Settling In
17 Dec 2006 — After a harrowing flight on the seaplane, I finally arrived on the island yesterday. Was warmly greeted by Yukiko, the Jap consultant as well as members of the HR team. Sally, the current naturopath who I’ll be replacing also dropped by to say hello. Was quickly ushered to my room. When Sally leaves, I’ll take over her place in the 3-person room, but for the moment, I’m sharing one with Cynthia, Hiromi and Yukie. Hmm, accomodation was rather disappointing actually. Bunk beds with mattresses so thin you can feel the boards of the bed, wooden cupboards, no TV, no fridge, and horrors of horror, just found out today, we are expected to clean our own rooms! Yucks! I don’t mind cleaning my own space, but who wants to clean up after strangers?!! As it is, I’m still trying to accept the reality that I’ll be sharing my room with others, which I’m already finding out can be rather tricky. Hiromi and Yukie, being typical Japanese, are friendly enough, but Cynthia who I suspect is French, is rather strange. She’ll chat happily enough about the weather and her efforts to lose weight, yet the few times I tried to say goodnight, hello and morning to her, I was completely ignored. Like completely!?!! Oh well… this whole “getting to know you” shit is so tedious and tiresome, but what to do, I’m stuck on an island man, I better get used to it! On the whole, people seem friendly enough though. I just have to accept the fact that with some people, you just naturally clique, while others you don’t.
So today was my first official day. Was shown around the spa retreat area and introduced to the spa menu. So far it seems like the work here will be simpler than at Chiva Som, but don’t take my word for it yet. Will get back to you on that one. One good thing is that I immediately liked both my spa manager Tara, and my assistant spa manager Zey. Zey though is being transferred to the Dubai Hilton in January. The rest of my immediate colleagues consist mainly of Thai spa therapists, so I still get to practice my Thai a bit. Surprisingly I still recall quite a bit of vocab. Damn! Should have brought my Thai language CDs along, would have been one more thing to do here.
The spa by the way, is simply out of this world. It consists of 20 over wooden huts built on stilts over the sea. The view is simply breath-taking. That’s the most amazing thing about Maldives so far, the water! I can’t get over how clear it is! It’s like clean drinking water. And because in many areas, the seabed is less than a metre deep, one can see immediately to the bottom. Perhaps for this reason the sea is a luminous turquoise colour. It’s so surreal. And you wouldn’t believe the amount of marine life one can witness just with the naked eye. Like just from the windows of my office today, I saw an amazing array of big colourful fishes, and guess what, even a baby shark! The species of shark around these areas is the whale shark, which is touted to be completely harmless and in fact, quite shy. Helps that they have no teeth! Can’t wait to start diving and snorkelling…
…ooh, but not before the weather lets up though. Apparently for the last six weeks, the resort has experienced monsoon weather. Like today, torrential rain poured down on the island for hours on end. The skies are all cloudy and grey. See that picture of the sea plane, don’t let that fool you. I stole that off some guy from Flickr.
This picture would be more accurate. In fact, can’t say that I’ve seen the sun since I arrived. And unlike the typical sunny weather you see on postcards of the Maldives, rain must be fairly common here because as part of our uniform, we are each issued with a raincoat, a real heavy-duty one too! And already I had a taste of that today. Great fun too, walking barefooted in a raincoat through the lush greenery and puddles of water — felt like a kid in a kampong! Oh yeah, that’s the other thing about working on an island resort: footwear is completely optional! Yep, I am talking about staff! Prolly cause sand serves as the main form of flooring everywhere, including indoor areas like the restaurants!
You can see it here in the Vilu restaurant.
Oh, on that note, must fill you in on the food situation. So on the up side, here I’m actually allowed to get my food from the buffet spread in the restaurant itself. And as one can imagine, the buffet spread is typical of any six-star hotel — immense variety, fresh ingredients, beautiful presentation. There’s a Thai station, an Italian, a Jap, an Indian, then of course the Western dishes, the salad bar, the cold-meats section, the fruit and dessert counter, and like breads alone, there must be at least 20 different kinds. And no, I’m not exaggerating! Sally says that she has actually gained weight since being here. But I have been sooo good, so determined and disciplined to lose weight that I have stuck to the vegies, lean meats and fresh fruit options. So proud of myself. Haha, well at least after 1 day, I’m still on track. Fingers crossed!
Ok, so much from me for now. Will keep you posted of my “adventures”. Speaking of which, you might be glad to know that the one thing I do have at least in my room is wireless internet. So yup, with that and pretty much nothing to do in my freetime, I can foresee I will be blogging more from here than previously from Hua Hin. And hey, cause I am so far from home, if any of you can spare the time, do send me an email or two, would love to hear from you! Ok bye for now!