Happy Halloween! While resorts are adorning their properties with spooky décor for the occasion, Soneva Jani’s main restaurant is permanently bedecked with a hauntingly alluring mobile of ghostly jellyfish. This post is the latest instalment in its catalogue of suspended sea life sculptures so I’ve added the handy “Mobile” tag for them.
Whenever we want to provide a great experience for an event or party, one of the cornerstone ingredients is a playlist to suit the guests and vibe. For example, being Halloween weekend, we are playing our Bruce’s Halloween Playlist for at our social gatherings. Patina teamed up with musicology experts MAV for an eclectic soundtrack at each communal venue of the resort. In addition, they produced a collection of curated Spotify playlists on the resort’s dedicated app to evoke to languid and refreshing vibe of the Maldives.
It’s great to have a selection of wines in your villa, but enjoying them at their finest can be a challenge. Getting the wines chilled can be too cold if you put them in the fridge and even too cold for some reds if you set them out at “room temperature” depending on the temperature you keep your villa at. But it Soneva Jani features your very own Wine Art wine chiller and preserver. It not only allows you to chill up to two bottles at precisely the temperature you prefer, but also it has an advanced preservation system to “cork” opened bottles. It will preserve the effervescence of the your sparklings as well as keep your wines in fine drinking shape for up to 10 days.
Want more wine to enjoy than fits in a mini-bar or under your arm on the way home from dining? Want to simply pay some store prices instead of restaurant prices for a bottle? Well, Ailafushi features an extensive wine store in its small shopping area. It includes an area where they hold resort wine tastings and includes a range of liquors and other alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.
Presentation is everything, and Cora Cora’s welcome treats came in an artistic little box as exquisite as its tasty contents. Many resorts provide a little snack in the room for the guests, but Cora Cora’s hinged box seemed like a presentation itself as each little compartment of goodies was revealed.
A major acid test for me indicating the luxury level of a resort are the nibbles they serve with drinks. A little bit of savory snacks make the cocktails all the most delectable and allow us to linger longer without getting too pecking for dinner. The most basic resorts don’t offer anything, the 4-stars offer the staples of crisps and peanuts, but a luxury 5-star really needs a distinctive goodies. And Sun Siyam Vilu Reef offered us one of our favourite snacks – dried fruits. We have received various dried fruits at other resorts, but Vilu Reef and an unprecedented assortment. It turns out that they have their own food drier on premises (see photo below) so that can create dried versions of just about anything. We enjoyed the dried apples, oranges, pears, coconut with out very welcome ‘welcome drink’.
World Food Day today. And the best place in in the world to eat any food was an experience we finally enjoyed at Sun Siyam Iru Veli this summer. We’ve fantasized about dining on a plot of sand ever since we first started visiting the Maldives two and a half decades ago. It epitomised the “plot of sand with a palm tree” isolation caricature. We’ve seen many of (exorbitant) dinners and even lunches such remote venues, but never a breakfast.
A breakfast is actually a great way to enjoy this sandbank location. Unlike a dinner which tends to have courses, the breakfast is more casual with more finger food (eg. pastries, fruit, pots of yogurt) that you can take in hand for a stroll around or wade into the sea to enjoy the sea-life nearby or the dappled azure vista beyond. And the morning has a particularly peaceful vibe to it which suits this indolent sliver of interruption to the gently surrounding waters.
One of the local Maldivian delicacies which delighted Tom Chesshyre in his book Tom Chesshyre “Misadventures in the Real Maldives” was “garudhiva”. It turns out that Milaidhoo features the dish in its “five must-try dishes at ‘Ba’theli by the Reef’ Restaurant” on Milaidhoo island
I always bring a few books to the Maldives in the perennial aspiration to sit a read for an extended period (on the long-haul flight at least), but my actual reading never quite meets my intentions. This past trip I brought along not only a book for the Maldives, but about the Maldives – “Misadventures in the Real Maldives” by Tom Chesshyre. And it was so engrossing that I actually finished it.
Chessyre tours the country from bottom to top, but in manner completely the opposite to how I and most visitors experience this tropical paradise. While we take an air-conditioned speed boat, he took a cargo ship. While we sleep on king sized beds with high thread count bedding, he sleeps on a mat. He specifically crafted his trip to explore the non-resort local islands and their daily routines in paradise. The account is a colourful and extensive perspective into local island life and guesthouses.
Despite him exploring such a non-commercial side of this luxury destination, I still identified reading his book with the sentiment he articulated about another travel book that he was reading: “His descriptions gave me that sense of déjà vu that sometimes hits you when you read about a place you’re visiting.”
Published in 2015, it is already a bit dated on some of its references, especially political, as the country is changing so very rapidly. In particular, he delves beyond the palm trees and pina coladas that are the staples of celebrity travelogues and explores such areas as:
His summary provides a captivating depiction of the Maldives and his distinctive glimpse behind the resort curtains:
After reading the book, I reach out to Tom to see if he would do an interview reflecting on his adventures and he kindly obliged with some bonus gems:
Planet wellness is more about low-carbon than low carbs, and The Patina features a range of low carbon concoctions for your Earth-friendly enjoyment: