Trip to the Maldives – the flights part 1
Trip to the Maldives – the flights part 2
Conrad Lounge in Mali and Seaplane to Rangali Island
Beach Villa at the Conrad Maldives
Euro swimsuits and Turtles
The main pool and snorkeling
Our luggage arrives, Vilu, and the Quiet Zone
The employee strike
The strike ends
Ithaa underwater restaurant, Water Villa, and sunset cruise

Back on the airplane into our very comfortable seats, we lifted off from Taipei to Kuala Lumpur with our excellent cabin service for a five hour flight.

The food consisted of:

Fruit Juice, fresh fruits, and yoghurt

For the main course:

I chose the Murgh Lababdar which is a braised chicken with rice and spicy gravy.

My wife chose the Three Egg Asparagus Omelette with a chicken patty, potato wedges, and ratatouille.

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur with an eight hour layover. We cleared customs and went to a baggage holding area to drop off all of our luggage while we went to explore town. Each bag cost about $4 to store. We took the KLIA Express – the bullet airport train into the middle of town. We then switched over to the local subway system and headed out to the Petronas Twin Towers.

We had originally wanted to go to the top of the twin towers – but there are only a certain allotment of tickets given to the public each day at the will call (no advance bookings) and we knew we wouldn’t make it there in time to get tickets.

We went inside the huge, multi stories mall and did some shopping.

There were tons of restaurants and eateries to choose from including some pretty bizarre looking ones – and we decided to eat at one of the restaurants in the food court.

After about four hours at the mall, we decided to head back to the airport as we were pretty jet-lagged even with the nice business class seats and it was incredibly hot outside as well. We entered the airport, picked up our bags from the baggage holding area and headed to the Malaysian Air lounge which was massive. There was plenty of free food including entrees, free showers, a spa, and plenty of spots to stretch out and relax. This was the first time I had actually taken a shower inside a lounge and I must say that it was very refreshing after having to travel a considerable time.

We headed back to the airplane, this time a much smaller business class on a Boeing 737-800 for a four hour flight to Male.

When we arrived in Male, we waited and waited at the baggage carousel. Finally, all the bags showed up and our bags were nowhere to be found. This was a pretty crushing development as we hadn’t packed any additional clothes or toiletries in our carry on bags. We went to the lost baggage department, described our bags, and were issued a tracer number with Malaysia Airlines. We were told that they would contact us when our bags were found. I figured that our tight connection in Los Angeles due to the original flight delay was probably the culprit and that they would appear the next day.

A little discouraged, we went through customs and greeted by both the Conrad Hilton and also Trader’s Hotel.

Originally we had booked a 15,000 Priority Club reward night for the Holiday Inn in Male. However, in November of last year we were notified the the Holiday Inn had been sold to the Shangri-La group and therefore our reward night reservation had been cancelled. We were pretty steamed at this development, and so my wife called up Priority Club to have them remedy the situation. They finally agree to send over a $200 American Express prepaid gift card as part of the Any Hotel, anywhere program. They did deduct the 15,000 points and so we felt satisfied with the resolution.

We went with the representative from Trader’s Hotel and boarded the speedboat for the 5 minute journey to the hotel.

By this time, it was about 11:30 pm and we were ready to go to sleep after a long day’s journey. We informed the front desk of our missing luggage and they quickly put together a toiletry kit for us which meant a lot.

I was very impressed with the room as it was very comfortable, very clean, and very nice. I wouldn’t hesitate to stay at this property again in Male.

We crashed for the night as we had to leave the hotel at 6:30 am the next day in order to go to the seaplane.