Last day in Abu Dhabi... the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque

Most things in Abu Dhabi cost a fair bit of money. There are quite a few theme parks... Ferarri World, Warner Bros, Yas Island Waterworld, etc. And while they would be fun (and fairly expensive!) for a day, that's not what we came here for. 

But probably the most popular attraction in the city is the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. And it's totally free to visit!

Men to the back of the bus...

Our hotel has a free shuttle bus that leaves at 10:00am to the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque. This mosque is a major tourist attraction in Abu Dhabi, and it boasts of 64 million visitors since it opened in 2007.

So after our filling all you can eat breakfast buffet, we hopped on the free bus to go check it out.

Day one in Abu Dhabi

I know many people love Abu Dhabi and especially the nearby neighbor Dubai. But neither of these places have ever been very high on our to do list, and the only reason we are here is because of the flight routes that made our "hop skip and jump" journey from Bangkok to Istanbul a little more interesting.

The displays of opulence and wealth in Abu Dhabi and more so in Dubai can be interesting though

Welcome to United Arab Emirates (UAE)... country #71 for us!

Last you heard from us, we were waiting at Male Airport for our flight to Abu Dhabi. 

Things didn't really go according to plan for us in Male. We took the public ferry at 6:30am from the island of Dhiffushi, and the two and a half hour trip went by quickly. So we arrived at the Male ferry terminal at about 9:00am. Problem is, our flight wasn't until 7:00pm, so we had more than a few hours to waste.

Last day in the Maldives, and some things we want to tell you about.

Writing this at Male Airport while waiting for our evening flight to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

We had a lazy last day on Dhiffushi Island. So lazy that it didn't even occur to us that we never did a blog post on that last day! And by the time we realized that, I just figured it could wait. Besides, we didn't do very much, although there are certainly some things we want to tell you about.

Swimming with the sharks

While we could spend our three full days here on the island of Dhiffushi just lazing about, the Maldives are one of the top locations in the world for snorkeling and diving. We are not divers, but we are quite happy to do some world class snorkeling!

Especially when our host told us that we could be swimming with the sharks as well!

Day one of island life

So, we are staying on the island of Dhiffushi in the Maldives. The island itself is about 1 km long, by 200 meters wide. At a slow pace, it takes about 30 minutes to walk around the circumference of the island. About 1,300 people live here full time. Dhiffushi is the most eastern inhabited island in the Maldives and is the first to witness sunrise every morning.

From the Visit Dhiffushi website... Dhiffushi was one of the first non-resort islands in the Maldives to commence offering holiday accommodation and was the leader from which all other islands followed. It's two main areas of commerce are fishing & of course, tourism. Affordable luxury, sprinkled with a wide variety of activities such as jet ski's, snorkeling with turtles, kite surfing and much much more. Proving visitors don't need to pay out for an expensive all inclusive resort to experience an amazing holiday in the Maldives. 

Welcome to the Maldives... country #70 for us!

We were up early again Saturday morning in order to catch our 9:15am flight to the Maldives. We purposely had our accommodation so that it was walking distance to Bangkok's Don Muang Airport and in ten minutes or so we were in the terminal.

Through immigration quickly, as well as security and waiting at our gate with an hour and a half to spare.

Travel day!

Well, our time in Hua Hin is up, and this morning we were up at 5:15am in order to catch or 6:40am train back to Bangkok.

Everything went smoothly, except that the train was a half hour late arriving. Apparently Thai trains are notorious for this, however our experience to date with the Thai train system has been really good.

What it cost for our two weeks in Hua Hin, Thailand

Thailand has a reputation of being a cheap place to visit, and while that is still totally true, costs have gone up here just as they have everywhere else in the world. 

Anyhow, we wanted to prove to ourselves that Thailand can still be done on the cheap. Because if you want to live like a tourist and eat "western" style food in higher end restaurants, it's still going add up to more than what you think it should.

We would go nuts here

While this two weeks at Hua Hin has been some good downtime, and we've got a lot accomplished on the internet, we are just about done.

Heck, even when we're in a place that we like we're ready to move on after two weeks. 

A few details about our upcoming trip to the Maldives!

We will be in Istanbul, Turkiye early next month, and when I was looking at flight prices and doing the route planning between Bangkok and Istanbul, I figured out that we could break the trip up with a few different destinations and it would cost about the same.

One of the choices along the way was to head to the Maldives... a group of islands in the Indian Ocean that is well known for their very expensive resorts and crystal clear blue water.

Cheapest day yet!

On Sunday, we hopped on the local transportation as far south as it goes. It only costs 15 baht ($0.42 USD, $0.57 CAD) per person no matter how far you go. 

So we went right to the end of the line, and walked down to the beach. There is small "island" at the end. Not really an island, but when the tide is all the way in, it looks like it is.

Kind of glad we've had all this down time

First thing I did Saturday morning was to check our online banking to see if the credit card problem was fixed. This time, it showed that my "available credit" was back to normal, instead of being a big negative number. With that confidence, I proceeded to book the Pegasus Airlines flight from Antalya to Paris and it went through with no problems at all!

So at least that is fixed, although with no explanation from Scotiabank at all. 

Well, that was a frustrating day!

It started off with an email from Turkish Airlines saying that they had cancelled and rescheduled our Kuwait to Istanbul flight originally on April 4th, to exactly the same time on April 5th.

I looked at all the options, including keeping it at April 5th, but we decided we were actually better off  changing it to April 3rd. So I did all the changes online, and it seemed to accept everything. 

Until I looked a little closer.