We came back 3 1/2 months ago, but I’ve been slack typing this up from my notes. Here’s my belated trip report from my honeymoon in the Maldives.
Pre-trip
Mrsdoctau is a teacher, so is pretty restricted with events outside the school holidays. We had planned to get married in the April holidays, so the July school holidays seemed like the obvious time to go, and we thought it would give is some time to recover from the wedding before going. Back in June last year, we agreed on the division of labour, mrsdoctau would make decisions for the wedding and I’d make them for the honeymoon. Except for the fact we had to stay in an over-water bungalow, the other decisions
So we were probably off to Tahiti or the Maldives, unless I found something good in Malaysia etc.
I had about a year, so I thought I would keep an eye out for great accommodation or flight deals, book whatever came up and figure the rest out afterwards. I had around 80k QF points and 30k Citi points at the time, and wasn’t sure I’d have enough for decent award flight. QF award on MH availability looked sketchy, it seemed hard to otherwise get to MLE on QF points, and I didn’t think I’d get enough citi points by the time I wanted to book to transfer to SQ to use them.
Around September I saw what looked like a pretty good deal for KUL-MLE on MH (this was prior to the MH 370/17 incidents and subsequent discounting). $1100 return for two adults in J, albeit recliner 737 J not lie-flat J. I’d heard that MH were decent (although not as good as SQ et al), and had previously seen that there were some cheap enough places in the Maldives if you looked around, so bought the flights. Figuring out how to get to KUL could wait. [Looking around now, I can see that there are a reasonable number of $1300 ones].
I checked out a few accommodation sites, and Agoda had some quite decent places at good prices. I didn’t book any for a while.
Fast-forward to February, and I figured out should sort out how we were getting to KUL and where we were staying. Reethi Beach (Reethi Beach Resort - Baa Atoll, The Maldives. The official website) caught my eye on Agoda as nice with a good deal. I could get 10 nights there in an overwater bungalow for $155 a night plus $850 seaplane transfers, and the list rate is $290 a night. I could add the “all inclusive” package (all food, limited drinks, a few activities) for $105 per person per night, when the list rate was $125, so did that too. The only choice for food was whether yo go buffer or restaurant, and both of us like our drinks, so it seemed good value.
Getting to MLE from Brisbane is awkward, and every route has a least one very long layover, several stops, or both. I ended up going with BNE-MEL on QF, QF codeshare on EK metal to KUL, then KUL-SIN on MH and back to BNE on QF all in Y. Immediately I put in for an upgrade to J on SIN-BNE but U class was taken so wasn’t going to find out until right before. I’ve never been in international J or PE, but heard that PE may not be great value for points, so said no to PE if I couldn’t get J.
Due to us arriving in MLE too late for the seaplane, we booked a hotel for the night. The hotel on the airport island is damn expensive, but we didn’t feel like dealing with a ferry to and from the main island itself to just paid up.
Just after the wedding I realised I has stupidly booked one ticker in mrsdoctau’s maiden name and one in her married name (she had already said she was going to change it). The conditions on the MH sale fares made it quite expensive to change that back to the maiden name, so I decided to change the QF ticketed flight to the married name. The QF and MH segments were quickly done, but the QF-on-EK codeshare was a different matter.
Apparently QF can’t change the name of a passenger on an EK codeshare, and instead they need to cancel it, try to put a hold on a fare, then email the “helpdesk”. Given the time it took, maybe it was “fax” or “send a raven” because three weeks later (and a few calls) her seat still hadn’t been confirmed. Finally 3 1/2 weeks after the request (and only 3 before we were due to leave) her seat was finally confirmed. Since they had to cancel her seat, they had to split our PNR which meant my upgrade request wouldn’t apply to her, so I requested her one using my points. I knew that she wouldn’t be happy if I got an upgrade and she didn’t so I would check a few days before the flight back to see what there J load looked like and cancel if I thought it may happen.
Outbound
Nothing much happened around the honeymoon until it was time to leave. Off to the Maldives!
We had a 20:00 flight down to Melbourne. I’d just dropped from SG to PS plus 3 month QP, so went to the BNE QP for a bit prior. Unfortunately our flight got into MEL after the last QF Intl flight so the QF J lounge was closed and PS+QP can’t get into the EK one. Our outbound flight wasn’t until 02:30, which we knew before hand and thought we were okay with, although I don’t know if I’d do it again.
