A much, much smoother ride with virtually no cloud and no turbulence, we had another pick up en-route and every single seat was filled, it seemed to take forever to take off second time around with all the extra weight!

Landing at Male around 45 minutes later, we were met again by one of the resort’s staff who got us onto the bus to the terminal. Then another resort member met us at the terminal and helped us get our bags and into the departure’s queue…. Male is truly chaotic and I really do hope it improves with the new terminal, the queue just to get through the first round of security and bag check-in was around 40 minutes, just one huge tensa barrier maze and no proper air conditioning. Then the first security scanners, where all your bags get put through, directly before the bag check-in desks…. Another queue at the Emirates check-in and it took forever as the baggage belts behind them were full and they could not load more bags - more chaos!!

One the bags were checked in and we got our boarding passes, it was upstairs to clear passport control, more security and through to departures - at least time there was air conditioning, but it felt like kilometres of tensa barriers and queues, to get through to the departure gates probably took another 45-50 minutes. The end result being that we literally had about half an hour before they started boarding the plane! We didn’t bother joining the queue until it actually started to move a bit and the buses were flowing from the gate properly!

Eventually boarded the 777 to Dubai and was just glad to have a comfortable seat! This time we were in the middle row and for some reason, it felt like we had far more room. We weren’t too late taking off and it was a smooth flight.

I’d stuck with the standard meal for this flight, even though I knew it would be pasta salad (you can check the menu with Emirates ahead of time) it was only small….

The drinks service with the meals was a bit haphazard, I asked for a glass of wine and the guy for some reason would only serve soft drinks and said his colleague would serve me - even though he had wine on the trolley - perhaps it was a religion thing, but it got forgotten and I had to ask! There are always crew passing and they never mind you asking for drinks. A couple nearby had the crew making every combination of cocktails including Bloody Mary’s, with the spirits and mixers!!



Perfectly acceptable meal all round, I do like the little cheese and crackers too!