The Maldives is not only one of the best places in the world to snorkel, but at Siyam World it is now definitely, verifiably the biggest place in the world to snorkel:
27 years coming to the Maldives and still there are things I’ve seen online and elsewhere in my travel that would seem to be right at home in the Maldives, but I have seen them there yet.
Custom Cocktails – Also, could be called “Drink Designer”. This inspired approach to mixology was something that we discovered at “Bar Stories” in Singapore. There is NO cocktail menu. Instead, the mixologist talks with you at your table as you describe the general characteristics of the cocktail you imagine. My brief was “I want a pina colada that’s not a pina colada. I like my cocktails super cold, fruit and a bit exotic.” [video above]
Blue Murano Glass – These Murano glass beads seem ideal to evoke the aquatic aesthetic.
Electric Hydrofoil – Maker Candela has even specially targeted the Maldives.
Floating Villas – In a destination where so much floats and its signature lodging is water villas, it does seem to be overdue for one of these floating villas. A few resorts have boats that have been modified as lodging, but nothing quite so villa-like as these. The New York Times featured a collection of them recently – https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/travel/floating-hotels-resorts.html (paywalled). (thanks Lori)
Underwater Garden – A true octopus’s garden under the sea.
Micro Seaplane – In a country famed for its seaplanes, this seems like a distinctive option for a local aerial tour.
Food Art – More food art ideas in Instagram…
Folded Fried Egg – Egg stations are perhaps the most common staple or the breakfast buffets and this technique elevate their fare to the distinctive.
Maldives Complete has been from its debut a place where I can play with the latest web technologies – Blogs, Active Server Pages, Splash, Dynamic HTML, DeepZoom. When Instagram took off about a decade ago inflecting the social media craze especially in the travel arena and photographic media, I figured I would to experiment with it and see what it had to offer the online landscape and experience. What content could it help me with for the site? What could I curate? It did provide an unprecedented flood of Maldives images which I started curating in the Listicles (another trend peaking at the time with sites like BuzFeed). Quickly, Insta became dominated by scantily clad (naturally for the tropics) pretty faces (most of whom women though I did ferret out and showcase a number of male ‘influencer’ wannabes). After a while, the novelty new imagery wore off and I stopped featuring Instagram collections on the blog.
Maldives Complete does have its own Instagram feed, but I don’t put hardly anything on it. Only a few of my very faourite pictures. People sometimes ask me why I am not more active on this social medium. I do continue to monitor the geotag “Maldives” daily to see if anything interested gets posted, but I’ve got even more disenchanted of late where this tag is less about the destination and more about the posing content creator. The “model” in the shots is not a personal touch to the depiction of the place, but rather the front-and-center focus pushing the destination far into the background. Just this week, 26 of the top 27 featured posts are bikinis (including the top 9). Wondering if this wasn’t just the Facebook algorithm pandering to its expected preferences of a middle-aged bloke, but I checked my wife Lori’s computer and her feed fed up the same geotag posts. Unfortunately, this platform is becoming more self-absorbedly focused on the poster than the subject which is less interesting to me.
As I noted in my review, the increasing costs and challenges of maintaining the Maldives Complete website brings the second most frequently asked question once again to the fore…”Why do I do it?” Well, Seth Godin, a fellow blogger with regular insights into this question shared another recently:
Happy 17th Anniversary to Maldives Complete. This has been a bit of a topsy-turvy year for the site. About this time last year I was musing about whether to keep putting in the massive time and money to keep Maldives Complete going (“Should I Keep Maldives Complete Going?”). Then I got a major boost from Siyam who wanted me to come to their two properties, Olhuveli and Siyam World, which gave me the impetus and lots of great content for 2025.
But the news of the year, AI, has appeared to have boosted the site profile big time. After years of gradual increments in traffic, 2025 was record year for the site. Investigating the cause, the major driver appears to be the arrival of the big LLMs like ChatGPT and Copilot. AI devours data ravenously and there is nothing like a Maldives Complete buffet of data with its 2700 posts and unmatched databases. I’ve done a bit of research this year for the site on various Maldives topics and have been using ChatGPT and the like more and more. A bit surprisingly, the engines came back with answers footnoted to the Maldives Complete site as the source. A few other webmasters that I know who have high quality content have also reported getting a big boost in traffic over the same period with similar indicators. One of my challenges is people finding Maldives Complete after all of the commercial sites have paid an arm and a leg for Google ads and SEO to squeeze me out of the search result, but the LLMs appear to be more objective in their looking for relevant content to share (not to mention that the SEO hounds buy the position in line with a only little bit of content, but a lot of selling).
Living in the UK after decades away from America we still celebrate the feast of Thanksgiving, but we do it on the Sunday following the official American holiday (as we don’t get the Thursday off as a holiday). So we will be gorging on all sorts of traditional harvest dishes including a range beans – green beans, lima beans, runner beans. During our recent visit to Joy Island, we discovered a new bean – wing beans. Sort of the wing dings of vegetable with their eponymously quirky shape.
Happy Thanksgiving! Not a turkey’s favourite day, but not a problem for the gobblers at Siyam World who live the pampered free range life not just with a home on the animal sanctuary, but also able to wander freely around the island (we stumbled upon them at the spa one day – photo at bottom).
Joy Island also features a home grown ingredient made from milk – mozzarella – used in its extensive Italian station at its buffet restaurant and other outlets.
For the complete coconut experience Veligandu welcomed chef Cristian Marino to craft a completely coconut experience to celebrate World Coconut Day this past year.
“To honor this day, Chef Cristian Marino created a special culinary journey for guests at the resort. The menu was simple in concept yet rich in flavor:
The dining room itself joined the celebration. Palms and coconuts were used as decoration, with tropical flowers set between the buffet stations. It was not just a menu but an atmosphere, an experience shaped around one ingredient.”
He talked about his experience in the Maldives on his own blog as well – Experience Sabato Italiano: An Italian Dinner in the Maldives – Cristian Marino.
On most islands, landscaping staff will readily find a coconut for you direct from the trees, and some resorts have special stands to serve up free coconut, but at Siyam World guest get their coconut the Maldivian way. Coconut stands are the equivalent of the “water cooler” on local islands where locals gather to chat and hang out. Not only does Siyam World have a typical coconut stand, but they also recruited an actual coconut seller from a nearby island who was lured out of retirement to take his trade to the resort.