The main reason for me to research the possibility to go this time, would be me turning 50. If that’s not a good reason, then what is ? So I started looking in Sweden first. I found out that Ving-resor had the Maldives in their catalogue, but that was about it. None of the other big travel-agencies did. I found Velavaru, Meeru and Komandoo and Kuredo. The search went on to www.malediven.net to see what the islands looked like and read some reports from people who had been there. Another good place to look is:
http://www.mal-dives.com/resorts/map.html
Finally I found that Velavaru or Kommandoo seemed to be about the right size (and prize) for us. The problem now, was that there weren’t any places left around the time we want to go (middle of January). Ving had one trip left in April…. We could get Meeru, but that island didn’t quite fit into the definition “Paradise”. 225 bungalows are too many to fit my taste.
Now what ? I went looking abroad. Norway, Denmark, & UK. I found Vilu Reef on a site in Denmark, DiscoveryTravel . Way to expensive as it turned out. All inclusive was around 59000 SEK. A nice girl to talk to though (Estelle). She really tried to find something that would fit us. Even came with own suggestions (Mauritius).
On with the search. In UK I found a site with the travel I wanted, at a prize I could afford, the only problem was that they never answered my mail…..I probably should write their address also, but I’ll refrain from that. Maybe it was just a one-time error. At this point I nearly gave up, but on the other hand I didn’t really have any alternative goal. I was looking for Thailand, but found out that around that time, the trip wasn’t going to be much cheaper, so I went on to look for trips to the Maldives.
Almost by accident I stumbled into the site of Global Holidays and that’s where the search finally paid off. I found several trips there that matched my criteria’s and also some resorts I hadn’t checked out. At the end Velavaru seemed to be the right anyway, so I went along and mailed them some questions. A friendly guy (Alan) answered within half an hour, and we had some mails going back and forth during the day and at the end of the day the trip was booked ;-) Perfect service !
Now the only thing I needed to do, was to get the rest to work….Traveling from UK and living in Sweden, means I have to fix the small matter of getting to UK also. So I went to Ryan Air and started looking. Wow!! 249 SEK a person to London and 11 SEK back seemed like a real bargain. When the booking was finally done, the trip was not 520 SEK for two persons, but almost 1800 SEK (including taxes, insurance and other add-ons). Still cheap, but not as cheap as it appeared at first.
Ryan Air flies from Skavsta – Stansted (or Västerås – Luton), and connecting flight for us will be from Gatwick, so we will choose to go by train between the two airports (Stansted Express & Gatwick Express.) We have a 10hr gap, so that should not present a problem. It will take approx 1,5 – 2 hrs. Next item to take care of, is the fact that our return-flight from Male comes in at 21:20 and there is no Ryan-Air flight to Sweden at that hour, so we need a hotel room also. Browsing around a while to find a modest priced stay for the night, I managed to come up with Carlton hotel at Belgrave Road and booked us a room.
So now the trip in itself is planned from one point to another (I hope). What’s left ? Oh, yes, passport would be nice to have…..ours had of course expired, but with two months left that’s not really a problem either.
Last time we bought us snorkel and Cyclops before we left Sweden. We planned to borrow fins at location. At the end of our stay, one set got stolen. Yes, stolen…on an island with 50 bungalows. Hard to believe but true. We never found them. With only two days left we could cope anyway, but now we need a new set. So we went to see the same store (Dykhuset, Kungsgatan 73, Stockholm) where we bought the first ones (4 years ago) and precisely like last time we got a great service provided by the guys there. Cyclops and snorkel was not a problem. Very soon we had those, then we started to talk about fins. They recommended us to buy them now, to make sure we got a pair to fit our feet. Lucky for us. My fiancés feet are very narrow, and so she had problems to get the fins to fit. They sat very loose. The guys tried out several different ones, but each one presented a new problem. At the end she got a pair of diver-boots and fins and finally a good fit. The price of those things was way more than we had planned for, but we got a good discount on top of everything. That’s a good way to make customers come back ;-) And recommend others to do so as well…..Thanks guys! 
Now we’re in the middle of November, and we are starting to build up the expectations. Making packing-lists to make sure nothing gets left behind – and dreaming of Velavaru. There are a lot of pictures to help us, on www.velavaru.com for instance.
