Hmm… Not Too Bad

I’m definitely on a roll now – two vacations in a row that did not involve waking up extremely early. Except I had to go to work before hand… so I guess I still had to wake up a little early. Adela and I each worked a half-day on Wednesday before she dropped me off at the Enterprise on Columbia Avenue to pick up our rental car. We had determined that it would be way more efficient this trip to just rent a car up in Lancaster for a few hours and just return it at the Dulles rental car return. That turned out to be a good call and I can see us doing this more if our trips involve frequent flyer shenanigans like this one does. The check-in counter for Qatar airlines was really crowded, the people next to us were checking something like 9 bags. The Capital One lounge at Dulles wasn’t crowded at all so we were able to stake out a corner table and play some Wingspan while we waited for our flight to board. One thing we’ve discovered about Middle Eastern airlines is they all start boarding early if possible. Like… and hour before departure. I don’t think we ended up leaving any sooner, but it meant we got to relax in our seats for a little while before taking off. Our seats faced backwards! Besides being incredibly weird, we had the important job of making sure our stuff didn’t get yeeted all over the cabin. I was unsuccessful.

I turned on a movie once we got to altitude (it was Shazam) and had an alright meal (with a pretty good dessert) before getting a surprisingly decent amount of sleep. The flight attendant had to wake me up for breakfast! Strangely enough we were having breakfast at essentially 3pm local time in Qatar but I think it made sense. Our flight landed a couple minutes late and we made our way to immigration. Strangely enough immigration took forevvverrrr. The main line moved quickly, then it seemed like the individual lines for the officers dragged on. I think we could’ve used the business class immigration but I wasn’t 100% certain what that entailed and didn’t want to take extra time if it was unsuccessful. Once through we met our guide, Lika, and her husband and started a little tour of Doha. One of the first things we learned was that Doha as a modern city is just a little bit older than my high school diploma. There are some things and places that have existed in some form for a long time, like the Souq Waqif, but not in their current form. It was really nice talking with Lika and her husband to get a sense of why so many people move to Doha and what life is like for someone who lives there. My three favorite things from the tour were – One, and way ahead of the others, visiting the falcon hospital. It is a government funded hospital where you can take your falcon for a check up. OR FALCON SURGERY. We could look like right in to the falcon OR. The second was that the less digits in your license plate, or the cooler the sequence, the more valuable it is. Like a six digit license plate is just a regular person, a four digit license plate is like “that person is rich” a three digit one is “that person has to be a sheikh” and one/two digits means they belong to the royal family. And lastly… our guides had decided ahead of time that if we were old it meant we were going to South Africa and if we were young it meant we were going to the Maldives. I’m not sure how I feel about how correct they were.

We got back to the airport with a little less than four hours left before our flight to Male and made it to the Al Mourjan lounge. There was only mild controversy between us if this was the one with the “big water feature.” Once we had taken the lay of the land we set our first task as getting showers. It was definitely warranted. After that we got some dinner at the al a carte dining restaurant. We got there at the perfect time to get some lounge-y chairs with a good view. I’m bad at time zones and thought our next flight was 5 hours… turns out it was only 4. This wasn’t a big deal, except it did mean that we ended up with a little less sleep than anticipated on the next flight. Our seats were pretty good on the flight to Male and we both got at least two to three hours of sleep before we woke up to eat some breakfast. Once we landed in Male we had to wait a little bit for the bus to come to our plane (bus gates are… not my favorite) and then had the pleasure of discovering that immigration in the Maldives is way easier than Qatar. That could be because we actually followed directions and filled out the required online form though. I know at least two people in front of us in line hadn’t filled it out. Unfortunately following directions didn’t help us meet the Mirihi representative at the airport because we got to booth C12 and nobody was there. Luckily she was watching to see if we went there and took us to get our seaplane tickets. Now… I was honestly a little worried about the seaplane weight limit thing. Because my backpack was like way over the limit, it turns out lithium batteries are heavy. But they weighed all of our luggage together essentially and Adela doesn’t have as many heavy electronic things as I do so we were able to overcome my weight challenge.

The very nice woman also then accompanied us to the seaplane terminal, which was a short bus ride from the main terminal. It is also significantly nicer than the main terminal, which is kinda funny considering one jet probably costs more than all the seaplanes. There is one main seaplane company – Transmaldivian Airways, which operates a fleet of 64 seaplanes that take you directly to your resort island! While we waited we were escorted to the Mirihi lounge, which was one of the nicest lounges I’ve been in considering how many people use it. They had dope outside seating, refreshments, and comfy inside seating. The only thing the building was lacking at that exact point in time was power. Fortunately chairs are just as functional with and without power, so our only objective was to somehow sit on the day bed chair in such a way as to not fall asleep. They gathered us up when our plane started “boarding” and we went down into the “gate” area. Just like regular airports for some reason they choose the harshest lighting possible for these areas to suck your soul from your body. Luckily we are in the Maldives so it didn’t work. There were six people flying to Mirihi on our plane and then seven people who were going to continue on to the Conrad.

The seaplane journey as a whole was fantastic! It was really cool watching the pilots fly, although the highlight absolutely was the view. Especially the view of Mirihi out the front windshield/window as we approached the resort. Landing was pretty wild, and then we had a short taxi to the worlds cutest airport. Also yes, if you were wondering, the airport has its own code. MRH for Mirihi. So our bags have checked luggage tags from MLE to MRH. It’s awesome. We took the airport shuttle over to the resort and then walked down the jetty to reception. Along the way we encountered the rather incredulous sight of two men paddling a dingy that is sized for medium to large children. We now just have the derpy version of the Moana theme song in our heads. Once we got to reception we were offered either a fresh coconut or some delicious fruit juice. The first instruction we received was to take our shoes off because the whole resort is shoe-free. I am already a big fan of this and might have to implement it at work also. That logistically might be a little hard as I think about it. After a tour of the property we were lead to our villa and told to rest for a little while to start getting used to the time change. After a few minutes of rest (which did not actually include a nap!) we left to explore the island a little bit and walked through the restaurant. We were then directed to sit down, which we obliged, because we got a table in the shade right on the beach with a nice breeze to cool us off. All meals are primarily served buffet style, and so far the selection has been incredibly varied and I’d rate it from OK to Very Good. While eating we had the pleasure of seeing some dolphins swim by!

Our villas come with a handy tide chart, which I promptly ignored thinking “it’s two hours to low tide, I’m fine to go snorkeling from the villa right now.” Well, it was quite a stressful swim out and back so I waived Adela off and we decided that we’d go snorkeling through the nice channel they made on the other side of the reef. By the power of greyskull the reef and fishes are amazing! Words and pictures barely do it justice. We both snorkeled out and back for a little while, and saw two hawksbill turtles right away! After snorkeling we dropped our gear off at the room, showered, and then took a nap before heading to the “Management Cocktail.” This was a slightly awkward affair since we were still operating on adrenaline and jet lag and the very nice staff members kept coming up to us to chat. We learned that our dolphin sighting was pretty lucky, although apparently they like to swim by our villa. After having a cocktail we meandered over to dinner – the theme of which was Maldivian Night. I think the food was cooked really well, I just might not be the biggest fan of Maldivian food. We managed to stay up after dinner to a reasonable-ish hour before crashing hard!