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Extreme<br />
Repeaters by<br />
“We have already booked our<br />
next holiday to the Maldives,<br />
as we do every year,” tells me<br />
Kurt with a big smile on his<br />
face, looking at his wife Assi,<br />
“though we have to say that<br />
the country has changed a lot<br />
since we came here for the<br />
first time”.<br />
The couple from Germany are<br />
exceptional visitors to the Maldives.<br />
If you talk to repeating guests, they<br />
have usually returned five to six times<br />
and experienced different island<br />
hideaways. Not so for Kurt and his<br />
wife Assi. They haven’t just been here<br />
many times – they have come and left<br />
in fact for 64 times to date, with their<br />
next holiday already booked. When<br />
the couple invited me to their villa near<br />
Frankfurt, I got the chance to find out<br />
what made them return to the island<br />
nation over and over again.<br />
“We arrived in the Maldives on <strong>Air</strong> India<br />
via Colombo for the first time in 1977,<br />
which you have to imagine is more<br />
like a ride on a military plane rather<br />
than a modern passenger liner. There<br />
was no big choice of resorts to stay,<br />
so we thought of trying ‘Club Nature’<br />
46<br />
Verena Wiesbauer Ali<br />
(Farukolhufushi) for our holiday in paradise. It was<br />
‘paradise’ indeed since guests took off their clothes as<br />
soon as they arrived,” Kurt begins.<br />
Wait, wait a moment... no clothes in the Maldives?<br />
Many times I heard that even naked sun bathing is<br />
prohibited in Maldives! He must be joking. Assi noticed<br />
my sceptical look. “Back then,” she said, “things were<br />
different from now. The staff on the island was clearly<br />
distracted by the customs on the island, but the concept<br />
was successful and tourists kept returning to the island.”<br />
I was shocked. “I didn’t know life was so relaxed back<br />
then... ”I was confused. “It was relaxed for tourists,<br />
but never for locals,”Kurt interrupted me, “and the<br />
government tried to minimize the cultural exchange<br />
between locals and tourists, but sometimes...,” he<br />
started giggling and looked at Assi. They confused me.<br />
I knew they were trying to hide something. “Just say<br />
what you think, I need to know everything,” I demanded.<br />
“Well, our German friend working at the dive school<br />
back then had to smuggle certain magazines into the<br />
country for staff that was expecting them like vultures.<br />
Most of the magazines, however, were confiscated at<br />
the airport in the 1980s ( even newspapers like Spiegel 1 ,<br />
Stern 2 , but also Neckermann catalogues 2 ” ).The whole<br />
picture was clear to me: with no internet available<br />
those days, locals had to find other means to get the<br />
forbidden items into the country.<br />
“Did you visit Male’ back then?” I wanted to know. “Yes<br />
of course,” they replied simultaneously, “you would see<br />
only a couple of cars and there was enough space to<br />
take a nice walk through the streets. The scene was truly<br />
that of a typical <strong>Maldivian</strong> village, with beautiful women<br />
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