Ok I haven't worked on this in awhile and thought I'd add some pictures. We left very early the next morning on Singapore Air direct to MLE, because of the way things ended up we had to wait a few hours for our Seaplane. It WAS so cool flying in and seeing all the islands on the way to MLE...here are some pics of Male from the air, the Seaplanes and our flight to the Conrad!
This is the new bridge being built so you don't have to take a ferry from the airport to Male (I'm not sure if this is good or bad as one of the reasons I felt safe at the airport was because it was totally separate from Male and I felt it would be hard to plan a terrorist attack on the airport...my husband has been to Pakistan and said the MLE airport was giving him flashbacks...lol). Also, our Conrad driver told us the Chinese are financing and helping build it, which I thought was interesting from a geopolitical perspective.
You can see even the water at the airport is gorgeous!!
I think it was unusual but the Conrad had confirmed us into a complimentary Deluxe Beach villa ahead (usually they won't guarantee anything until you arrive but I nicely wrote them ahead and told them how loyal and great customers we are within the Hilton family).
We stayed there two nights and then paid for an upgrade to and OWV the other three nights. The Deluxe Beach Villas are extremely private and you have to use your keycard not only to enter the villa but also to enter the courtyard and surrounding fenced in area.
Courtyard to the villa:
Walkway to your outdoor bathtub and jacuzzi in the back:
Another pic of the huge tub and lounger next to it:
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Outdoor shower:
Outdoor dual vanities:
The trip was for my DH's birthday so they decorated the bed:
Diamond Welcome amenity (I asked them for a couple cokes since we couldn't drink the champagne but I guess Housekeeping didn't get the message...lol):
Front of the villa lounge chairs and private pool. It is TOTALLY secluded so you don't have to worry about anyone bothering you but the downside to that is that even though we were about 20 yards from the ocean and had no view, because of the tall hedges. Just something to bear in mind if a view is important to you (and something to add to the endless debate about whether it's necessary to upgrade to an OWV here or at the Hyatt). I loved the unit but the OWV was a whole other world and I personally love a great view and wouldn't travel here without booking and OWV for part of the time.
We were jetlagged from all our flights so went to bed early that evening and caught the sunrise on the beach in front of our villa the next morning:
The next morning at breakfast the chef (same guy that personally helped us store all our kosher frozen meals we brought from Singapore the afternoon before) came and found us and in a separate outdoor cooking area made us breakfast on new pans. He chopped the veggies I requested in front of me, had me check the eggs for blood and had me turn on the flame (I didn't teach him all this it was BarryLincoln and it was him or someone else that also left some Pam)!
He also let me check the package on their lox because I wanted some and it came from Australia and had a hechsher. They also have cereal, chobani yogurt, jams and other things with hechshers or on the Australia kashrut list. He gave us new cutlery and has special glass plates he keeps for serving kosher food and seriously everybody has their own comfort level y'all can ask shailas to your LOR's about eating at a place like this, but I felt he bent over backward for everything we requested (we made sure to give him a nice tip at the end of the trip because he personally did this every single morning for us).
Next installment will hopefully be in a few days, not a few months and will include pics of the island and our visit to Ithaa, the underwater restaurant for morning cocktails!