This was mrsdoctau’s first international flight that wasn’t on an LCC or to NZ, so she was very impressed with EK Y. I don’t sleep well on planes, but she got a bit - I think the “stars” on the ceiling helped
We arrived in KUL in the Satellite wing, so picked up our MH boarding passes had bit of a look around, before going to the Golden Lounge for our 11 hour layover. There were some bed things for mrsdoctau to have a rest on and it was okay, but nothing too special. Since I’d only been to KUL on AirAsia before, I didn’t realise until right before leaving that MH had two lounges, the good Regional lounge and the average Satellite lounge - I should research airports better.
After boarding our flight to MLE in the evening, we sat down to enjoy the leather reclining J seats, and some delicious satay. I wasn’t overly hungry, but the satay was exceptional and the other food pretty good.
Arriving in MLE was pretty simple, it’s a small airport. We made our way to the bus to the airport hotel, checked in and headed to sleep.
Tropical paradise
Waking up to our first Maldivian day, we went up for breakfast which was good. The hotel is small but probably the fanciest “airport hotel” I’ve been in. Good but not worth the crazy price. We headed back to the airport on the bus to go to the resort. There’s plenty of desks around for them all, so finding the right one was simple, and the guy took us over to the Trans-Maldivian Airways counter to get out tickets. That was sorted out quickly.
We caught another bus down to the other terminal which houses the seaplanes, and were were scheduled to depart in 50 minutes. Our flight was only going to our island, so was probably going to be full. There was a small delay of 15 minutes, and then another one of 20. After waiting a bit longer we were informed that our aircraft had gone tech, so may be a while.
Someone from the counter came over and said that due to the delays, we could get some free food and gave us a voucher. We went up and asked what we could get with it, and it turned out to be a “club sandwich toastie” thing, but why not it was free? About a minute later they announced our aircraft has been fixed and to go to the “gate”. We mentioned that to the food people, so we didn’t need it anymore. Waiting for a few mins before boarding the plane, we were just about to get up to board when someone rushed in and gave us each a toasted sandwich!
The aircraft is a small seaplane (~12 passenger capacity), which I don’t mind but I know some who would. The weather was pretty good aside from a few cloud, so took a few photos out of the windows. After 45 minutes we approached our resort island, and it looked like the photos - perfect
Everyone headed over to the reception, and they gave us a fresh coconut to drink while all the paperwork was sorted out. Due to the plane arriving late we had missed lunch, so everyone with Full Board or higher got given a voucher to visit the all-day restaurant and bar for free.
We head to get some food, since the restaurant is on the way to our room (at the far end of the island, since it’s an overwater bungalow). It’s pretty basic stuff but tastes good. The walk isn’t too far since the whole island is only 600m by 200m!
We head over to our room, and the overwater bungalows are spread in a semi-circle, with some wooden bridges over the water. They are basic, but nice with a big bed overlooking the water, with large bi-fold doors to the private balcony. We have a ladder down to the water and reef below. Going to the buffet dinner that night, it was a pleasant surprise - every night has a theme and tonight’s is French, and the food was delicious. They also have a vegetarian and non-vegetarian Sri Lankan style curry there too, which we’ll see the do every night (not the same ones). After a lot of travel and too much food, we head for an early night.
We get up the next (Tuesday) morning, with a plan to do bugger all - just enjoy the sand, sun, and plenty of our all-inclusive coughtails! We want to go snoring to look at the coral and fish around the island, but walking past the dive shop we see how expensive it is to hire. What you’d expect for an isolated resort I guess - probably should have brought ours along. The coral is right outside our deck, so there isn’t much room to go swimming there. The coughtails included in the all-inclusive package aren’t bad, but they aren’t brilliant either - what you get for all-inclusive on a remote island, it’s not a fancy coughtail bar We may have had a few too many piña coladas…
Wednesday we gave in and hired snorkels. At 11am every day one of the dive shop people takes a group off the big (Western I think) beach. Since sunscreen fogs up the mask I didn’t put any one. The snorkling was good, and it seems to be the opposite of what I’ve seen on the Barrier Reef - they have brightly coloured fish with pretty boring coral. Conveniently there is a bar on the beach, so we ended up staying here for a few hours. I got a bit sunburnt. The camera battery ran out so I changed it over, and we went to the buffer dinner which was Chinese.
