Favorite Pictures from the
2013 Maldives and Singapore Trip
(Vacation: 11/11/2013 - 11/22/2013)
Favorite Pictures from the2013 Maldives and Singapore Trip(Vacation: 11/11/2013 - 11/22/2013)
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On November 10, 2013 I went on an 11 day vacation to the Maldives with Katherine Chung, on the way there we stopped for a day in Singapore. Below are pictures and videos from the trip. Click on any picture to get a HUGE version of that photo. Click Here for a Google map of some of the interesting locations on our trip. (Here for long form of the Google Map URL.)
CLICK HERE for the entire picture set (480 pictures).
Where Did We Travel?
We flew from San Francisco to Korea (Incheon
Airport),
then flew to Singapore (and rested for 2 days). Then we flew Singapore to
the Maldives. Below is a map (click on map to make it larger!):
Comment from Katherine:
Unlike a "sandy" beach, the Maldives beach is made up of tiny fragments
of broken up coral. What does that mean to Katherine (who is from Southern
California)? Walking on the beach and/or into the ocean was painful unless I was
wearing protective footwear.
Favorite Pictures:
Here are a few pictures that represent the Maldives to Katherine and I.
The very first picture below is borrowed from the Cocoa Island Resort webpage to show the
general layout of the island. We just landed on the far side (top in the
picture below), and now we walk out to our rooms across the wooden dock walkways
at the bottom of the picture. The very light blue water between the rooms
and the island is about 1 foot deep at low tide, maybe 3 or 4 feet deep at high
tide. We would often see many different kinds of colorful fish on our walk
to our rooms.
Below is the row of "Dhoni Boat Rooms". These aren't actually boats, but instead permanent structures built on pilings made to look like the traditional boat of the Maldives (a dhoni boat).
This was our room (825) at Cocoa Island Resort in the Maldives. Notice it is made to look like a dhoni boat but actually is a permanent structure.
This is a picture of an actual dhoni boat as it passed by, you can see how it looks like the rooms.
A picture from the front of our Dhoni Boat Room 825 facing outwards.
A sand spit would appear at low tide that extended out away from Cocoa Island Resort in the Maldives. This picture was taken standing on the sand spit looking back at Cocoa Island.
A picture taken while standing in the fresh water swimming pool at Cocoa Island Resort in the Maldives.
A picture of our rooms from behind showing the private decks. The light blue water is VERY shallow, maybe only 1 foot deep at places, then the darker water gets very deep.
Katherine (in black) and Lia (in red) wearing plastic gloves and feeding the fish. This is at a "fish feeding" at the Cocoa Island resort, where we walk out on a particular dock that goes all the way to the edge of the reef and toss in food for the fish. If you click on this picture, you can just make out some of the interesting fish that live in/near the coral reefs around Cocoa Island. Can you see the humpback unicornfish? Or the bluestripe snapper?
This is a picture a one-legged heron our group affectionately called Patrick. The hotel staff would feed Patrick fish scraps from the kitchen every morning, and he spent a lot of time standing in about this exact spot. A lot of the hotel guests would try to stand right next to Patrick so that he was in their vacation photos.
Our group we travelled with from left to right: Bob Greenshields (in back left), Nicky Greenshields (white top front), Katherine Chung (white long dress), Brian Wilson (me - light blue shirt biggest guy in back), Lia MacDonald (blue dress in front), Will MacDonald (white shirt in back), Alastair Irvine (hat in front), and finally Susan Irvine on far right with sunglasses on head.
A picture of Katherine Chung and Brian Wilson at Cocoa Island Resort in the Maldives.
A beautiful Katherine walking on the beach with champagne at sunset at the Cocoa Island Resort in the Maldives.
Dinner on the beach, Cocoa Island Resort in the Maldives. Our "rooms" are the lit-up little houses across the water in the background.
I went snorkeling at this spot, walked into the water right here.
Colorful fish I saw underwater while snorkeling (taken with a $19 waterproof camera case covering my Canon S110 camera).
Below is a silly 2 minute movie of me driving a JetSki (technically it is a WaveRunner) in the Maldives near Cocoa Island.Click here for a very high quality QuickTime Version (probably will not play on a Windows computer)! This movie shows the shallow water around Cocoa Island and the back side of our rooms.
On the last day (last sunset) we were in the Maldives, we took a one hour boat ride to watch the dolphins play. Below is a 6 minute movie of dolphins jumping out of the water. Click here for a very high quality QuickTime Version (probably will not play on a Windows computer)!
ALL THE Pictures:
CLICK HERE for the entire picture set (480 pictures).