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:
Rangali Bar

Other various photos

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

We spent the whole morning in the Water Villa and went over to Atoll very late. We only had about 20 minutes to eat before they closed it all down.

We headed to the main pool again while the staff came and retrieved our luggage again to move us to the Superior Water Villa.

After a couple of hours at the pool, we went to our new Superior Water Villa.

Once again, the room was magnificent and very decadent.

Notice in the Superior Water Villa-there are two sets of robes, white quilted pair in the closet and print pair in the bathroom.

The view from bathtub looking out to the deck (The window allows guests to see out but not be seen from the outside; when you are on the deck the window is like a dull mirror.)

In the Water Villa and Superior Water Villa, the toiletries are from Bulgari.

View from the bed looking outside towards the jacuzzi on the deck

What room would be complete without a jacuzzi outside overlooking the Indian ocean?

We had a pretty tough time figuring out how to turn on the jacuzzi – it really wasn’t self explanatory.

Above are the button controls – you would think that one of these would turn it on. I tried for quite a while to push several different combinations of buttons, but nothing worked.

Eventually we had to call maintenance to come and show us how to work it.

Here are the controls that are behind a wooden door behind the jacuzzi. To start the jacuzzi, push the button on the bottom row to the right of “hand” button. You’ll thank me for giving you more jacuzzi time.

Here is some video footage I shot of the room as well.

After being sufficiently wowed, we went to do some more snorkeling around the resort.

We also hit happy hour at Rangali Island for half price virgin strawberry daiquiris. I drank two of them and therefore we were running a little late for our evening excursion. My wife and I had decided to go on a fishing excursion. We had seen one of the boats come into the dock several times during the week and it looked to be a pretty cool adventure. It was a speed boat with several fishing rods to pull in gigantic fish I assume. This is the type of activity that you normally wouldn’t do on your own and we decided it would be fun to go on a two hour fishing expedition.

We showed up a little late to the lobby area and there were other families with really small children waiting as well. It seemed a bit odd as I imagined us cruising through the ocean at 50 mph on the speed boat. Our guide showed up and all proceeded to head to the excursion.

As we approached the dock, the only boat that I saw was a long, pontoon type boat – the dhoni. It was apparent that we had signed up for the sunset fishing excursion rather than the big game fishing excursion. We boarded the boat with three other families, all with small children.

We started to head out to the sea, and the crew said that they weren’t going to go as far out to sea as they normally did because they didn’t want the small children to get seasick. They handed each one of us a hand made “fishing rod”. It consisted of a wood board with fishing line wrapped around it and a hook with weights at the end. One of the crew came over and put some bait on it for us and instructed us to drop it down into the water about 30-50 meters deep.

The last time I went fishing must have been when I was a Boy Scout. I was pretty bummed that we weren’t on the high speed fishing boat pulling out these large fish.

I dropped the hook and the sinker down in the water and let the line unwind itself very deep. It was amazing that the water was actually that deep this close to the island. As I patiently waited for a bite, I could feel some movement on the hook and quickly started to pull the line up. Nothing on the line. I preceded to continue this same routine for about 30 minutes, getting pretty discouraged that I wasn’t catching anything. One of the crew members came over and told me that the key was to pull the hook really hard as soon as you felt a nibble in order to hook the fish.

I decided to rely on his expertise and tried his method instead. Within about 20 minutes I had finally caught something. I tried to pull the fish in with my bare hands (since there was no rod) but even I wasn’t strong enough. One of the staff members asked if he could help and with amazing brute strength pulled the fishing line in.

As the fish came out the water – I had caught a beautiful red snapper!

I was pretty excited to catch something and threw my line back in to try and catch something else. About 20 minutes later I pulled up another fish – this time a surgeon.

My wife soon caught her own fish – a surgeon as well.

After the two hours were up, we wanted to stay out longer. The crew accomodated us and allowed everyone a few more minutes to fish which was generous of them. The crew really tried to help everyone catch something and have an enjoyable time. I had enjoyed the night fishing and were glad that we ended up going out on the dhoni afterall.

As we headed back in – the crew informed us that for $20 the Atoll Market would clean and prepare the fish you had caught and you could eat it for lunch the next day. Neither my wife or I enjoy eating fish which is sad given all of the destinations we have traveled to where they have fantastic seafood. We were ensured by the crew that our catch wouldn’t go to waste and that the staff on the island would eat it.

We went back to Rangali Bar for hamburgers and ice cream for a late dinner and then headed back to the water villa for some jacuzzi time while doing some star gazing at the crystal clear skies.

I feel like I can die at anytime as I’ve had a taste of heaven.