Getting up on Thursday I realised the spare battery was flat, and I’d left the charger on the bench at home - oops, not more honeymoon photos apart from with our phones! mrsdoctau suggested we go for a massage, so she booked us in for the afternoon (at the usual exorbitant resort prices). Rather than an actual massage (which probably wouldn’t be good on the sunburn), she’d booked us for a post-sunburn scrub thing. We were slathered in some kind of green goop and wrapped up like a cocoon. After an hour we had a show to wash it off, but I was finding random bits of green in my arm/leg/head hair over the next few days.
That morning we’d received an invite to the “management coughtail” at 5, so we went along to that and had some free (and tasty) Sangria. We met an English couple who were both FAs on BA, and had quite a long chat with them, with some interesting stories about passengers - hopefully none of you We’d book into the grill for dinner (Italian was in the buffet), and it was excellent - mrsdoctau got a mix seafood sizzling plate, and I a big piece of snapper. You could order steak, but who comes to a collection of spread out tiny islands to eat steak? If you go to the Maldives, eat the seafood!
Friday night had the sunset cruise (part of AI package), so we spend most of the day lounging around in the sun, near the bars obviously. That morning we had a slip under the door inviting us to a special dinner the next night because it was our honeymoon (I’m sure everyone here knows to tell hotel that Mid-afternoon we were in the main bar playing some cards with the FAs (we’d run into them at least 4 times already that day) when it started pouring with rain. Pretty much every person on the island must have been there, and since it was World Cup time, it didn’t really die down until the very early morning. Buffer was tex-mex, and the tacos were excellent. I haven’t mentioned it so far, but the lunch buffer was consistently good too.
Saturday was quiet (read: spent at the various bars and running into the FAs again every hour or two,) and that night was Middle Eastern buffet, which from talking to others was probably the best in their two week cycle. Since we had our honeymoon dinner we didn’t get to try it. I ordered the baked whole fish for main, and started on the entrees which were great. We got a free bottle of ’10 Miguel de March (some kind of white, I didn’t hear and didn’t check the bottle). My fish was cooked Maldivian style - which I learnt means cooked as far as you can without burning it :-\ The desert has about 4 types of chocolate in it, and we were completely stuff by the end.
Sunday we went on our included “local island” tour, to see two islands. One had around 400 people and survived off fishing, the other just over 500 and also did a ship repair. Tonight buffer was “welcome buffet”, presumably a lot of people arrive on Sunday. It was a mix of random things and unfortunately the least good buffer we had the whole time. It wasn’t terrible, but not up to the same delicious standard as the other night.
Monday we went on the island “technical tour”, to see the staff village, laundry, capentry/metalwork building (they buy wood and make all the furniture on-island) and the de-saliantion plant. By this point we’d been running into the FAs several times a day, and decided the only way to stop that was to sit at the same bar together for 6 or 7 hours, over a few (ha!) coughtails and beers. Tonight’s buffet was Spanish (great) and there was 15% off Spanish wine so we got a bottle for the four of us to share. Well, two bottles. Sorry, three…
Tuesday night was “around the world” buffet, which was generally very good, except for their “Australian” dishes. “Australian chicken” was honey-soy chicken, and there was some weird tuna-stuffed cucumber roll thing I’d never seen in my life. The main bar had a movie trivial night, which was a debacle. You had to be one of the first 5 teams to run up the front and answer correctly to get points, so there was a group of 30 of us piled together waiting behind the line where the sand stooped, and once managed to crash forward so hard we knocked the scorer’s lecturn over! Fun though.
