So to give this whole passport renewing and entry adding in Beijing a real good purpose, I packed my bag on Dec, 27th including a bikini (as excited as I was to wear for the first time) and my recently bargained fake Ray Ban sunglasses to be all set for our one week long vacation on Bolifushi. Haha, you might think now, where the h*** is this place. But by adding Jumeirah Vittaveli Hotel in the Maldives you should get the idea. Oh yes folks, you read correctly, my Chinese hostfamily was really taking me with them to go 'outside play' (as Chinese loove to say) aka hanging out on an island in the Maldives with gorgeous sea and sealife, white sand and terrific weather. I did feel extremely lucky. Especially as I knew that, as this hotel, hosting guests from all over the world, would for sure have some sort of New Year's Party and fireworks. Neither one would I have found in China, as 元旦 aka Silvester is not found in the traditional and beloved lunar calendar of the Chinese. So they stay pretty unimpressed by Dec, 31st.
But after not experiencing the Moonfestival at all, and Christmas being sort of off that year, I was eager to have myself a blast and a glass of champagne for New Years. Period.
So as my hostfamily planned to take the ferry from Macau to Hong Kong, I met at Shuangliu Airport early morning of the 28th with 5 of the family's friends to fly with them together to Hong Kong to meet my hostfamily and head to Male from there. As the friends included a small 4 year old girl, I spent the time we had to wait in the airport in Hong Kong waiting for my hostfamily playing with little Niuniu. How adorable this little kid. Though after spending almost a whole day playing with her I was ready for my hostfamily to finally arrive and our flight to The Maldives finally departing. Rex and Amy acted like total strangers at first, but after a few minutes of warming up I had my two little munchkins back :-). That's when I realized how much I've been missing them! So when it was finally time to board, I was overly happy to find myself the only person being seated in the No. 56 middle road which meant I would be able to strech my whole 1.75m to get, as much sleeping on an airplanes allows, some time to rest. Sure enough that was as hard as I expected as the free seats next to me were used by my company to give themselves a little break from their kids aka Ronja, would you please watch them while we catch some rest?! My pleasure. Smiling face. Always keeping in mind the great time I would have as soon as we would get to our place. So after 6,5 hours and 3 hours earlier (thanks to the time difference) we arrived at this ridiculously small airport in Male. Having gathered all of our luggage and verrifying that we didn't try to smuggle any pork inside this Moslem country, we were already expected by staff of our hotel including a boat getting us there. So while we took the 20 minutes roller coaster alike boat ride to our island, my eyes got trapped by the millions and millions of scaringly bright and huge stars filling the sky over the water. And I knew we were heading for a great time there!