Beginning of the end

Today is the beginning of the end when I finish the adventures and relaxation and proceed to Kuching for time with family before flying back to reality in Auckland in less than two weeks.  We had set the alarm for 0600 to catch breakfast at the hotel before getting on the 0730 dhoni to Male. We felt that the duration of our stay was perfect; we relaxed on the beach from mid-morning to mid-afternoon yesterday. Two chill days and one dive day. I couldn’t do weeks of island-hopping.

At the harbour, we noticed how much rubbish was in it; largely plastic bottles. The local community need to do more to make sure they don’t end up in the harbour. Our hotel provides 2 small bottles per day per person. I wonder how they dispose of the bottles. This can’t continue.

The boat had curtains on one side only. If you think the correct side to be on is the side with the curtains, think again. That’s the side with the sun; that’s why it has curtains. The ferry operates on a fixed schedule and it only needs curtains on that side!

The 90 minute journey was quick. Arriving in Male, the young boat driver (who had taken over from the Captain partway) skilfully backed us into a tight spot. Quite impressive considering he was located right in front.

Taxi drivers wanted USD5 for the ride to Luckyhiya Hotel but it should be only MVR35 (just over USD2). We walked out of the port area and managed to get one at the right price. We spent most of the day indoors apart from lunch and dinner at the Nepali place.

I left around 1830 for the dhoni to the airport. My Sri Lankan Airlines flight for Colombo was at 2050, connecting to Malaysia Airlines for Kuala Lumpur and Kuching. I had been booked on Malaysia Airlines ex-Male but they operated their final flight only last night. I organised the rerouted flight as soon as I had found out a couple of months ago and the disruption was quite minor.

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Check-in was painless with no queue and the staff checked my luggage all the way to Kuching without hesitation. Some staff are wary of sending bags to a domestic port as it isn’t normal practice for countries like Australia or New Zealand. We boarded a slightly aged but very presentable A320 for the short 1h20 flight to Colombo. A very delicious hot meal was served. I thought the CEO of AirAsia (Malaysia, not Group), Aireen Omar was diagonally behind. I took the chance to tell her what a fan I was of her airline when we landed. She had been in Male with her sidekick Raymond for discussions in preparation for their Male route launch in October.

My oneworld transit wasn’t that seamless. SriLankan couldn’t issue my boarding pass on behalf of Malaysia Airlines. They had to walk my passport and bagtags to the MH office downstairs and walk the boarding pass back. Aireen and Raymond were in a similar situation so we chatted some more. She had some concerns from customers about the price of accommodation but I assured her there was plenty of nice ones at USD40. They both seemed like very pleasant approachable managers.