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
Sunset fishing and Superior Water Villa
The final day
The conclusion

Finally was able to board our flight a little before midnight. We flew from Male back to Kuala Lumpur with another eight hour layover. Rather than try to go back into the city, we decided we would just stay at the Kuala Lumpur airport instead.

We went through customs and headed over to the Malaysian Air bag terminal to find out about compensation for our bags being lost for three days. After waiting in line for a good while, a friendly gentleman came to help us. We had to fill out a lot of paperwork and after explaining what happened he went to consult with his boss. He said that since we were flying business class, we were eligible for $100 US per person for our lost bags.

We debated whether or not take the offer but given the complexity of even finding our bags, we decided that it would be worthwhile to accept the offer since we were talking to a live person. He handed us the Malaysian equivalent of $200 and had us sign some paperwork and we were done.

We went back through passport control and headed up to the lounge where we stayed for six hours watching TV, sleeping, and messing around on the Internet.

We boarded the plane again and flew from Kuala Lumpur to Taipei and had another two hour layover and then it was back on the plane from Taipei to Los Angeles. By this point, I didn’t want to see anymore satay. I was ready to impale myself with one of the bamboo skewers. After another brief layover, we were finally back to Salt Lake City.

My final thoughts:
It was an incredible value to fly the entire time in business class for 120,000 Skymiles per ticket. The eight hour layover in Kuala Lumpur was a bit much. Bora Bora was our favorite destination of all time before this trip to the Maldives. The Maldives is now our absolute favorite place to go. There were so many things to like: the weather, the luxury, the food, the excursions, the staff, and the remoteness of the location.

In my opinion, the Conrad Rangali Island did a fantastic job in ensuring that our stay was pleasant.

We have been holding on to the British Airways buy one get one tickets and I am seriously considering redeeming them to go back to the Maldives. We enjoyed our stay that much.

Here are some final pictures: