Well, we sleep pretty good and get up about 9:15am. The hotel has free breakfast so we head down and eat up. Pretty basic…scrambled eggs, toast, a little fruit, juice and coffee. Oh and I ordered ham, Rhonda bacon. The bacon looks normal, the ham more like spam or something else. I don’t even think about touching it! It looks revolting…seriously. I normally want to try anything but there is no need for this. After we finish breakfast we set out to get some cash. I forgot to mention the day before when I realized we had been ripped off at the nest. Someone stole 1500 baht right out of my wallet. I didn’t spend any cash while we were up there and I opened my wallet when we landed in BKK to count up. Well, money was out of order which doesn’t happen in my wallet, and I’m missing a ton. Not sure when it happened and not sure if it was the people at the nest or the massage ladies but I am sure it was someone. I left my wallet in the room pretty much the whole time we were there and it was right next to the bed during the massage. It could have happened even during it since I did dose off a little bit at times. Anyways, back to the day at hand. The first bank we go to won’t let me get cash off the card. Ugh. We do get them to negotiate a tuk-tuk ride to a bank down the street they say will do it for us so for 20 baht we ride to the Bangkok bank. They won’t give me money b/c my card isn’t signed but luckily Rhonda’s is and after a few minutes, we have cash! Greatness! We go back to the hotel and find out how far it is to the tailor and then head up to the room. We decide just to take our time getting ready, pack up all our stuff, go to the tailor and then head from there straight to the airport. The sights of BKK can wait till we get back from the Maldives. There isn’t a ton we want to see anyway but the must see stuff like the Grand Palace, floating markets, etc will be cool when we get back. The traffic is awful going over but our driver is the man and maneuvers thru the traffic with ease and flair. The best part of this 40 min ride is the pre negotiated 100 baht. Dirt cheap. We make it to the hotel (the tailor is next door) and they offer to hold our bags. Nice since we aren’t going to stay there. We pick out a suit and some shirts…we will see how they turn out. Hopefully well. It’s not as cheap as I imagined but this place has a good reputation for the most part and I wanted something that will hopefully look good and last a little while. We head back over to the hotel, get our bags and a taxi and it’s off to the airport for our flight to Male, Maldives. We make it to the airport in 30 mins (way faster that it is supposed to be) and have plenty of time before our flight. We check our bags and get our boarding passes. When we were standing in line I told Rhonda how surreal it is for me to see our flight on the monitors. PG 711 Male. I told her how for years I have priced flights and routes and dreamed of going to the Maldives and that dream is about to come true. It really is amazing. After check in, we find a place for some food and wow, I guess Rhonda was hungry. She got spaghetti and didn’t leave a drop on her plate. I had a club sandwich that was decent and then we headed thru passport control and toward the gate. We were on a mission for tapes for the video camera as we had 4 mins left on our last tape. There is tons of shopping in the Bangkok airport…seriously like a mall. We finally find a place and get a pack of tape and are really thankful we have them. We hit the Bangkok air lounge for a little while, Rhonda writes in her journal and I check email and then we head to the gate. Maldives, here we come! Rhonda is cracking me up as I tease her about missing the flight and what would she do, etc. She expresses she would have a major meltdown and start crying, etc. We definitely don’t want that. When we get to the gate, they aren’t boarding and I want to take a seat. Rhonda insists on the seats closest to the boarding door but when we get over there, there are not 2 seats. I want to head back the other way but she doesn’t, she is freaked about missing the flight. It’s hysterical! We are checked in, by the boarding door, they have torn our boarding passes and she doesn’t want to walk 30 feet to sit in a chair to wait. I convince her it’s going to be fine after cracking up a little and we wait and then we board. We are on the flight right now as I’m writing this and we are closing in. We have just been served ice cream and Rhonda is laying down taking a nap. Wish I was but I’m also really excited. The bad part is it is dark outside and we won’t be able to see all of the little islands from the air during daylight. The good part is we just flew over Sri Lanka and will be landing in 45 mins. Well, next update from the Maldives!
I can’t explain the excitement as we land in Male, Maldives. It’s a place I’ve been dreaming of going for probably 11 or 12 years and now we are finally here. We landed in total darkness so it’s a big disappointment that we won’t see the Maldives from the air. It looks so spectacular in pictures and some resorts require a seaplane flight (which only operates during daylight) but we are close enough to Male to just take a speedboat. The good thing about that is we go straight to the resort and don’t have to spend a night in Male waiting for daylight. It seems to take forever to get our bags on the slowest baggage carosel I have ever seen but they finally come. Next it is off to customs where everything is x-rayed and of course we pick the slowest line ever. We didn’t know it but the worst thing you can do is get behind locals. The customs people go thru everything and I mean everything. They take everything out and sort thru it…what a pain. The line next to us must move 20 people thru before we finally figure out what’s going on and change lines. We get thru the customs and out the door we go. A representative from Soneva Gili is waiting and we walk about 50-70 yards and we are on the speedboat. There is nothing to this airport…out the door and you hit water. No exaggeration. Waheed is one of the guys who met us and he is our Guest Relations man. Anything we need, we just contact him. He tells us it’ll be about a 15 minute ride to the resort so just sit back and relax and we’ll be there in no time. A few minutes later he pulls out a little bag that reads, “No News, No Shoes” so we take our shoes off and in the bag they go. Rhonda is loving life at this point…she loves the no shoes aspect. And at our resort the only time you wear shoes is to workout. Other than that, no shoes. Its ok to wear flip flops if you just HAVE to but that is just one of the things about Soneva Gili. When we arrive we are just in awe. We are so excited and walking down the arrival jetty we are loving the lights in the water and how crystal clear it is. Waheed shows us to a waiting golf cart, “our limosiune” as he puts it and we are off to our villa. The time is about 9:20 or so (the resort is an hr ahead of Male to maximize daylight) and we pull up at Villa #22. Rhonda comments on the number since we were married on July 22. Waheed says “welcome to your new home” as he opens the door and it our villa is soooooooo big. Just like we imagined (since we’ve looked at it on the internet about 1000 times) and surreal to there. He gives us a tour starting with the living room, the bathroom, upstairs, the sundeck and finally the bedroom. We can’t believe we get a week here. We must have said to each other 100 times, “can you believe we are here?” We are really hungry so we head over to the bar to get something to eat before we crash out. We decided to split a burger and have a drink. I ordered up a beer and Rhonda ordered…well she ordered something that will have you breathing fire in no time. It had raspberry sorbet and some liquor I can’t recall the name of but its about 95% liquor and there is a small scoop of sorbet. Asking how she likes it she says, “ok” which I know means she doesn’t like it very much. No comment on the fact she is drinking straight liquor! I taste it and about cough up a lung. There are only a few more sips and I just tell her to forget the price (expensive!) if she drinks that she’ll be on the floor and hungover the entire next day…not worth it! We finish up and decide we are ready to head home for the night and get rested up for the next day…our first taste of daylight in the Maldives! There is a complementary bottle of champagne in our villa so we don’t go bed immediately but do after we check out our sweet outdoor shower and upstairs daybed.