While we were at the Handhavaru bar (near our room), Hanifa from the Beach bar phoned Salim to talk about something, and he must have asked if anyone was there, because Hanifa wanted to talk to us. “Why are you there? You’re normally at my bar this time of day, and you know I make much better coughtail than him!”. Obviously he knew us too well Since we were close to leaving, my wife went to the cashier in reception to see if she could break some notes we got out of the ATM back at the airport (which I hadn’t seen), and she learnt an important travel lesson: the local currently is not necessarily what you use. The resort basically keeps no rufiyaa, so they couldn’t break the money she had. So we unfortunately could only tip a relatively small number of people, but those that did get the larger tips (like Hanifa and Salim) definitely deserved it. Mixed asian buffet tonight.
All trips have to end
Thursday was time to leave, but we could see that “Grand Buffet” was tonight and it would have been Indian on Friday. The seaplane on the way out went via another resort (Four Seasons), and the after we stopped the pilot said we could get out onto the pontoon, since it was hot and this resort is notorious for not having their boat with passengers out on time. After waiting 30 minutes they finally arrived and we flew back to the MLE airport.
Since we were flying J, we could go to the ‘Leeli Lounge’ which was very busy since it was shared between all airline’s J pax. About an hour before our flight out, I got called up to the front desk, where a guy who had been behind the checkin desk for our flight (but not doing checkins himself). Apparently the Maldivian government has increased the departure tax after we had bought out flights, so needed to pay the extra tax - in cash in USD. “Is there an ATM I can get some at?” I asked, and the answer was that they were all land-side. So I can to get escorted out backwards through immigration to get to one. The ATMs only give out MVR and they wanted USD, so I wondered if I could get some MVR out and change it to USD at the currency place - nope, you can only change MVR back if you have a receipt from the conversion to MVR. So after a bit of a discussion with the airport guy, with him having no idea what to do for a bit but being insistent I had to pay, he found another airport staff member who had some USD I could swap for some MVR I got from the ATM.
It kind of sounds a bit like a scam, but while waiting I’d jumped on the airport wifi and the tax increase was listed on the government website, and the airport website also noted you had to pay in USD cash. It was also a lot of effort if someone was trying to scam me out of three and a half US dollars.
Arriving into KUL we had a reasonable length layover, but since we had a J-to-Y connection we went and discovered the better ‘Regional’ golden lounge. While still in the Maldives I’d checked the flight loadings and J was 9+ and Y only 3, so I left the upgrade request active. After checking that morning it had changed to J 0 / Y 2, but it was too late to cancel any requests. We’d just have to wait and see. Shortly after at T-7 from the SIN-BNE QF flight, my seat was cancelled and then a bit later replaced by Z class, which was strange because I’d said no to upgrading to PE. mrsdoctau looked to still be in Y, so she wasn’t entirely happy. Since she’d quite her job right before the honeymoon and I had to work ~25 hours after we got back to BNE, she said that if only one of us could go in PE I could have it, but I wasn’t sure if she meant that or if it was a “don’t you dare leave me in Y while you sit in PE” thing.
The KUL-SIN flight is delayed so we arrive in a bit of a rush, since we are at one end of one terminal and have to get to the other end of another terminal to pick up our boarding passes. Along the way randomly run into a friend from Uni who I hadn’t seen for 5 years, but we don’t have time to stop and chat. Getting to the transfer desk, we realise that we don’t have enough time to go to the QF lounge (I had free three month QP) and pick up the duty free we ordered online. They confirm that I’d been upgraded to PE and the point were taken off my account, it must have reset to “J or PE” upgrade request when the split was done. It was also too late to swap seats so mrsdoctau could have PE, unless we talked to the FAs to do it on board. I promised not to enjoy it.
We get to the gate on time, and then have to sit around for an extra hour because there is a delay due to weather. After finally boarding, we get to it on the tarmac for 40 minutes due to the same weather. The dinner was a nice fish and noodle one, but the breakfast in the morning was some fruit and overcooked dry pastry.
When we arrive mrsdoctau isn’t too happy about being stuck in the fully-packed Y cabin overnight. I’d never been in PE before, but it seems to be the same as Y with a bit better seat and maybe better service - we had the same food, wine and so on. I think that if you’re going to spend point to upgrade from Y, upgrading to J would be much better value.
End notes
I haven’t attached many photos since the ones we have don’t do it justice. If you go to the Reethi Beach website or look at tourism photos of the Maldives, that’s what it looked like. If you want somewhere in the Maldives which isn't too expensive but still amazing, then you should consider Reethi Beach. It’s not the fanciest place there, but definitely worth the money.
