Maldives Day 16 - "Choukouriya & Vakivani!" and a seat on the pilot's chair

August 10, 2021

Our alarm clock goes off at 7:15 am. We quickly get up, finish packing our suitcases, and place them by the door.

After a farewell photo on the beach, we go to have breakfast.

You can immediately tell that we're leaving: shoes, socks, some long pants, and backpacks.

My feet strongly resist socks and shoes.

Oh, how nice it was to walk around barefoot or with flip-flops for the past 2 weeks.

We sit nostalgically at our beautiful table with a view. Waiter Mohamed says goodbye to us with double the amount of ordered drinks ("for the road"), and the omelette station employee also recognizes that I'm leaving and makes me an "extra tasty omelette" as my last breakfast and says goodbye as well.

Oh yes, the staff here on the island are really great!!! Truly all of them are consistently friendly and helpful. And even waiter Mohamed, who always looks "in a bad mood," has a soft spot 😉

I quickly take some pictures by the pool

Our suitcases are taken to the jetty by a luggage trolley at 8:15 sharp, and we board the speedboat with another German couple and a family with a child.

The sea is calm today, the view is great, the sun is shining, and the sky is blue... sniff. But the island doesn't make it easy for us to say goodbye!

Well, at least the boat ride should be more relaxed today than on the day of arrival.

We nostalgically leave our little dream island Thulhagiri and head towards the airport island.

At 8:40, we stand in line at the airport and sweat. Masks are mandatory here. After a short time, I change my FFP2 mask for a surgical mask because I can hardly breathe in this humidity.

To enter the building, you actually have to have the IMUGA forms ready on your phone for scanning.

Phew, at least that worked smoothly for the departure!

After waiting in the humidity for what feels like endless minutes, we are allowed through the first security check into the building. It's a bit cooler here - at least if you stand under an air conditioning vent.

The line at the 3 Condor counters is long. So, again: WAITING!

Finally, it's our turn.

The employee checks our passports, the kids' PCR tests, and our vaccination certificates. And once again, we have a problem:

While I, as a teacher, had the privilege of being vaccinated with Biontech back in April, my husband, as a "normal person without any vaccination priority," had no chance of getting a Biontech or Moderna vaccine. Not even AstraZeneca was possible...

The only way to get a reasonably good protection before the vacation was to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Advantage: only requires 1 dose!

But now that's the problem!

It seems that he is the first traveler in the Maldives who was vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson. The employee doesn't want to issue us a ticket because the "second dose" is missing. Unfortunately, they don't believe us that there is only ONE dose with J&J.

Oh man, this can't be true!!!

The vacationers behind us in line are pretty annoyed when the employee at the counter has to call her supervisor. Then 3 employees stand next to her and search for information about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on the computer, phone, and phone calls.

After what feels like an eternity, one employee gives his OK, and our vaccinations are accepted. Phew....

No one needs this.

Next hurdle:

Since we've never paid to reserve seats before, we hope that this time we were assigned seats together.

Unfortunately, that didn't work out this time.

The system has spread the 4 of us throughout the plane!

Oh sh...... 😱

But the employee is very nice and helpful, she discusses with a colleague at the counter next to her and points to us saying "Family with children," then she prints our boarding passes with a smile.

Until the last moment, contiguous seats are kept for families, and we have now received them. That's nice 😉

Officially, our kids (13 & 17) are considered "adults" in the plane starting from age 12, so it's nice that they still get the "kids bonus" when it comes to seats.

We get Row 11, 2 window seats, and 2 middle seats - just like on the outbound flight. (We briefly considered booking similar seats from home. But it would have cost us 80 €. And it's confirmed again: seat reservations are a waste of money!)

However, this time we are sitting IN FRONT of the wing, with (hopefully) the best view when taking off from the Maldives! Maybe we'll see Thulhagiri from above!?

It's right in the flight path - as we experienced in the past 2 weeks when a plane flew directly over us 🙈

A few days ago, I found out that a friend of mine will be flying our vacation plane as the captain today 🤪

That's awesome!!! A few years ago, we were lucky enough to be on the same plane. At that time, we were flying to Egypt, and I even got to be in the cockpit during landing. It was amazing!

Due to COVID, it's not possible this time, but we agreed that we can visit the cockpit during boarding 😉

How cool! That's definitely a nice surprise at the end!

After all the security checks, we spend another hour in the duty-free area. My daughter buys a burger, then it's time to board.

We manage to get on the first bus to the plane with the "priority guests."

The cabin crew already knows that we're coming because when I say that we want to say "Hello" to the captain, we're immediately escorted to the cockpit with a smile. It's not easy because there's the captain and 2 co-pilots in the cockpit, and it gets quite crowded with us and our backpacks.

The co-pilot eventually gives up his seat for the kids, who can take turns sitting in the pilot's chair and are shown everything.

When boarding is almost complete, we have to say goodbye (with a photo of course) and we also take our seats.

Unfortunately, the plane is completely full this time!!!

ALL seats are taken, including the 3rd seat in the middle row, where my son and husband are sitting.

Well, let's hope that everyone is vaccinated and tested 🙈

We take off on time towards home and realize after a few minutes of flight:

We're sitting on the RIGHT side!!!

We fly directly past our little dream island Thulhagiri!!! Yayyy!

From above, you can also see the extent of the construction monstrosity on the neighboring island. It's worse than it looked from below. It's going to be a huge complex... terrible!

Bye Bye Thulhagiri!!!

The flight is calm this time - but it's dragging on.

Unfortunately, we can't connect any of our devices to the in-flight entertainment, so we have to take turns using the tablet to watch a saved movie. Luckily, we still have our phones and books, but 10 hours is really long....

For lunch (we're starving!), luckily there are vegetarian noodles again. We all eat them.

The time until dinner, however, feels like eternity. Fortunately, we took some mini muffins and cakes from the breakfast buffet.

That saves the afternoon above the clouds.

We land in Frankfurt at 7:11 pm, and the weather is good:

24 degrees - how pleasant!

Well, it seems like we brought the nice weather with us  🤭

Our Portugal replacement trip to the Maldives was the best thing that could have happened to us and a great consolation for the canceled Portugal vacation.

It could have been worse 😉

It was a real dream vacation!!!! I highly recommend it to everyone!

Stay tuned for our next adventure blog. We have a lot planned - surprise yourselves!

Until then, stay healthy and enjoy reading!

"Choukouriya & Vakivani!" 😉