Days 12-13: Happy(?) New Year

December 31, 2024 - Jan 1, 2025

We know this blog is a couple of days late and we apologize if anyone was concerned about us given that we didn't post yesterday (we are fine!). Being a part time travel blogger is hard work!

But we are back on schedule with a combined post today. Our travels continued in the morning where we were heading back to an airport for yet another flight, this time leaving from Chiang Mai to a very short stop in Bangkok where we would be bringing in the New Year! Luckily it wasn't as early of a wakeup as the past few trips and, because we were flying Bangkok Airways, we were given access to another lounge where we had some snacks as we waited to board. The flight itself was pretty uneventful and, again, we were served some weird mush food that we don't remember ordering.

One fun moment was that as we were waiting for the gate, we saw someone with the exact same bag as mine and joked that it would be funny if we had our bags switched. Turns out, the joke became sort of a reality as we were seated directly next to the backpack, which belonged to a woman originally from Idaho who now lives in Thailand teaching at an international school. Luckily for us our bags were in overhead compartments on opposite sides of the aisle, but what a small world!

We landed and were greeted by staff from The Rosewood, our next hotel in Bangkok, and were escorted to an extremely fancy BMW that would take us to the hotel. Most of the drive itself was quick, but once we exited for the hotel we hit an absolute standstill. We inched forward for probably about an hour in bumper to bumper traffic before finally making it to the hotel. Bangkok, it turns out, is a popular New Year's Eve destination and the city was packed with people and cars making it very difficult to get around. As a result, we decided that we shouldn't try to venture across the city to check out the major tourist attractions and settled on just exploring whatever was walking distance / connected to our hotel.

Our first stop was another fancy mall where we stumbled upon a food court in the basement that was set up like a night market, with a bunch food stalls with little bites in a seemingly endless basement. We got some dumplings, an extremely spicy crab curry, pork skewers, a duck broth, and, of course, more mango sticky rice for dessert! The mango sticky rice still didn't live up to our first one, but was still a delicious treat to end our meal on.

We then set out to explore what we could of Bangkok on foot. There was a park that looked like a promising destination, so there we went. The park itself was just okay, but it was also very hot and muggy and after a lot of walking we just wanted to get back to the hotel. Fun fact though, it turns out Dean & Delucca is quite popular in Bangkok, which was a welcome treat for Emily who got a much needed and refreshing iced tea. We turned back around and made our way back to the hotel to rest up for our big NYE plans at the hotel.

Our first stop was dinner at Nan Bei, a Chinese restaurant in our hotel that ended up being one of our favorite meals so far. We ordered way too much food including, but not limited to:

• Spinach doused in a thick peanut sauce

• Truffle and crab soup dumplings

• Crispy sea bass

• Pot Stickers

• Crispy pork belly (which was our least favorite of the things)

• "Long life" fried noodles with scallops and prawns

• For dessert they brought us a little cake and wished us a happy honeymoon!

After dinner, we headed up 11 floors to our next stop at Lennon's, a "speakeasy" lounge at the hotel where we had a table reserved for their "Studio 54 80's" New Year's celebration. Our table was facing out over the city where we could already see fireworks going off well before midnight. They gave us some small bites as part of our reservation and we ordered a couple of drinks while the DJ spun vinyl soul albums. Then, a keyboard and lounge singer appeared and sang a couple of covers and welcomed everyone to the party.

Now, if you've gotten this far, is where things sort of took a turn. We ordered a couple of glasses of champagne with around a half hour left before the clock struck 12 so we would be prepared to cheers the new year and head straight to bed before our 6:15am ride to the airport the next morning. At around 11:50 we finally flagged down the manager to help us close out so we could make our quick getaway.

11:55, still no check. 11:56 - 11:58, still no check. At 11:59 the manager came over to us as we were standing up with our champagne, looking out over the fireworks across the city, ready to begin the final countdown to 2025.

We started counting down: 5...4...and before we could get to 3 the manager screamed in our ears over the noise of the venue "you are well short of the table minimum, would you like to order anything else?" We were incredulous. We took about one second and told him to hold on while we clicked our glasses and wished each other a "Happy New Year" and then the fight was on.