Pre-trip
Mrsdoctau is a teacher, so is pretty restricted with events outside the school holidays. We had planned to get married in the April holidays, so the July school holidays seemed like the obvious time to go, and we thought it would give is some time to recover from the wedding before going. Back in June last year, we agreed on the division of labour, mrsdoctau would make decisions for the wedding and I’d make them for the honeymoon. Except for the fact we had to stay in an over-water bungalow, the other decisions
So we were probably off to Tahiti or the Maldives, unless I found something good in Malaysia etc.I had about a year, so I thought I would keep an eye out for great accommodation or flight deals, book whatever came up and figure the rest out afterwards. I had around 80k QF points and 30k Citi points at the time, and wasn’t sure I’d have enough for decent award flight. QF award on MH availability looked sketchy, it seemed hard to otherwise get to MLE on QF points, and I didn’t think I’d get enough citi points by the time I wanted to book to transfer to SQ to use them.
Around September I saw what looked like a pretty good deal for KUL-MLE on MH (this was prior to the MH 370/17 incidents and subsequent discounting). $1100 return for two adults in J, albeit recliner 737 J not lie-flat J. I’d heard that MH were decent (although not as good as SQ et al), and had previously seen that there were some cheap enough places in the Maldives if you looked around, so bought the flights. Figuring out how to get to KUL could wait. [Looking around now, I can see that there are a reasonable number of $1300 ones].
I checked out a few accommodation sites, and Agoda had some quite decent places at good prices. I didn’t book any for a while.
Fast-forward to February, and I figured out should sort out how we were getting to KUL and where we were staying. Reethi Beach (Reethi Beach Resort - Baa Atoll, The Maldives. The official website) caught my eye on Agoda as nice with a good deal. I could get 10 nights there in an overwater bungalow for $155 a night plus $850 seaplane transfers, and the list rate is $290 a night. I could add the “all inclusive” package (all food, limited drinks, a few activities) for $105 per person per night, when the list rate was $125, so did that too. The only choice for food was whether yo go buffer or restaurant, and both of us like our drinks, so it seemed good value.
Getting to MLE from Brisbane is awkward, and every route has a least one very long layover, several stops, or both. I ended up going with BNE-MEL on QF, QF codeshare on EK metal to KUL, then KUL-SIN on MH and back to BNE on QF all in Y. Immediately I put in for an upgrade to J on SIN-BNE but U class was taken so wasn’t going to find out until right before. I’ve never been in international J or PE, but heard that PE may not be great value for points, so said no to PE if I couldn’t get J.
Due to us arriving in MLE too late for the seaplane, we booked a hotel for the night. The hotel on the airport island is damn expensive, but we didn’t feel like dealing with a ferry to and from the main island itself to just paid up.
Just after the wedding I realised I has stupidly booked one ticker in mrsdoctau’s maiden name and one in her married name (she had already said she was going to change it). The conditions on the MH sale fares made it quite expensive to change that back to the maiden name, so I decided to change the QF ticketed flight to the married name. The QF and MH segments were quickly done, but the QF-on-EK codeshare was a different matter.
Apparently QF can’t change the name of a passenger on an EK codeshare, and instead they need to cancel it, try to put a hold on a fare, then email the “helpdesk”. Given the time it took, maybe it was “fax” or “send a raven” because three weeks later (and a few calls) her seat still hadn’t been confirmed. Finally 3 1/2 weeks after the request (and only 3 before we were due to leave) her seat was finally confirmed. Since they had to cancel her seat, they had to split our PNR which meant my upgrade request wouldn’t apply to her, so I requested her one using my points. I knew that she wouldn’t be happy if I got an upgrade and she didn’t so I would check a few days before the flight back to see what there J load looked like and cancel if I thought it may happen.
Outbound
Nothing much happened around the honeymoon until it was time to leave. Off to the Maldives!
We had a 20:00 flight down to Melbourne. I’d just dropped from SG to PS plus 3 month QP, so went to the BNE QP for a bit prior. Unfortunately our flight got into MEL after the last QF Intl flight so the QF J lounge was closed and PS+QP can’t get into the EK one. Our outbound flight wasn’t until 02:30, which we knew before hand and thought we were okay with, although I don’t know if I’d do it again.
