Due to time zone changes and a short layover, we spent most of Tuesday in transit. We flew with Malaysian Airlines from Male to Kuala Lumpur and then from KL to Melbourne. Valerie was a little worried about flying with Malaysian, but the flight was uneventful and the food and service were better than our previous flights.

When we arrived in Melbourne around 10pm, we took the SkyBus to our hotel and then went to sleep. The front desk informed us that an international conference of Jehovah’s Witnesses is being held in Melbourne just as we are leaving. (We have a habit of traveling to places without knowing about major events that are happening in the city at that moment [e.g. London paralympics, Berlin marathon]).

Having not slept much on Tuesday, we woke up around 1pm on Wednesday. We quickly picked up some schnitzel and boarded a tour bus to see the parade of the little penguins on Phillip Island. Valerie really liked watching the little penguins waddle up from the beach to their burrows. We were even lucky enough to see some squabbles between penguins and other penguin mating rituals.

Our hotel transfer back to the airport was at 2pm and our flight wasn’t until 11pm, so we used the extra time to explore the capital city of the Maldives, Male. The city is easily accessible via a $1 ferry ride across the channel that separates the airport island from the city. We walked through the island for a while, checking out its limited tourist sights including the presidential residence and jetty and the tallest flagpole in the Maldives (which isn’t particularly tall). Unfortunately, the national museum closed before we arrived, which was disappointing since it is supposedly air conditioned. After about a half an hour avoiding the cars, taxis, and motorbikes that crowd the small streets, we ate dinner at a nice Thai restaurant near the center of the island (about a 10 minute walk from any other point on the island) before heading back to the airport.