This was not only the least convenient time to have said anything about not hitting our minimum, but also was the first we were hearing that the minimum spend was per person and not, as it said on their website and had been told to us, per table. We had been sitting in the same seats for 2.5 hours at this point and rather than telling us over the course of the night that we were not close to our minimum and asking if we'd like to order more food or drinks to hit it, they decided at the last possible moment of 2024 to reveal this to us.

Obviously we were not going to pay double what we had been told. We'd had 2 drinks each and just wanted to go to bed because we had to be up again in just a few hours. We were quick to pull up their website where it clearly stated the minimum is "per table" and, despite the manager pushing back and saying that we were sent an email saying it was per person (we weren't), it seemed like we had maybe won and were not charged for the additional "person" and just charged as a table. But this whole ordeal at the end of the night really put a damper on NYE and our time in Bangkok. We didn't have the opportunity to actually celebrate the new year as we were too busy arguing with the manager AT MIDNIGHT to really take in the sights of the city and the party in the room. It was a super weird and unfortunate end to what was otherwise a nice night.

After finally signing the bill, we packed our stuff to get ready for our early pickup to head back to the airport for our long travel day ahead to the Maldives!

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January 1, 2025

After a very short and not restful night of sleep, we woke up and headed to the car (another fancy car, this time a Mercedes), that was outfitted with coffee and breakfast for us to take us to the airport. Luckily there wasn't any traffic so early and we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, which was good because my suitcase had started to rip at the seams and we needed to get a strap to make sure everything was kept in place.

We ate our breakfast and were the first to board our 4 hour AirAsia fight to The Maldives, but not before Em had a quick meltdown on Facetime with her parents-- all the stress and exhaustion of the past 24 hours had finally hit. Sometimes you just need to cry it out with mom and dad!

We had been stalking the weather forecast for The Maldives and it looked like it might be a cloudy and rainy few days, which definitely contributed to the bumpy ride in, but eventually we landed safe and sound in Malé, the capital. Our travel day was really only just beginning though as the next phase of transportation was a seaplane that would fly us about 45 minutes north to a resort near ours where we'd have our stuff loaded onto a short boat ride to our resort.

The seaplane was quite an experience! We were the last to board this time and ended up in the front row where I had a direct view inside the cockpit and Emily had the window seat. The takeoff and first 15 minutes of the trip were pretty terrifying. The propellers were whirring loudly and our pilots seemed to be aiming for every large cloud in the way, making for a particularly bumpy ascent. Eventually we leveled out at around 1,500 feet (I had a great view of all of the dials) and chugged along for the next half hour. While it was still a rocky ride and mostly cloudy, we did catch some pretty amazing glimpses of the islands with their crystal clear, turquoise waters and iconic strings of villas stretching out into the Indian Ocean.

Landing directly in the water was also quite the experience as every fiber of your being is saying that planes land on land and memories of Captain Sully flash through your mind. But the landing was about as smooth as it could be and our pilot parallel parked the plane on the dock, where we transitioned from plane to boat and then boat to Hurawalhi, our home for the next 4 days.

We were greeted by the hotel managers and Afrah, who would be our attendant for the next few days and accessible via WhatsApp for any of our needs. Afrah then gave us a golf cart tour of the island and brought us to our villa. On the bed they wished us a happy honeymoon and had a bottle of champagne and some treats waiting for us. But that was just the start! The bed faces out over our private backyard, complete with lounge chairs, a table, snorkel equipment, and a private pool as well as stairs directly into the ocean where we can snorkel whenever we want!

While the weather was still not perfect and remained both windy and overcast, we were still so happy to be here and thrilled with the accommodations and view and were ready to do nothing but relax here until we have to go home.

Dinner was at Canneli, the buffet style restaurant on the property. I got a random assortment of stuff including fresh sashimi, stir fried veggies, and a piece of sea bass lathered in some sort of yellow sauce. Emily got sashimi as well, but also got a heaping bowl of extremely pesto-y pasta from the fresh pasta station.

After dinner, we headed straight back to the villa to go to bed as the last 24 hours had been exhausting from the travel and NYE minimum ordeal. We put out our "Do Not Disturb" coconut and promptly fell asleep.

But we we're finally here, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, ready to hopefully soak in the final rays of sun on this amazing adventure and can't wait for our first full day here in The Maldives! Hoping for smooth sailing from here on out. Happy New Year!

Love,

Max