This was mrsdoctau’s first international flight that wasn’t on an LCC or to NZ, so she was very impressed with EK Y. I don’t sleep well on planes, but she got a bit - I think the “stars” on the ceiling helped
We arrived in KUL in the Satellite wing, so picked up our MH boarding passes had bit of a look around, before going to the Golden Lounge for our 11 hour layover. There were some bed things for mrsdoctau to have a rest on and it was okay, but nothing too special. Since I’d only been to KUL on AirAsia before, I didn’t realise until right before leaving that MH had two lounges, the good Regional lounge and the average Satellite lounge - I should research airports better.
After boarding our flight to MLE in the evening, we sat down to enjoy the leather reclining J seats, and some delicious satay. I wasn’t overly hungry, but the satay was exceptional and the other food pretty good.
Arriving in MLE was pretty simple, it’s a small airport. We made our way to the bus to the airport hotel, checked in and headed to sleep.
Tropical paradise
Waking up to our first Maldivian day, we went up for breakfast which was good. The hotel is small but probably the fanciest “airport hotel” I’ve been in. Good but not worth the crazy price. We headed back to the airport on the bus to go to the resort. There’s plenty of desks around for them all, so finding the right one was simple, and the guy took us over to the Trans-Maldivian Airways counter to get out tickets. That was sorted out quickly.
We caught another bus down to the other terminal which houses the seaplanes, and were were scheduled to depart in 50 minutes. Our flight was only going to our island, so was probably going to be full. There was a small delay of 15 minutes, and then another one of 20. After waiting a bit longer we were informed that our aircraft had gone tech, so may be a while.
Someone from the counter came over and said that due to the delays, we could get some free food and gave us a voucher. We went up and asked what we could get with it, and it turned out to be a “club sandwich toastie” thing, but why not it was free? About a minute later they announced our aircraft has been fixed and to go to the “gate”. We mentioned that to the food people, so we didn’t need it anymore. Waiting for a few mins before boarding the plane, we were just about to get up to board when someone rushed in and gave us each a toasted sandwich!
The aircraft is a small seaplane (~12 passenger capacity), which I don’t mind but I know some who would. The weather was pretty good aside from a few cloud, so took a few photos out of the windows. After 45 minutes we approached our resort island, and it looked like the photos - perfect
Everyone headed over to the reception, and they gave us a fresh coconut to drink while all the paperwork was sorted out. Due to the plane arriving late we had missed lunch, so everyone with Full Board or higher got given a voucher to visit the all-day restaurant and bar for free.
We head to get some food, since the restaurant is on the way to our room (at the far end of the island, since it’s an overwater bungalow). It’s pretty basic stuff but tastes good. The walk isn’t too far since the whole island is only 600m by 200m!
We head over to our room, and the overwater bungalows are spread in a semi-circle, with some wooden bridges over the water. They are basic, but nice with a big bed overlooking the water, with large bi-fold doors to the private balcony. We have a ladder down to the water and reef below. Going to the buffet dinner that night, it was a pleasant surprise - every night has a theme and tonight’s is French, and the food was delicious. They also have a vegetarian and non-vegetarian Sri Lankan style curry there too, which we’ll see the do every night (not the same ones). After a lot of travel and too much food, we head for an early night.
We get up the next (Tuesday) morning, with a plan to do bugger all - just enjoy the sand, sun, and plenty of our all-inclusive coughtails! We want to go snoring to look at the coral and fish around the island, but walking past the dive shop we see how expensive it is to hire. What you’d expect for an isolated resort I guess - probably should have brought ours along. The coral is right outside our deck, so there isn’t much room to go swimming there. The coughtails included in the all-inclusive package aren’t bad, but they aren’t brilliant either - what you get for all-inclusive on a remote island, it’s not a fancy coughtail bar
We may have had a few too many piña coladas…Wednesday we gave in and hired snorkels. At 11am every day one of the dive shop people takes a group off the big (Western I think) beach. Since sunscreen fogs up the mask I didn’t put any one. The snorkling was good, and it seems to be the opposite of what I’ve seen on the Barrier Reef - they have brightly coloured fish with pretty boring coral. Conveniently there is a bar on the beach, so we ended up staying here for a few hours. I got a bit sunburnt. The camera battery ran out so I changed it over, and we went to the buffer dinner which was Chinese.
