Back when my bud and Pokin decided to get married, they also had to choose where to get married. While they eventually settled on Bora Bora, the Maldives was a strong contender. The political instability in the Maldives broke the tie. “Chance of uprising” were not among the risk factors my bud wanted to deal with. So they booked Bora Bora.
Now 7 years later, they decided it was time to see what the other option looked like. That decision was in no small part helped by some expiring use-or-lose credits they had with Emirates. I’m not complaining!
There are a lot of different options of places to go in the Maldives. At the current count, there are 172 resorts in the Maldives, all spread across different some 26 different atolls and 1,192 islands. Pokin had her sights on some place called Anantara because they had a cool underwater restaurant and an observatory, but because we did the St Regis Bora Bora, it only made sense to check out the parallel resort in the Maldives. Also our friends have been here and loved it and wanted to come back. So to St Regis!
Last time around, we got an upgrade due to planning our wedding there. And back then, St Regis was still part of Starwood. Since then, St Regis became part of the Marriott family. And since then, Pokin learned how to level up her travel booking optimization game. She booked the trip personally as a travel advisor, used the STARS program, and additionally got herself Platinum status through the Bonvoy Brilliant credit card. So we were hoping for some sweet upgrades here too.
The journey to the Maldives is long, especially from Vegas.
We left Tuesday morning a 8:00AM for our 10:00 flight to SFO. It was promptly delayed so we got in at 1pm. We wanted to leave a lot of buffer before we caught our 5:05pm flight to Dubai. We arrived in Dubai at 7:36PM on Wednesday, and then at 2:45 AM Thursday morning, hopped on a 4 hour flight to Male, Maldives (with the time zone change, arriving around 8:00AM).
On arrival, our St Regis host greeted us, transported us to the Maldivian Airways counter where they promptly weight all our luggage (30KG limit per person). Then we hopped on a shuttle to the float plane terminal where we waited in the St Regis lounge. This terminal was just a square building full of lounges.
flight was scheduled only the night before, and fortunately they had us booked for a 9:30 AM departure.
Shortly before it was time, we were escorted to a holding area, before we got on a flight plane over to St Regis.
The flight plane trip was a noisy 40 minutes, but we were lucky to have good visibility over all the atolls. I had fun looking out the window, and then we started descending towards Vommuli island where the resort is situated within the Dhaalu Atoll.
On arrival, just like in Bora Bora, we were greeted by a line of hotel staff. Then it was over to the outdoor waiting area where branded coconuts awaited us.
It was surprisingly not that hot and stuffy for how hot and stuffy we would feel later! I guess that spot is well situated with a persistent breeze.
Fortunately for us, our room is ready!