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

At this point, our luggage still hadn’t arrived and we were getting a bit frustrated. I had sent Direct message via Twitter to Delta – and all they could tell me was beginning at LAX, Malaysia Airlines had their own bag tag and they would be unable to track it.

Using Skype, we had talked to the Male airport, Delta Airlines, and Malaysia lost baggage departments without any success. We had talked to our island hostess but it didn’t appear that she had taken any action – but I think it was because she was a new employee rather than she didn’t care. The transportation director also was unable to get any information in regards to where our bags were but he seemed to want to do everything in his power to try to get to the bottom of the situation.

Several times we were told by various people at Conrad and Male Airport that it would arrive on the next seaplane but it didn’t come to pass. We would be out at the pool or out and about and we would hear a seaplane and our hopes would go up that our bags might be on that plane.

Finally we received a call from the transportation director that our bags had arrived on the island and would be delivered to our room. We were so excited that we wanted to actually go out to the seaplane arrival lounge and get them ourselves. Thirty minutes later there was a knock on the door and our bags had finally made it. The Maldivian employee was taken aback when my wife started screaming and smelling the fresh clothes. She told him that she wanted to marry him. I was finally able to shed my Euro form fitting swimsuit!

With our fresh clothes, we decided to try out the breakfast at Vilu. Vilu differs from Atoll market in that you order off the menu instead of having the full buffet. They do have a smaller buffet there as well and after having so many days of Atoll, we were ready for a change.

Vilu is located on the second island that is connected by a bridge to the main island. There is a Dhoni that goes between the two islands that will drop you off right by Vilu.

As you approach Vilu, the setting is absolutely brilliant as it is looking right out to the water.

We were seated in a beautiful location and handed the menu. Plenty to choose from including all types of eggs, waffles, pancakes, fresh fruit smoothies, orange juice. Other guests said they had the best eggs benedict they have ever had. You can order as much as you want off the menu.

I chose the over easy eggs on toast, with hash browns and sausage.

After placing our order we headed over to the mini buffet.

The Vilu breakfast felt much lighter and healthier with plenty to choose from. Vilu also had one or two varieties of champagne to choose from that are included in the breakfast, we can’t remember if this was available at Atoll. My wife liked eating breakfast at Vilu better than Atoll because she is not a big fan of buffets, and she loved the ‘Vilu smoothie’, an original smoothie only served at Vilu during breakfast. Also they had the hashbrown patties instead of french fry style hashbrowns.

After enjoying our breakfast with orange juice and fresh fruit smoothies, we headed over to the Quiet Zone pool. The Quiet Zone is on the same island as Vilu and is intended to be an adults only pool.

View of Vilu from the beach near the Quiet Zone pool

We spent several hours at the Quiet Zone pool before heading back to our room to change into our workout clothes. Eating all this wonderful food – it was time to try out the exercise room.

There was plenty of weight machines and best of all – ice cold bottled water in a refrigerator. It is small but adequate as most people run/walk around the islands for their workout. We saw sting rays swimming around in the ocean while we were on the treadmills. Employees are allowed to use the gym which bothers some guests, but it didn’t bother us and I saw them go in the gym but they were never there when we worked out.

We went back to our room, changed our clothes and went to the by invitation only manager’s reception. It was held right outside on the deck of the Rangali Bar and was actually kind of overrated. There was complimentary canapes, wine or champagne (can’t remember) and some unique non-alcoholic fruit concoctions that we didn’t care for. We did get to meet several of the staff but overall it wasn’t that exciting so we split after about 30 minutes.

For dinner, we had made reservations for cheese fondue at The Wine Bar. The dinner cost $65 per person.

The fondue was pretty good but I’ve had better. It was a nice atmosphere. We dined with Russians who are on the Sochi 2014 Olympic committee along with some Brits and Americans and enjoyed talking with them.

The desserts were divine – they included a lime sorbet, cheese in white chocolate, and some ball of heaven that we couldn’t figure out what it was. Sometimes quality is better than quantity. My wife thought they were some of the best tasting desserts she has ever had, and would go back for the okay fondue just to eat these three little bites.

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.

Great news from the hotel – the employee strike has been settled!

Last night at dinner – we could see sincere concern from the expatriate employees who wanted to see this end quickly as they realized what damage could be done if this continued on.

As I said in my previous post, the Conrad did a magnificent job of keeping the resort running at a bare bones by pulling employees from other sections of the island.

Now it’s time to return to relaxation!

PS Does anyone have a link or any information in regards to any upgrades you receive if you are a American Express Hilton Surpass owner? We received an email from the resort in regards to this prior to arrival but can’t seem to find it now and our island host was unaware of anything regarding this. Thanks!

This morning at about 4 am we heard rally cries from what sounded like a pep rally. It was really strange but we didn’t think anything of it.

