Gosh, I've been meaning to write our trip for the longest time. Up till now I still have the hardest time to find a suitable 'me time' to blog. Anyway, this trip is way past its due date which way back in June! Haha. I know2 almost 2 month the photo sleep soundly in my hard drive. Well without further a do, here it is!
Going to Maldives have been a dream of mine for the longest time. Especially, swimming with whale sharks which has been in my bucket list (right now I've scrapped that off since I discovered that I am a fairly bad swimmer due to lack of practice.. haha).
We went during school starts right after the Raya Aidilfitri school holidays. Which means less people are travelling and cheaper flight tickets. It was also a slow season for maldives, and the hotels are more or less affordable. By the way, before you digged deeper, this is not by all means a backpacker holiday nor a luxury one. This is more of a family vacation bringing old folks, small kids and a baby with a fair amount of budget.
We fly with Airasia, and it cost us roughly RM2500 with food, luggage and hot seat (with baby basinet). Airasia has only 2 flight time and I chose it to be around 9am so that we could straight away go to our island of choice which is Maafushi (more on that later). So we woke up at 4am, get everything ready, drove to the airport and park the car at KLIA2 and have our early breakfast (subuh) at Old town coffee.
The flight was uneventful and Rayyan slept part of the way and it is was almost a 4 hours flight. Upon arrival we were greeted by our Hotel rep and transported to Maafushi by a private speedboat which cost us USD125 (per way). Oh yes, I forgot to mentioned that we stayed at Arena Beach Hotel which was quite fantastic!
The speedboat ride was scary for Ruzain, he cried a whole lot which makes me kinda nervous and baby Rayyan was scared too. He stuck his face right on my boobs the whole way (25 minutes). Poor baby. I would definitely recommend going to the islands on a larger speedboat. Ours was quite small so the bump and corners are quite crazy for the kids to handle.
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| The kids at the airport Jetty.. it was hot! |
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| Next to our private speedboat |
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| I wanted a photo of the bluish sea! |
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Speedboat ride, which was bumpy and quite awful and made Ruzain cried!
This is him when he felt a little bit better. :) |
The hotel was very nice. It was in a newer wing (
Arena Grand) which I had personally emailed the hotel and requested for it. They were nice enough to accommodate this request. We had a queen bed with a single and pull out sofa. Everything was clean and cozy. The best thing you can get here is the service. They really took the effort to entertain your request and care for your needs. Wifi is good and reliable. Every device will have their on password, which is strange but that's how they roll.
The price for the hotel for 3 nights in total including
breakfast and
dinner was RM 2400. It was one of the best hotel in maafushi please consider if you are planning to stay in Maldives.
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| Our room for 3 nights |
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| Not many tv channels |
Since more 90% people in Maldives are muslim, we can go to any restaurants and it is halal. So, for lunch we stop by Hot Bites since it is well reviewed in trip advisor. Food was not so expensive and quite good. Tok Ayah was mentioning that the dhal was superb.
The kids had pizza, papa had bamirang (maggi goreng) and mama had pasta. Which was tasty. Ruzain however, hated the sandy flooring which has many ants. Haha!
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| Mommy's pasta was good |
After our meal, the kids insisted on playing at the beach. Since, it was still too early, we told them that they could only play with the sand.
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| Ruzain can't stand the white beautiful sand |
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| Papa and baby Rayyan |
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| This was later in the day. Around 5pm. |
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| Baby Rayyan first dip! |
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| Ruzain enjoing the maldives beach! |
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| Riding on papa! |
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| Mama didn't go in tho.. The hotel also provide you towels for the beach. :) |
Dinner was buffet style and also covered by the hotel. The menu was a little bit limited but I am not complaining since it is very convenient to have it right in front of the hotel. There was not many patrons at the hotel on the first night that we are able to enjoy our meal in peace in front of a large screen projecting the world cup. Haha!
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| Romantic light over my dinner plate |
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| Papa and little rayyan |
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| The drinks were not covered by the hotel, so you got to order the drinks separately |
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| They also have some bbq items |
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| Biscuit pudding for dessert |
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| Also a live performance on the side! Until next entry for Day 2! |
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