dives with Euro Divers with 10% discount)
Meals and drinks are extra!

Ref:

http://www.srilankanholidayshk.com/

http://www.adaaran.com/

http://www.eurodivers.com/

NAUI Instructor 16807L