We had breakfast at Atoll restaurant and there was completely new staff there and it seemed to be busier than usual. Afterward we found out that there is an employee strike going on (it seems to be the Maldivians rather than the foreign staff) and so the resort had pulled people from other sections of the resort to help out. There were people from the spa, the gift shop, and from the dive shop delivering food and helping out.

Due to the employee strike, all of the restaurants except atoll and Rangali Bar have been closed and all the excursions have been canceled. Other services such as housekeeping have been suspended.

Hopefully they’ll be able to resolve it soon – we were going to go on a dolphin cruise tonight and were scheduled to have cocktails at the underwater restaurant, Ithaa. Under the circumstances, I feel the resort has been doing really well to keep the place running.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to an article – a little unnerving with this quote:

The service in the island has not been disrupted. However, the strikers are threatening that they might have to disrupt the services to the inhouse guests if their demands are not met.

Well no sign of our suitcases yet and so I made the executive decision to head to the gift shop to find some swimsuits. I realize we’re on a deserted island – but perhaps they would have something reasonably priced. I found a swimsuit that was 3XL – plenty big for my gut or so I thought – perhaps they’ve been lying to us all these years in the US here I was feeling good about only being a 2XL.

I tried the suit on and man is it form fitting. Pretty much leaves nothing to the imagination and if I do any jumping jacks or roundhouse kicks I have a feeling they’re going to split in half.

Checked the price tag – only $200!? The lady gave me a 20% discount and so I walked out for a mere $160.

We’re the only Americans crazy enough to travel this far – plenty of Australians, Russians, French and British.

The breakfast buffet (free for Diamonds) was the most extravagant thing I’ve ever experienced complete with fresh juice bar. Plenty of videos and pictures when we return.

We’re in Taipei on a two hour layover on the way to Malaysia. The business class seats are incredibly roomy, the food fantastic, and the service spectacular. I slept 9 of the 14 hours so I’m feeling pretty refreshed at this point. We were denied entry into China Airlines business lounge though it had Malaysia Air as a partner and we also had Platinum American Express.

Other than that – fantastic start to the trip.

Each year my wife and I sit down and decide where out next goal is going to be. We have a wish list of places we want to go.

The first step was to apply for the American Express Hilton Surpass card. It came with 62500 points and the opportunity to earn Diamond status with a $40,000 annual spend on the card. In 2009 I spent $40,000 on the card which gave me Diamond status through March 2012.

Next I started applying for the Citi American Airlines cards which at the time gave 25,000 bonus points. I did this every three months until I had 150,000 American Airline miles. I then converted them to Hilton points at a 1:2 ratio that I now had 300,000 Hilton points plus 62500 from the American Express bonus.

I am always looking for ways to accumulate Delta Skymiles and recently did both the personal and business account through Suntrust Bank for 140,000 Skymiles.

I’ve also been participating in all of the Priority Club promotions an have over 400,000 points.

In addition, we applied for the British Airways cards and spent $30,000 in 2010 in order to earn a buy get one free award ticket with enough combined miles to fly first class while getting a first class ticket free.

Armed with this – we began to narrow our wish list down to Greece, Maldives, or Bali. We had Hilton, Priority Club, Delta, and British Airways to use.

We had been emailing the Hilton Conrad Maldives asking when they were going to release reward nights. We had pretty much decided on going to Bali when we received an email back from Hilton stating that there would be opening up award nights in a week. Our decision was made – it was going to be the Maldives.

The day that the reward nights opened up, we called and asked what weeks were available – it was wide open. We grabbed 9 reward nights.

We called Delta to see about business class tickets to Male. We were willing to go anywhere and ended with a routing through Dubai. We would then have to purchase a ticket from Dubai to Male and decided we needed to try another routing. We started to inquire about any other Asia routings, perhaps via Japan. The agent mentioned we could go via Malaysia. SLC >> LAX >> Malaysia >> Male – all in business class for 120,000 Skymiles a piece.

We booked this trip 10 months ago and are leaving shortly. It is times like this that make this hobby so rewarding. To see exotic places for a fraction of the cost.

I’ll be sure and post from the road!

The Hilton Conrad Maldives is embracing technology to make for a better experience for their guests. At check in – each guest will be given an Ipod Touch with a “Hotel Evolution” application preloaded. This application allows guest to customize their stay by simply clicking a button.

Some of the things you can do with the Ipod touch during your stay:
Order pillows
List of special events
Book spa appointments
Access to restaurant menus
Order room service
Restaurant reservations
Book Excursions

I will report back on how easy the app was to use and also suggest while I’m there that they consider handing out IPad2s!

If they really want to make for a special experience, I suggest they also preload Angry Birds.