Right after Shabbos, we finished packing and went around the house to make sure we didn’t forget anything. My wife made sure to pack sunscreen and aloe as those items are quite expensive in MLE. I picked up 2 sandwiches from Mike’s Burgers, which is a fast food restaurant in 5 towns, to have on the plane. We were supposed to get a ride to the airport, but that person canceled on us at the last minute, so we ordered an Uber. When the driver arrived to our house there was a kid in the car and the driver rolled down her window to tell us that her phone died and that we should cancel the ride and then drove off. It was the weirdest thing in the world. I canceled her and ordered a new one, which was a local driver from the 5 towns who I’ve used before. I told him the story that just happened to me and he told me it’s a trick for the driver to get 10 bucks as it costs $10 to cancel your ride, so I quickly emailed Uber the story and the next day they told me they’ll refund the $10, lesson learned.
There are plenty of TR's from EK F so I will try to keep to the main points and if there was anything I thought was worth mentioning. Check in went smoothly, there was one of those machines which plastic wraps your bags a couple of feet away from the Emirates first class check in, so my wife thought it would be a good idea to get our food bag wrapped for $15 to make sure the bag wouldn’t open at all. After that we went through security, where we needed to take off our shoes and laptop out of our bag, since EK doesn’t partake in TSA Pre. The Emirates lounge in JFK is nothing special, just a lot of seats and was pretty full since EK206 departs 40 minutes before EK202, which also means we wouldn’t be able to board directly from the lounge, since that gate bridge was being used by EK 206. When we were leaving the lounge we passed by 2 guys with baseball caps sitting in the lounge… but more on that later.
Emirates is exactly how everyone talks about it, just tons and tons of bling. We scheduled our shower for 2-3 hours before landing which would refresh us for our 8 hour stop over in Dubai. Once we were in the air it was around 11:30pm and we were bombed and went to sleep for a good 6 hours. When we woke up, we went to the back to the lounge/bar and found one of those guys we passed in the lounge more than a little tipsy. We started talking and he tells me he’s traveling with his friend who knows a lot about miles and points and I asked his name, and tada, another DDFer!!! I was not expecting that. We had a nice time by the bar, drinking and taking pics with the FA's. It can get really fun by back there, depending on who is around. I’m not sure if this is well known, but the cabin crew has a Polaroid camera and can take pictures and give them to you on the spot, in a nice Emirates frame card. After about an hour we went back to our seat and had our kosher meals which weren’t great, but did the job and decided to save our Mike's sandwiches for our stop over in Dubai. Being that the rest of our food was under the plane, this seemed to be the best idea. The shower is not overrated, end of story. For me it wasn’t so much the fact of taking a shower 35,000 feet in the air, rather landing after a 15 hour flight and feeling as fresh as can be.
Since our flights were booked with Alaska miles, technically we were not entitled to a chauffeur service, but we went to the desk which is after customs and just showed them our F ticket. We told them where we wanted to go and they set us up with one of their chauffeur cars. Unfortunately we were not able to arrange for a car to take us back to the airport, since it needs to be booked 24 hours prior. We asked to go to the Dubai Mall to see some sights. We walked around the mall for about an hour and a half, saw some cool stuff and decided at about 10pm to head back to the lounge to chill for a little, and eat our sandwiches. Just something to note, taxis are not allowed to pick you up in front of the Mall. We ordered an Uber and needed to meet him in the parking garage in order for him to take us back to the airport. The Uber guy gave us a brief tour of the city as we were driving, which was interesting, to my wife, at least. When we got back to the airport I tried to get upgraded to first class, since I flew JFK-DXB on F and I technically paid for F (Hey, it worked for LX, maybe it will work again), but they weren’t budging especially since I was originally booked in Y and had AS upgrade me to J, they thought I upgraded my ticket so I was for sure not eligible for F. When we got to the lounge we ate our delicious (not so soggy) sandwiches. I was able to catch up on some work and rested till our 4:50am departure. Boarding was called for 4:20am but when we got to the gate at 4:05am they had already completed boarding and were just waiting for 2 other passengers besides us.
Since we would be taking a bus to the plane, they opened the gate for boarding but made no such announcement in the lounge, even though they had called all the other flights before us. As I mentioned in the beginning, first class was completely empty. Emirates 777 features a 2-3-2 layout in business class, which we took the 2 seats on the left side in the second row. Since sleeping on a chair in the lounge wasn’t the most comfortable or restful, my wife and I went to sleep shortly after take-off. When we woke up, we were served our kosher breakfast that was sourced from Thailand. It was a basic breakfast spread, with nothing fancy or any extras. Once we arrived in Male, we were finally able to get a taste of the warm however humid weather. Since the airport is kind of small, we deplaned from a remote stand and walked into the airport with our carry-on luggage. The business and first class passengers arriving to and leaving Male are entitled to Fast Passes, or security line cutting rights, as it were. We were the first on line and through immigration in under 3 minutes.
Next we had to pick up our bags. One came out with red stickers on it, and we had to pull off the line into the “goods to declare” section, where there were 4 or 5 officers waiting for us. They put our bags through the x-ray and told us that we would have to leave the wine and champagne my wife had packed in the airport. Luckily, they were just holding it, and allowed us to pick it up when departing Male, because that would have been a waste of perfectly good drinks. Once that was taken care of, we went out and were met by staff from the Conrad, who took all of our bags and arranged our check in to Trans Maldivian Airways for our seaplane transfer to the resort. Meanwhile, we walked around and checked out the shops. Once we were all checked in, we were driven to the Conrad arrivals lounge, in a well air-conditioned van. Once we were settled, the Conrad staff checked us in, while we each got a 10 minute chair massage. The lounge was overlooking the seaplane port, so we got to see many planes coming and going before we were finally told that ours would be next.
We walked onto a tiny plane and sat crammed with 12 other people with no air conditioning. However, it was pretty cool to watch the pilot and co-pilot operating the seaplane, and seeing all the islands and reefs below. We were supposed to be the second stop, so we landed at a floating raft in the middle of the ocean to drop off several of the passengers first. Since it is in the middle of nowhere, we had to wait for all the Dhoni’s to come and pick up people going to different resorts, so we got out and enjoyed the breeze while talking with some of the other passengers. Finally, we were ready to get on our way again, finally headed to the Conrad this time. The Conrad actually has a landing dock in the resort, so we were escorted off the seaplane right into another arrival lounge while our luggage was unloaded. Then from there we were taken to the reception by boat.
To be continued…
