Maldives Trip - Day 1: The Epic Journey Begins!

Hi friends! So I got back from my epic maldives 2 days ago. It was an epic 36 hour journey back with 2 hours sleep and some jet lag to get over which kind of took over my brain yesterday. I took a ton of video footage and a few photos of the trip so I will be sharing it all with you here over several posts. Let us begin!

^{gratuitously awesome title pic}

The trip starts in London. I flew down from Scotland the day before and met up with some family and did a few last minute purchases there. We headed to Heathrow to board a flight bound for Dubai, where we had 90minutes before our flight directly to Malé.

^Dad

We flew the A380 (the totally ginormous double decker airbus). You know, the one with a shower and a bar in first class. I didnt see any of that, we're common people in common class.. er.. Economy class. Which to be fair was still pretty damn swish!

^{Another A380 from our window}

The thing I noticed immediately was the size of the wings. It filled almost the entire window. It was insane. The scale of this thing is unlike anything I have flown in before. Definitely an experience worth trying. The inflight entertainment system as pretty epic too.. 1500 movies and tv shows to choose from! I remember the last time I flew international the airline gave you a small selection based on the route you were flying. Not here on Emirates, they give you everything!

So yeah, we take off and settle in for an 8 hour flight to Dubai as the lighting slowly changes in the window from day to night.

We got to Dubai around 1am local time and headed straight to our next plane thinking 'oh we'll have time when we get there to chill, go to the bathroom and maybe grab a drink. NOPE. It took so long to get from one terminal to the next that we just barely made it on time for boarding!

The great thing about this flight was that it was so empty. Most of the rows were unoccupied so you were able to stretch out on a whole row and get some actual sleep. This was a 5 hour flight so I wasn't sure if it was worth getting any sleep so I watch guardians of the galaxy 2 while waiting for them to serve breakfast.


That is, until the view outside the window changed from blue sky/blue sea to AWESOME. As we approached the Maldives all the little islands and atolls started to appear below us. What a view! Observe:

The view was stunning and you could tell because every widow in the plane had a face squished against it to get a glimpse. Then of course we eventually got closer and closer to the ground until we landed. We got off the plane and oh my it was warm and humid! Such a change from home. It was glorious.

A word of warning, don't bring Alcohol with you as its banned in the maldives (until you get to the resorts.. or your boat -they have a special license). If you do they confiscate it and you can collect it when you get back to the airport to leave.. so no major harm done really, but its a waste of time bringing it.


So when we got off the plane and into the arrivals hall (not air conditioned by the way) we had to wait and look for the rep that would take us to our boat. He eventually appeared and gathered us along with the others joining us on the boat. We got herded out of the airport and across the street to the boat jetty. That's right, the airport is its own tiny island. Here's a picture I took (of a postcard of the airport), the terminal building is to the left of the runway. Then the jetty's where are all the boats arrive to either take you to the main city of Male or to you resorts or boats.

So anyway, we head over to the jetty and shortly there after a boat arrives to take us away.

ALL ABOARD!

So now we are aboard this little boat and almost at our final destination. What a trek! In the pic above you can see the city of Male on the right, and the airport is on the left.

Finally we get to our new home for the next week. The Emperor Orion! Emperor is the name of the company, Orion is the name of the boat. Its a glorious boat, and I will show you a bit what it looks like and what the remainder of our day was like in the next post.

P.S. Its good to be back and back on Steemit. I missed you guys, but to be fair.. considering where I was.. I didn't miss you that much ;) However I am glad I can share this experience with you!

!steemitworldmap 4.183206 lat 73.518632 long Maldives Trip - Day 1: The Epic Journey Begins D3SCR

---

Thanks for Looking.
Follow me and read more of my posts here: @fiftysixnorth
Don't forget to Upvote and Resteem