Best of the Maldives: Dhivehi for Couples – SAii Lagoon

SAii Lagoon - couple dhivehi

Mother Language Day today. If you want to delve into Dhivehi for a taste of local culture, it’s often fun to do it with a partner to both learn with as well as to practice with. SAii Lagoon’s Le Be Well spa offers a “Dhivehi for Couples” experience”:

  • “Love, after all, is one of the classic motivations for picking up a new language. When you learn a new language with your partner, it’s a bonding understand one of the most rewarding aspects of you try to communicate with them in their own language – Dhivehi, while fostering an appreciation for the traditions, religions, arts, and history of the Maldivians.”

You might wonder what would be the use of a relatively obscure language aside from impressing Maldivian staff on your resort visits? One possibility is to have your own personal code back home to converse in. We always remember meeting good friends for dinner years ago who we knew would try to pay for the meal and we wanted to pay. During the meal, they had a chat in Chinese which they said was just a family matter, but it turns out it was them scheming how to get the bill. Another example of such a shared secret language is the “Divine” language in the film “The Fifth Element”. Writer/Director Luc Besson invented the 400-word language for the character Leeloo (played by Milla Jovovich) to speak. Only Beeson and Jovovich learned the language and practiced it regularly to help it become natural for Jovovich. They ended up getting married after the film’s release so maybe a private shared language does have romantic effect.

Could Dhivehi be your language of love?

 

Best of the Maldives: Cozy Wet Suits – Haa Pril Fulshi

Dive knitwear

From nutty to knitty (and maybe not much difference between the two even). The less known Haa Pril Fulshi resort has introduced new developed crochet dive suits. This new fashion must-have for the trendy diver combines colourful whimsy with soft natural fabrics instead of the awkward conventional neoprene gear. Unfortunately, the suits can only be worn once due to shrinking.  Available on Etsy.com.

Pricing Seasonality

 

A trip to the Maldives is often one planned months in advance and as one starts to investigate you quickly note that the prices vary dramatically according to the time of year. This pricing seasonality is fairly typical in the travel business with high seasons and off seasons and airline prices varying by all sorts of considerations. While there is officially a ‘rainy’ season between May and October, as you can see from our post on climate, the average hours of daily sunshine varies little and the Maldives have lots of if not predominantly glorious weather even at this time of year.

Maldives Complete has gathered up all of the published rates for the UK tour operators serving the Maldives (Kuoni, Hayes and Jarvis, Thomas Cook, Thompson, Seasons in Style and Cosmos) and averaged up their prices for each month which is shown in the above graph. Note that these are published ‘rack rates’ and often deals and promotions can be found which will be discounted off these. The basic analysis shows February, June and November to be the least expensive times to visit and January, March and July the priciest.

Greetings of the Season

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Greetings are always a curious part of any language. The Hawaiians have ‘aloha’ which means ‘hello’ and ‘good bye’ as does the Italians’ ‘ciao’. The English – as in what people in England speak – have an all purpose word ‘cheers’ which can not only be used as ‘hello’ and ‘good bye’, but also ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome’.

Dhivehi is the native language of the Maldives islands and it has no direct translation for ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhivehi_language). Instead, islanders greet each other with a smile or the raising of the eyebrow and just ask "where are you going?" followed by "what for?" The tradition evoked for me one of the earliest ever Dilbert cartoons show above (featured in Dilbert’s ‘Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies’).

Seasons Greetings!

Satellite Views

Virtual Earth and Google Earth provide useful and sometimes stunning images from above of the Maldives to provide a sense of where you are heading to.  But often the images are months if not years old.  If you want the uber-birds-eye view, especially to see what the weather is looking like, check out Eumetsat hourly satellite photography online for a peek at the (usually) blue skies awaiting you.  The ‘Southern Asia’ (which covers the Maldives) colour photos are found here.  If you select the ‘Play’ option, then the site goes through the pictures in sequence to provide an animation of the weather movements.