Honeymoon Day 15: Pool time at the Raffles Praslin

1/13/2017
Honeymoon Day 15: Pool time at the Raffles Praslin

First a few more photos of our room and the road to and from our room, and a quick video of us driving on the buggy cart around the hotel.

To the breakfast buffet again! Yay!! My BBQ Fish Buddy (the chef who made the banana leaf fish at the Creole BBQ a couple nights prior) was manning the noodle station this morning. Because of that, I got mad hookups ("Hey, you want me to add chicken?!") I didn't even see the chicken anywhere. That was awesome. Sweeeeeeeeet.

They had super weird/amazing fruit today: Rambutans! Also Passion Fruit (YES) and Mangosteen! The fresh fruit juice was also amazing today: Mango juice... and SOURSOP JUICE!?!??! Wow. That was crazy. I tried like 1000 things.

SOURSOP JUICE, you guys...

I remembered to get a crepe today from the table near the front! And loaded up on Passion Fruits :)

Awesome pasta this morning!

Rambutan and Mangosteens today!

The weather was bright and sunny so we took some photos outside of the breakfast restaurant area -- that place had an amazing view of the beach. So honeymoon-y!!!!!

Seychelles... are you seriously this awesome?!?!

The Honeymooners!

Huge gross snails!

Showing off our fancy new beach bag that one of the staff gave us. So awesome.

We went back to the room to change and then headed right to the pool. We hadn't spent too much time at the pool at this point, so we figured it would be nice to chill there for a while today. We stayed for a nice long while and at some point got a Passion Fruit Mojito and a Fresh Coconut. After I finished drinking the coconut, the awesome server at the pool asked "Should I slice it?!" "Sure!" He came back later and had cut me a different coconut -- he said "I made you a better one!" The one I was drinking out of didn't have enough coconut inside of it, so he made me a NEW one and brought a spoon. Man the staff here is insanely good.

We had a nice chat with one of the lead servers/pool manager fellow named Muhamed, he was a really funny guy and we were joking about shark nets in the water at Anse Lazio beach. He said sharks occasionally come by, so for the tourists they put shark nets up. "They will just eat it [the net]", he said, haha. "This is only for the mind, the sharks don't care!" hahaha. We asked him that same question about where Seychellois people usually travel. He said they usually go to France, since Seychelles became independent from France only 40 years ago. When describing this he made an action like helping a toddler walk... "Ok... here you go!"  What a fun conversation and yet another amazing staff member of this epic hotel. It was nice to chat as the weather was starting to get a little grey so it was less about sitting back and enjoying the sunshine and more about having a good chat. So interesting to chat with folks who live here. Man, what an epic trip!

Another nice dude came by to ask us if we'd like him to clean our sunglasses, he had some fancy spray for that. "Sure!" His English didn't seem quite as strong (or perhaps he was just more shy than some of the other guys there) but as he was cleaning our glasses, I made a joke about how that spray is great for someone's armpits too... that got a solid belly-laugh! :) Good times. Fun times at the pool, chatting with Michal and she read and I caught up on my journal notes (for this blog). We went back and forth a couple times between the pool chairs and under the awning area, as it would begin to rain, short and hard, for just a moment.

Apparently you can see Sea Turtles here on our beach. I will have to check that out. The servers continued to be amazing and even brought a little sugar for my coconut, they said it was a good addition! After a good amount of time at the pool, we went under the awning to the lunch area and got a couple light things for lunch. Michal had some sushi which was OK, and I had really good red snapper fish and chips. Peppery! It was not the usual type of flaky fish you get with fish and chips... it was more substantial.

A little bird friend

He wants to join us for lunch!

Red Snapper Fish and Chips

Sushi

We thought maybe we should try our luck at snorkeling again. The nice fellow in the snorkel borrowing-booth seemed a little unsure whether it would be good. "Choppy choppy" he said :) We figured we'd try anyway. We went down to the beach just as the clouds started getting darker and it was clear our snorkel buddy was right. A couple near us on the beach had their books out and were reading... and seemed like they were getting their reading disturbed by the medium rain, back and forth. It was raining a bit but not considerably, so I put on my flippers and snorkel and just as I finished... WHOOOSSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It started REALLY coming down. Thankfully, we had an umbrella at our chair on the beach. It was coming down like crazy, a HUGE amount of consistent rain. Thankfully we had towels and a large umbrella open so we snuggled under and made a towel fort, listening to the rain. I was caught on the way to the beach with my flippers so they were still on for 10 min at least, hanging off the edge of our shared chair... eventually I just took them off and agreed now that it was certainly too "choppy choppy" for snorkeling today!

Getting a litttllle cloudy....

"It'll let up soon...." we figured, as we huddled underneath the towels and umbrella, sharing a chair and keeping close to stay warm, our legs still getting soaked by the hard and persistent rain as they were out of the range of the beach umbrella that we were under. Figuring it would let up soon-ish, we figured we'd wait-out the storm on the beach before trekking back to the main area and buggy-ing back to our room. 20 min... 30.... 40.... ummm.... still going!