Getting up on Thursday I realised the spare battery was flat, and I’d left the charger on the bench at home - oops, not more honeymoon photos apart from with our phones! mrsdoctau suggested we go for a massage, so she booked us in for the afternoon (at the usual exorbitant resort prices). Rather than an actual massage (which probably wouldn’t be good on the sunburn), she’d booked us for a post-sunburn scrub thing. We were slathered in some kind of green goop and wrapped up like a cocoon. After an hour we had a show to wash it off, but I was finding random bits of green in my arm/leg/head hair over the next few days.
That morning we’d received an invite to the “management coughtail” at 5, so we went along to that and had some free (and tasty) Sangria. We met an English couple who were both FAs on BA, and had quite a long chat with them, with some interesting stories about passengers - hopefully none of you
We’d book into the grill for dinner (Italian was in the buffet), and it was excellent - mrsdoctau got a mix seafood sizzling plate, and I a big piece of snapper. You could order steak, but who comes to a collection of spread out tiny islands to eat steak? If you go to the Maldives, eat the seafood!Friday night had the sunset cruise (part of AI package), so we spend most of the day lounging around in the sun, near the bars obviously. That morning we had a slip under the door inviting us to a special dinner the next night because it was our honeymoon (I’m sure everyone here knows to tell hotel that
Mid-afternoon we were in the main bar playing some cards with the FAs (we’d run into them at least 4 times already that day) when it started pouring with rain. Pretty much every person on the island must have been there, and since it was World Cup time, it didn’t really die down until the very early morning. Buffer was tex-mex, and the tacos were excellent. I haven’t mentioned it so far, but the lunch buffer was consistently good too.Saturday was quiet (read: spent at the various bars and running into the FAs again every hour or two,) and that night was Middle Eastern buffet, which from talking to others was probably the best in their two week cycle. Since we had our honeymoon dinner we didn’t get to try it. I ordered the baked whole fish for main, and started on the entrees which were great. We got a free bottle of ’10 Miguel de March (some kind of white, I didn’t hear and didn’t check the bottle). My fish was cooked Maldivian style - which I learnt means cooked as far as you can without burning it :-\ The desert has about 4 types of chocolate in it, and we were completely stuff by the end.
Sunday we went on our included “local island” tour, to see two islands. One had around 400 people and survived off fishing, the other just over 500 and also did a ship repair. Tonight buffer was “welcome buffet”, presumably a lot of people arrive on Sunday. It was a mix of random things and unfortunately the least good buffer we had the whole time. It wasn’t terrible, but not up to the same delicious standard as the other night.
Monday we went on the island “technical tour”, to see the staff village, laundry, capentry/metalwork building (they buy wood and make all the furniture on-island) and the de-saliantion plant. By this point we’d been running into the FAs several times a day, and decided the only way to stop that was to sit at the same bar together for 6 or 7 hours, over a few (ha!) coughtails and beers. Tonight’s buffet was Spanish (great) and there was 15% off Spanish wine so we got a bottle for the four of us to share. Well, two bottles. Sorry, three…
Tuesday night was “around the world” buffet, which was generally very good, except for their “Australian” dishes. “Australian chicken” was honey-soy chicken, and there was some weird tuna-stuffed cucumber roll thing I’d never seen in my life. The main bar had a movie trivial night, which was a debacle. You had to be one of the first 5 teams to run up the front and answer correctly to get points, so there was a group of 30 of us piled together waiting behind the line where the sand stooped, and once managed to crash forward so hard we knocked the scorer’s lecturn over! Fun though.
