{"id":1239,"date":"2011-01-17T11:39:55","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T04:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/?p=1239"},"modified":"2011-01-17T11:39:55","modified_gmt":"2011-01-17T04:39:55","slug":"the-maldives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/2011\/01\/17\/the-maldives\/","title":{"rendered":"The Maldives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Maldives\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Total Miles Traveled:<\/strong> 49,655<\/p>\n

As a child, I had one of those large spinning globes of the world \u2013 you know the ones, tilted to one side, with a raised surface you could run your fingers over when you felt the Himalayas or the Appalachians.\u00a0 Well, the Maldives were always the farthest place I could find from Houston \u2013 exactly on the other side of the globe.\u00a0 It was a game I had played many times growing up, and now, the little chain of islands \u2013 dots on the map \u2013 were only 4.5 hours by plane from Kuala Lumpur.\u00a0 Lisa and I decided it was time to realize our fantasies.\u00a0 This would be the one chance in our lifetimes that we could go.\u00a0 And so we did.<\/p>\n

\"Maldives\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Maldives\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Maldives\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, what did we think?\u00a0 Well, the Maldives are gorgeous.\u00a0 There\u2019s no doubt about that.\u00a0 All the photos you see in travel magazines aren\u2019t photoshopped \u2013 the scenery really is that beautiful, and some of the resorts probably are as idyllic as portrayed.<\/p>\n

But\u2026?<\/p>\n

\"Empty<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also one of the most expensive countries we will ever visit in our lifetimes.\u00a0 They have a captive audience \u2013 honeymooners, the rich, the newly minted rich e.g. the Chinese (and there were MANY of them), and many others from all over the world.\u00a0 Let\u2019s put it this way \u2013 the per night cost of a hotel room was 4 times more than I had ever paid.\u00a0 In short, I didn\u2019t think it was worth the hefty price.\u00a0 I can think of many places that are very beautiful and for a fraction of the cost.\u00a0 THAT SAID, we enjoyed it very much.<\/p>\n

Here are a few photos from our resort, the Sheraton Full Moon.\u00a0 Quite nice, but there are probably more secluded spots in the Maldives.<\/p>\n

\"Sheraton<\/a><\/p>\n

We stayed in a water bungalow – basically a cottage surrounded by\/over the water . \u00a0The view from our deck:<\/p>\n

\"Sheraton<\/a><\/p>\n

… it had stairs that led down in to the ocean so you could go snorkeling. \u00a0Pretty nice.<\/p>\n

\"Sheraton<\/a><\/p>\n

Have a look at all of our photos from the Maldives:<\/p>\n

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”tony-chen” id=”72157625931105264″]<\/p>\n

Next, we\u2019ll report on the diving\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Total Miles Traveled: 49,655 As a child, I had one of those large spinning globes of the world \u2013 you know the ones, tilted to one side, with a raised surface you could run your fingers over when you felt the Himalayas or the Appalachians.\u00a0 Well, the Maldives were always the farthest place I could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}