After a great night of sleep, we woke up to yet another round of breaking coronavirus news. Our Prime Minister issued a call for all Canadians currently abroad to immediately return to Canada. My fiancée received a similar warning from her coworkers and boss. The UAE also announced they would stop issuing visas so we didn’t have much choice but to head home. I immediately looked for flight options and found a Turkish Airlines flight leaving two days from now. I then rescheduled the Istanbul to Vancouver flight that I had booked yesterday to coincide with our flight from the Maldives. This was surprisingly easy and I was able to do everything on the Turkish Airlines website. I was initially worried that changing the flights would require calling the airline and being put on hold for hours, but thankfully that wasn’t needed.
While it was disappointing that we would need to shorten our stay in the Maldives by one day, we still had two and a half days left.
For breakfast, we went to Vilu, a restaurant on the water villa island. As a Hilton Gold member, breakfast is included in the stay, although I think it was free for all guests. Breakfast at Vilu includes both a cold buffet and a hot a la carte menu. Since everything was free, you can order as many dishes as you want. We got a nice spot overlooking the water.
We got a pretty awesome array of dishes like fish congee, egg white omelette, mango rice pudding, quiche, and more.
This heron was also quite interested in our food.
I spent some time after breakfast playing on the beach. There were tons of little critters in the sand. All the shells you usually find on the beach were here but the difference is they are all alive.
Afterwards, we walked over to the Quiet Zone next door which was an adults-only pool and relaxation area.
We then did a mini photo shoot outside our villa
Since it was low tide, the water around our villa was very shallow. We saw another couple walk out into the distance so we joined in.
In the afternoon, we headed over to the main island to explore and to inform the lobby of our revised plans. This was the bridge connecting the two islands.
At around 4pm, we went back to Vilu for a Happy Hour for Hilton Honors members. There were quite a few guests here, the most we’ve seen so far. We enjoyed some cocktails, mocktails, and small bites, while doing some people watching.
We then chilled around our Villa until dinner which was at 7pm at Uufa. As a Cantonese restaurant, they presented the bread course in a steamed basket with a really tasty passion fruit sauce.
We opted for mango juice instead of the very expensive water this time. We ordered a hot and sour soup with Maldivian lobster, a seafood vermicelli, and a spicy stir fried Maldivian lobster.
All the dishes were absolutely delicious. The vermicelli portion was quite generous and had a lot of seafood. The flavors were excellent and right up there with some of the best we’ve ever had in Vancouver. The spicy lobster dish was divine - that sauce was incredible. This meal was over $150 but it’s not often that we find really good Chinese food in exotic hotels. I would say given the location, it’s definitely worth it.