December 8 1994 I went to this wonderful island. I went there alone.
Everybody thinks that this is a place you go to with a partner, when you're in love, to get engaged or if you are a diver.
Well, I wasn't in love nor a diver, but I really wanted to go to the Maldives. And if I wanted to go to this world of islands I had to go alone. And I had no problems with being single on the island. As a matter of a fact, I met several people who had gone alone and they weren't all divers.

The best thing with this place is that you don't have these people (men) who are walking along the beaches trying to pick up girls. You know, the kind you find in the Mediterranean. (After a number of trips to Crete and Cyprus I know what life on the beach is like) Here you can go out directly on the beach and lay down without anyone disturbing you.

Another thing is that on the Maldives the nightlife is not that hard. Myself and the others I got to know had big trouble keeping our eyes open after 9 in the evenings. Probably because we got up early, went snorkelling, the sun and a lot of fresh air, meetings with sharks, morays and other strange animals. The beauty that is beneath the surf and the currents to fight against when you snorkelled.
I think these things might be the reasons we passed out early in the evenings. And the fact that you had visits during the nights by cockroaches could also be added to that, not a very good nights sleep when you are up in the night frantically chasing the little bastards.

A couple of turns around the island were a must. It didn't take more than 40 minutes to drag yourself around, and you did drag yourself. Not just because you weren't in any hurry but also because it was the safest way to walk. When you were walking in the water you had to drag your feets in the sand to scare the stingrays away, they were laying just under the sand resting. And there were lots of stingrays, sometimes you could see as many as 20 stingrays disappearing in front of you when you walked in the water, what a sight.

The island wasn't big but you could find nice small beaches everywhere.

Even if it only took about 3 or 4 minutes to cross the island and maybe 10 or 15 minutes along the island, they actually had a road. The road went around the island and past the bungalows. There was one truck which drove around and picked up the luggage.

There was an end to the road, it looked like this.