As we stayed safe and huddled under our umbrella, a boat came ZOOMING in from out of the middle of the misty area in the water. An Asian family came off the boat in wetsuits and must have  been out for a while in the choppy water and bad weather. Not a fail though it seemed... they dragged in a GIANT "King Fish" from the boat, which they must have caught. It was crazy, and had a huge pointy nose like a Swordfish. Totally insane. They took photos of themselves laying beside it for scale, and, just watching from a distance, you could tell from their body language that the father was PSYCHED they had caught this. I was glad they had fun as the seas were VERY choppy by now. This was hilarious and awesome to watch.

Eventually, it was clear the rain was not going to let up much anytime soon, so I made a break for it. I raced out to see if I could find a stash of portable umbrellas (the beach ones are huge and stuck into the sand), and, amazingly, I found one umbrella at the unmanned towel station near the beach. Yay!! We had been protecting all of our important stuff: books, journal, phones, inside of the new beach bag. Thankfully with this epic umbrella we got all of our important stuff, and us out, dry. :) Time to warm up back at the villa.

"King Fish" catch!

Grab everything and let's roll!!

It was still super rainy so we ordered something small from the IRD menu, which they called "IVD" here (In-Villa Dining)... fancy! We got something called a Lapis Suraba, a Malaysian Chocolate Sponge Layer Cake. Also some Ice Cream: Vanilla, Banana, and Coconut. We took a nap and chilled for a long while... it was STILL raining! We were quite glad to be in a nice warm place and in warm clothes and not still in our towel fort trying to stay dry in the wind and under our beach umbrella! That was awesome though :)

Not sure why we were keen for Ice Cream after being caught in the rain for so long?!

STILL raining!

Eventually, as it started to clear up a bit, we headed to the Danzil Lounge to try their cocktails. Our German friends who were super nice who we met at breakfast a couple times had suggested we try both the Singapore Sling and also the Praslin Sling... so we did and they were amazing. Singapore was very good but I absolutely LOVED the Praslin one!!! OMG. Super amazing. It had sweet tropical fruit and coconut, it was a bit fruitier and less coconut-heavy than a Pina Colada, but kindof in the same ballpark. Friggin' amazing.

Yay for cocktails and dry clothes!

We had dinner at Losean tonight, which is the location where the Creole BBQ was served (but different food) and also the same spot where the Breakfast Buffet is (but, again, different food). We were seated... right beside our German couple friends!! So funny!! The couple was probably in their 50's or so, I'd suspect, and they were adorable. The dude was SO psyched about everything, wide-eyed grinning and happy. His wife had an opinion about all the different cocktails and said they were all amazing, and they were pleased we took their advice to try the two "Slings" at the Lounge. It seemed like his wife may have tried most of the cocktails they served!! Haha she was hilarious too. Seemed like a special occasion for them as well, not sure, but I think we told them it was our honeymoon, and I think it must have been a special anniversary for them or something like that.  I said to Michal that we have to be as epic as them when we are older!

We proceeded to order the same thing as our German buddies, a "Full Grouper in Banana Leaf for 2"... amazingly soft and moist. This was a bit similar to the incredible Creole BBQ fish we loved a few days earlier... but was even MORE moist. Amazing. And they had Creole sauce!!! This was so, so good. For dessert, our server seemed like he wanted to decide for us and I was nervous to let the server pick since there were so many things I wanted to try on the menu... but it worked out GREAT... Passion Fruit Creme Brulee with Passion Fruit Sorbet?!?!?!? YUP!!!!! So that was all amazing.

The steps out to the front area were flooded from all the rain today, this rain is crazy. Back we went to the Villa and it was STILL raining. We were just chillin' for the night and relaxing... when I looked up at the roof... "What is that on the roof? Is that a Gecko or some gross huge bug?"

Uhhh....

After watching whatever this gross thing was come in and out of the area where the fan connected to the roof, back and forth for about 30 min... (and note that this was IMMEDIATELY above our bed/faces, basically...) haha I was way too wound up to go to bed and consider that this dude might fall on us in the night. Haha. So after hoping he would go away for quite a while, we eventually called and asked if someone could come help us get the bug/gecko off the ceiling. This was super high up, and right at the top of the vaulted ceiling, and behind the giant ceiling fan, so there was not an easy way we could throw anything or get it out ourselves.

2 young hilarious dudes showed up with a whole pile of stuff: brooms, buckets, RAID, etc. It was like a "Bug SWAT Team". They were fast and very efficient. It was a whole experience to watch them brush the bug (turned out it WAS a gecko) off the roof, and make sure they got it and it didn't run off or get stuck in the bed, etc! What a performance/bug-related fiasco. We said "Thank you" as they headed out and their response was hilarious. "It is our duty".