While we were at the Handhavaru bar (near our room), Hanifa from the Beach bar phoned Salim to talk about something, and he must have asked if anyone was there, because Hanifa wanted to talk to us. “Why are you there? You’re normally at my bar this time of day, and you know I make much better coughtail than him!”. Obviously he knew us too well
Since we were close to leaving, my wife went to the cashier in reception to see if she could break some notes we got out of the ATM back at the airport (which I hadn’t seen), and she learnt an important travel lesson: the local currently is not necessarily what you use. The resort basically keeps no rufiyaa, so they couldn’t break the money she had. So we unfortunately could only tip a relatively small number of people, but those that did get the larger tips (like Hanifa and Salim) definitely deserved it. Mixed asian buffet tonight.All trips have to end
Thursday was time to leave, but we could see that “Grand Buffet” was tonight and it would have been Indian on Friday. The seaplane on the way out went via another resort (Four Seasons), and the after we stopped the pilot said we could get out onto the pontoon, since it was hot and this resort is notorious for not having their boat with passengers out on time. After waiting 30 minutes they finally arrived and we flew back to the MLE airport.
Since we were flying J, we could go to the ‘Leeli Lounge’ which was very busy since it was shared between all airline’s J pax. About an hour before our flight out, I got called up to the front desk, where a guy who had been behind the checkin desk for our flight (but not doing checkins himself). Apparently the Maldivian government has increased the departure tax after we had bought out flights, so needed to pay the extra tax - in cash in USD. “Is there an ATM I can get some at?” I asked, and the answer was that they were all land-side. So I can to get escorted out backwards through immigration to get to one. The ATMs only give out MVR and they wanted USD, so I wondered if I could get some MVR out and change it to USD at the currency place - nope, you can only change MVR back if you have a receipt from the conversion to MVR. So after a bit of a discussion with the airport guy, with him having no idea what to do for a bit but being insistent I had to pay, he found another airport staff member who had some USD I could swap for some MVR I got from the ATM.
It kind of sounds a bit like a scam, but while waiting I’d jumped on the airport wifi and the tax increase was listed on the government website, and the airport website also noted you had to pay in USD cash. It was also a lot of effort if someone was trying to scam me out of three and a half US dollars.
Arriving into KUL we had a reasonable length layover, but since we had a J-to-Y connection we went and discovered the better ‘Regional’ golden lounge. While still in the Maldives I’d checked the flight loadings and J was 9+ and Y only 3, so I left the upgrade request active. After checking that morning it had changed to J 0 / Y 2, but it was too late to cancel any requests. We’d just have to wait and see. Shortly after at T-7 from the SIN-BNE QF flight, my seat was cancelled and then a bit later replaced by Z class, which was strange because I’d said no to upgrading to PE. mrsdoctau looked to still be in Y, so she wasn’t entirely happy. Since she’d quite her job right before the honeymoon and I had to work ~25 hours after we got back to BNE, she said that if only one of us could go in PE I could have it, but I wasn’t sure if she meant that or if it was a “don’t you dare leave me in Y while you sit in PE” thing.
The KUL-SIN flight is delayed so we arrive in a bit of a rush, since we are at one end of one terminal and have to get to the other end of another terminal to pick up our boarding passes. Along the way randomly run into a friend from Uni who I hadn’t seen for 5 years, but we don’t have time to stop and chat. Getting to the transfer desk, we realise that we don’t have enough time to go to the QF lounge (I had free three month QP) and pick up the duty free we ordered online. They confirm that I’d been upgraded to PE and the point were taken off my account, it must have reset to “J or PE” upgrade request when the split was done. It was also too late to swap seats so mrsdoctau could have PE, unless we talked to the FAs to do it on board. I promised not to enjoy it.
We get to the gate on time, and then have to sit around for an extra hour because there is a delay due to weather. After finally boarding, we get to it on the tarmac for 40 minutes due to the same weather. The dinner was a nice fish and noodle one, but the breakfast in the morning was some fruit and overcooked dry pastry.
When we arrive mrsdoctau isn’t too happy about being stuck in the fully-packed Y cabin overnight. I’d never been in PE before, but it seems to be the same as Y with a bit better seat and maybe better service - we had the same food, wine and so on. I think that if you’re going to spend point to upgrade from Y, upgrading to J would be much better value.
End notes
I haven’t attached many photos since the ones we have don’t do it justice. If you go to the Reethi Beach website or look at tourism photos of the Maldives, that’s what it looked like. If you want somewhere in the Maldives which isn't too expensive but still amazing, then you should consider Reethi Beach. It’s not the fanciest place there, but definitely worth the money.
