Jace Cole (dot) com

I’m back in the Windy City.  Arrived home yesterday after a nice United Airlines business class flight from Singapore to Chicago (thanks to Erik and his upgrade certificates).   It truly was an amazing trip,  the cultural experiences,  seeing different ways of life,  and the beauty of the places we saw was life changing.

Over the next few days I’ll be working on putting together a detailed photo album and a summary of the experiences.   For now,  I have to focus on finding new project work back in my professional life.  I guess as they say… “back to reality”.

Thanks to everyone for reading about our trip,  your kind comments and e-mails.  Pete & I truly enjoyed sharing this experience with you.  I hope everyone has the opportunity to take some time out and do some globe trotting.

Well, whale shark, that is.  Pretty much harmless (they filter-feed plankton), but stunning non-the-less, and I got the chance to swim with one just yesterday!  It was amazing.  She was just a baby, but still 5m long with a beautiful dark green color and white spots.  Finding a whale shark is one of the pinnacles of diving, so I was stoked to have had the opportunity to do so!  Unfortunately, Pete was taken by a bout of travelers’ diarrhea, and did not dive with us that day.  He certainly got the full experience from my rantings when I got back from the dive!

Going to the Maldives was truly an amazing, once in a lifetime experience.  It was very rewarding to travel here and see my friend Dennis.  Dennis and I met in Thailand after he did my Rescue Diver training in 2004.  We’ve stayed in contact and Dennis and I spent a month together over Christmas 2005 doing my Dive Master training.  Dennis now manages the Euro Diver Centre at the Diva resort on the tiny Maldivian island of Dhidhoofinolhu along with his girlfriend Risa, who is a dive instructor.  When Dennis invited us out to the Diva resort, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to a place we could never have the means to travel to without knowing someone that could provide a major hook-up.

The Diva resort is a brand new (not completely finished) 5-star resort on a 2km x 150m island.  There is nothing on the island but Diva.  No McDonald’s, no Starbucks, no 7-Eleven.  If you need anything at all and the staff has not already thought of it, dial 0, and it will be brought to you, though at some expense and depending on whether it needs to be shipped in or not, you may have a considerable waiting period, too.  Dennis had us upgraded to one of the water villas looking out over the south Ari Atoll.  The resort absolutely exceeded any expectations we had.  The beauty of the exclusive resort was breathtaking and the five star service was to die for.  If you look closely at the picture, you can tell what age Pete turned during our stay in the Maldives.  Pete is cheating and saying that he’s 22…

The water villas sat on the south side of the island.  These rooms were laid out  in a semi circle scattered out on either side of a long  board walk and suspended over the ocean.  Each villa had its own private balcony with sun chairs, day beds, and stairs that took you down to the ocean.  The open air concept had showers and toilets that made you feel like you were showering right over the ocean.

We had a great time on the tiny island resort, but after 5 days it was time to move on.  We flew by sea plane back to Male, and then onwards to Singapore with a one night stop over in Colombo.  We will be in Singapore for 2 days before flying back to Chicago on Sunday, May 11.

Diva Resort, Dhidhoofinolhu, The Republic of the Maldives… a.k.a. Paradise!

No, not like big box stores, we mean literally, big boxes! All over Asia, we have seen hundreds of passengers at airports checking boxes upon boxes of stuff. In Bangkok, one lady was definitely checking boxes of durian or durian-flavoured food – the smell was unmistakable. And the deeper we travel into Asia, the bigger the boxes seem to get! We landed in the early hours of the morning here in Colombo, Sri Lanka (we have 2 more flights before arriving at our final destination of the White Sands Resort in the Maldives), to see the biggest boxes of them all! Indeed, these passengers were collecting boxes of refrigerators, plasma TVs and microwaves that they had bought at the duty free and getting ready to check them as baggage on their onward flights!

I could only imagine what it would be like to see this display at O’Hare, not to mention what the excess baggage cost would be on United!!

SCUBA diving was the main purpose of this leg of the trip. Pete had done all of his diving certification bookwork in Chicago before we left, so in Phuket, he could jump straight into the swimming pool for his skills training. He breezed through the skills in an afternoon in the capable hands of our good dive friend Thien, who runs the Rumble Fish Adventure dive company with his partner Miz.

That evening, we had a tasty Thai dinner with Miz and Thien at a great after beach bar overlooking Kata beach. We remarked to Thien that we were disappointed with the Vietnamese food in general, and the pho in specific that we had in Hanoi. Thien, being Vietnamese-American, explained that the food in the north tends to be more bland, with little more than noodles and meat while in the south (which was historically more pro-west than the more communist north), they use a lot more tasty spices and vegetables. That explains how we went to 3 authentic pho shops in Hanoi, yet could not get any that was as good as we remembered it in Chicago. Apparently in Chicago, pho is prepared more in the southern fashion…

On day 2, Miz and Thien hooked me up with a little gig as a tour guide for one of their customers. It was fun to be back in the water leading and teaching diving again. We found a ghost pipe fish, which is a rare micro species found only in the Andaman Ocean – and making this rare find made me ever more excited about all the cool things we will certainly see when diving in the Maldives! What’s more, on top of this great experience, because I was guiding, I was able to dive for free and got a nice tip from the customers which covered our dinner that night!

Pete, on the other hand, started the first of 2 days of open water dive training at Kata beach. Again, he completed his skills to the highest accolades of his instructor, Danny. In fact, his only issue with diving seemed to be motion sickness! The surf and currents that day at the beach made him very queasy, though he did not vomit underwater into his regulator (breathing apparatus) as others have been known to do (not mentioning any names)! Maintaining a therapeutic blood level of anti-nausea medications will be the order of the day from now on!

On day 3, I accompanied Pete and his instructor Danny to Racha Yai for his last day of training. We had phenomenal weather and under water visibility that day. During his morning dive, he completed his training, and that left the second dive in the afternoon all for fun! This was a “drift” dive, which means we had a strong current which drifted us along without much effort. To top off this great dive, we saw a sea turtle near a small boat wreck along the reef. Pete now only needs to better control his oxygen usage so he doesn’t go through it at twice the rate of us experts!

Our last day in Phuket was devoted to sight seeing. We had rented 2 motorbikes for the week in Phuket (it’s the best way to get around the island), and used them to tour around the island. We rode about 80-100 km seeing most of the south side of the island and its many beaches. We ended the day with dinner and drinks with Miz and Thien to thank them for helping us organize this great trip. We were sorry to have to leave so soon!

This morning, we started our long voyage from Phuket to the Maldives. After talking to Thien, we learned there was an easier way to get to the Maldives, but we had booked an “Amazing Race” type flight schedule, that includes 4 flights and a 12-hour lay over at Singapore’s Changi airport. Changi is a phenomenal airport with lots of built-in shopping, restaurants and even a movie theater. We planned to take full advantage of all that Changi has to offer, but unfortunately, I was not feeling very well, and so far, we are taking it quite easy here. In a little while, we’ll proceed through security and check into the day hotel for transiting passengers, where I can get some sleep. The one cool thing we did catch a glimpse of was Singapore Airlines’ giant double decker Airbus A380. They are currently the only airline in the world that flies this aircraft! It’s parked at the terminal and awaiting passengers bound for Sydney. Maybe we can catch it taking off later this evening.