6th - 11th May - Mercure Kooddoo - Maldives

Assalaa mu alaikum from Mercure Resort Koodoo, Maldives,

Well, well, well, what to say about the Mercure Kooddoo in the Maldives?

SHMICKOOOOO!

Here goes,

We flew from Colombo to Male.

The airport in Male is on one tiny island and the township is on another that is connected by a long and very cool looking bridge. The water looked amazing and came right up to the arrivals hall in the airport. We grabbed some cash from the ATM and grabbed a taxi to our hotel.

We hit a slight hiccup when the chick at reception told us it was $46US plus taxes for the room, which came to roughly half of what I just withdrew. Also the card machine was not working. Ok… we paid the balance and THEN she told us that the top floor of the hotel was out due to water damage and we would be taxied to new digs – same quality hotel – across town.

Ok… I guess.

We arrived a few minutes later at the new digs of Cracktown as we called it. Very dodgy, but lucky I’m a 6.3 behemoth of a farang!

We then walked the dodgy streets of Cracktown, had a good Mexican feed, bought some water and local sweet biscuits (stale and gross) and went back to the A/C and fan of the Cracktown motel.

Shite sleep and then up at sparrow’s to get a taxi back to the airport.

I read that we had access to the Kooddoo lounge but having never been a VIP traveller before I wasn’t sure what that entailed. Anyway, we paid $10 to get back to the airport and then $48AUD for a toastie and coffee each!!!

What a shite start...

We were then shown to the departures terminal where they weighed not only our bags but us (WTF?) before we were lead upstairs to the lounge and the FREE ALL-INCLUSIVE BREAKFAST BUFFET!

Amateurs we are, pure rubes…

Two hours later we were on the 38 seater, twin prop, wee plane for the hour-long voyage to our paradise destination. Seats 1A and 1B – yeah, about time we were treated like royalty!!

The hour voyage over the blue Indian was gorgeous. I don’t ever think I’ve used the word “atoll” as much before or since that flight!

We touched down on the wee runway and we were ushered into golf carts for the short journey to our resort. Was it good? Check the videos below!!

So our life for the past 5 days has been, snorkelling, SCUBA diving (Jen-Jen only) eating amazing buffets, drinking, swimming, movies, snorkelling, eating buffets, drinking, swimming and drinking! Oh, and eating buffets.

You get the drift?

Jen-Jen has got a terrible sore throat and cough and Grandude has an earache from the sewage pool at Villa Cha-Cha, but all in all the place is paradise.

It is a true once-in-a-lifetime rig and we love it.

This trip has been a blast and we are rested, brown and feeling slightly better about 2022.

If only there had have been some all-you-can-eat meals on this trip. :)

Namaste