For some reason the TV in our room is set to turn itself on at 7.30 am. 'American Idol'...great.
The breakfast buffet was pretty good. Plenty to choose from, the highlights being maki rolls and fresh honeycomb.
After breakfast we lay out on our private sun deck reading. I went for a cheeky snorkel in the sea below our bungalow. So many fish! I can see why people rave about the snorkeling here.
At lunch time we went for a wander (you can walk around the island in 15 minutes) and stopped in the chill-out area to sit on Fat Boy bean bags and eat pizza. The pizza bases were more like Jacob's crackers, but the toppings were nice. Not as nice as the all-inclusive cocktails though!
After lunch we had a swim in the sea before grabbing our snorkels and snorkeling off the end of the jetty from which the water bungalows protrude. Again there were tons of colourful fish everywhere. I was looking at a couple of long thin fish with huge eyes and tiny mouths when I heard Amber making excited noises through her snorkel. She looked worried, so I made the thumbs up signal at her to indicate that we should stick our heads out of the water for a chat. Our conversation went something like this:
Amber: 'Did you see it?'
Me: 'See what, those freaky long fish?'
Amber: 'No, the MASSIVE sting ray! Isn't that what killed Steve Irwin?'
Me: 'What sting ray?'
Amber: 'You didn't see it?! Oh crap...'
...at which point Amber set off swimming to the jetty at great speed. I thought I'd better follow along to calm her down, but in her panic Amber kicked out and caught me full in the snorkeling mask with her foot. Ouch. Luckily nothing was broken. I couldn't help but laugh at the idea that, faced with potentially dangerous sea creatures, my wife had effectively kicked me in the face and left me to die. Thanks love! Glad it wasn't a big shark, put it that way.
Amber got the heebie-jeebies about the ray incident, so we decided to change location and snorkel in the shallow water off the beach in front of Chill Bar. In the open water there were plenty of large - mostly silver - fish and the patches of coral were teeming with damselfish, trigger fish, tangs, butterfly fish and more. I loved watching pairs of gobies interacting with each other by the mouth of their sand burrows. By this time it was getting cloudy, so visibility was okay, but not great.
We were booked in to do our 'sunset cruise' at 5.15 pm, so headed over to reception at 5 pm. Sadly the weather wasn't quite right for a beautiful sunset, but we did enjoy our trip on the traditional Dhoni boat. We shared the hour long cruise with another couple, who were friendly enough and also on their honeymoon. Oddly they had elected to spend a week in the Maldives and then finish their honeymoon with two days in Kuala Lumpur. Personally I would have done it the other way around, as really there is nothing to do in KL but eat and shop.
We borrowed 'The Big Year' DVD from the library to watch before dinner. Nice film about three American twitchers (played by Owen Wildon, Jack Black and Steve Martin) competing to see the most birds in a single year. It reminded me of my ornithologist colleague and his obsession with small brown birds.
We had another excellent dinner, this time at Etesian. Lovely food, plenty of booze. All good. We staggered back to our room, whereupon Amber went straight to bed. I stayed up watching National Geographic Wild.
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