Friday, August 08, 2008

Inflation, Stupid Leaders and The Need For a Holiday




Currently in the midst of a serious job hunt which includes me having to have in depth knowledge of the country's fiascoes, economy and other depressing statistics. Inflation is down from 28% to 26% - cause for celebration! NOT! That's a whole 24% more than it should be! MR and his usual antics and the crimes of uneducated politicians stand out from blogs and newspapers. So, I feel I wanna take a leaf out of our great leader's book and go on holiday! Albeit I might give a miss to the Beijing Olympics (I thought the opening ceremony looked fantastic!).


My last fantastic holiday whose only objective was to relax was to the Maldives. Else I've been travelling around in the plans to visit people and work. Which doesn't really constitute a holiday since you have an agenda. Anyways, the journey to the Maldives wasn't as easy I thought. There are so many factors to consider so by the time you get there you're really ready for a holiday!


The transport cost from the airport to the island resort of your choice varies depending on how far it is from the airport and whether you use a speedboat or a sea plane. Sea Planes obviously are faster, but clearly more expensives. A 20 minute journey on a seaplane takes 2 hours on the speed boat. I tried both and found the sea plane to be mildly nauseating. Really. Been confined to a small aircraft which rocks here and there and has close to no air circulation is disturbing.


Then there's a choice of where to go! So many resorts, so many differences so little time!!!! http://www.expedia.co.uk/ and http://www.travelocity.com/ and other such sites provides pretty steep rates with not much scope for discount so what I tried to do was approach the hotels themselves. Failing which, the less commercially oversubscribed sites such as http://www.hotelscombined.com/ was a better option. They automatically compared all hotels found and provided me with the best rates in an easy to read format so my confused little brain wasn't fried in trying to look for the exact rates. Oh and for the fun of it, I searched Colombo and Kandy and such hotels on the above website and found all the hotels here as well! Which is FANTASTIC for those of us in Sri Lanka who can't seem to find a single website that gives rates for all the hotels here.


So in the end I managed to find a lovely hotel in the then Velidhuu resort owned by John Keels Hotels and had a scrumptious holiday. The beaches are so beautiful and so clean and so amazingly blue. I love the fact that the water isn't deep and you can wade around in peace. The comfort and peace that Maldives provides is hard to find anywhere else. Perhaps it's due to the fact that the somewhat steep prices keeps it a tad exclusive.


I'm dying to return and considering the current state of matters in Sri Lanka , perhaps its best we all jump ship, get some canoes and paddle away to the Maldives where we can live peaceful, white sandy blue beached lives :D


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to see if you would link to my hotel reservation site in your blog roll.. I would of course pay $$$ for this.

Contact me: philippe at exemail.com.au