The Maldives (Part 1)

Socks... or more accurately a lack of socks. That is what I endured for nearly a whole week on an island approximately 1.5 km in length situated in the Indian Ocean. Just over 300,000 people live on a 1,000 plus islands that make up The Republic of The Maldives - and I must say it was exceptionally pleasant.

We set off from Gatwick Airport flying by Emirates via Dubai and then onto Male. The idea was to leave one of the cars at my mum's and get the Thameslink direct to Gatwick. Of course there was soddin' engineering works which torpedoed that idea and meant we had to travel from WGC into Kings Cross, tube it across London and get a train from Victoria to Gatwick. All went well though.

Why is it whenever you fly there is always someone who is weird or irritating sitting next to you? This time there was no exception... our fellow passenger in our group of three seats asked if we could constantly speak to her during the flight so as to take her mind off of her fear of flying. Needless to say we ignored her. Weirdo! In the end she asked a flight attendant if she could move seats and promptly got a seat in first class. Typical.

Inflight entertainment was a bit hit and miss. Emirates has a pretty impressive interactive system so I settled down and watched "Blades of Glory" which was rather amusing (Rating: 6.5/10) and then "Eragon" which was one of the worst films I have ever seen. Utter crap (Rating: 1/10).

We transferred at Dubai International which had a lot of construction work going on. There were about 50,000 people lying on the floor asleep in the main terminal building (as there was a distinct lack of seats). The Dubai to Male leg was more stressful in that legroom was sparse and the moron in front of N kept bouncing the back of his seat up and down. This moron was English, northern and had an earring... this would become a recurring theme on our holiday... as you will see...

To be continued...