Going natural on the beach facilities can extend to the sports scene as LUX South Ari Atoll has demonstrated with their beach volleyball pitch set up perhaps the way beach volleyball was meant to be played.
Best of the Maldives: Beach Dining – Shangri-La Villingili
We always describe the Maldives to people who have never been as “that iconic image of a plot of sand with a palm tree…1000 of those!” The diminutive sandy dots in the middle of mill pond still lagoons provides an intimacy with a gently inviting ocean. When we first visited, the resorts all sequestered us into dining rooms at mealtime. Eventually we asked if we could move our table out onto the beach by the water and they were happy to oblige. By the end of the week, a bunch of other diners had followed our lead and joined us under the stars with the mini waves lapping nearby.
These days all resort understand the charm of beach dining and offer a number of seating areas on the sand close to the water. But no standard dining venue (as opposed to specialty beach dining experiences) get you closer to the water than Shangri-La Villingili’s Javvu restaurant. Partly this proximity is due to a bit of erosion that has brought the water closer to the dining as much as the dining has approached the water. The tables are all set under a canopy of shore lining palms to that cosying up the seaside experience.
Best of the Maldives: Beachy Groynes – OBLU Select Sangeli
long grappled with the ocean shifting the sands all over the place historically. The properties there have figured out a variety of means for reducing this erosion with sea walls, groynes and other measures to address the impact of currents.
For many guests, these protruding measures can detract a bit from the archetypal image of a round plot of sand in the middle of the ocean. Some creative resorts have made lemonade from these aesthetic lemons by dressing up these structures in a number of way (many of which I have shared and now have collected in the new tag of for “Groynes”). I like the approach by OBLU Select Sangeli to smooth the groynes (as opposed to making piles of rocks) and painting them a brilliant white to blend in with the adjacent coral sand beaches.
Best of the Maldives: Wall of Memories – Kudafushi
Kudafushi features an artistic tribute to its guests with its “Wall of Memories”. The feature is complementary for any guest who sends a special note. One of the most extravagant guest books ever.
Guest books were especially popular in resorts in the early days where guests were intrigued to know perhaps what celebrities had visited this already prestigious destination. Those guest books prompted me to add the “Celebrity Guest” field to the Maldives Complete database. And the popularity of that information and piece I wrote about celebrities, contributed to the “Fashionista” series when the Instagram wave hit.
Best of the Maldives: Evacuation Map – Joali
If you are keen for a plaque for your wall, I recommend Joali and their exceptionally high spec evacuation map. Most room maps are simple printouts with maybe a bit of lamination. The luxury villas might have a printed plastic sign up. But the Joali is an artistically etched brass plaque. No troubles finding the way out with these directions as the aesthetic allure of it draws your eye to it.
Maldives Top Blogger
- “My best conversations in philosophy have been with French lycée teachers who love the topic but are not interested in pursuing a career writing papers in it…Amateurs in any discipline are the best, if you can connect with them. Unlike dilettantes, career professionals are to knowledge what prostitutes are to love.”—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)
Is Maldives Complete the “Best of the Maldives” for blogs?
With the new year, the awards season ramps up a bit. But don’t count on Maldives Complete being featured. I’ve submitted the site for consideration to a number of online awards only to be rebuffed by clarifications that the awards were only open to advertisers. Not that it comes to any surprise to me. In many decades of marketing, the shill schemes are pretty standard practice – “you give us lots of money for sponsorship/advertising/etc., and we declare you the best of contrived category”. Some “directories” won’t even list you, unless you pay them. Being an “amateur” (Maldives Complete makes no money from advertising, sponsorship or sales), I don’t have the funds for such vanity accolades.
So I’ve decided to toot my own horn a bit for the record. In two areas, it does seem to stand head and shoulders above the rest:
- Longest Standing Blog (since 2008)
- Most Original Content (2000+ posts, though Maldives Insider is catching up)
When I first started blogging about the Maldives, resorts didn’t even know what “blogging” was (based on all of the confused looks and questions I got from them when I described that part of the Maldives Complete website). A couple of resort websites dabbled with this new digital medium throwing out a couple of posts and then abandoning the initiative. For a number of years, blogging had been considered a bit passé. Overtaken by the “micro-blogging” (small posts to the extent of hard character limits on Twitter) format of social media. But lately, blogging is making a bit of a comeback. Travel bloggers, especially, are a bit of a rage coupled the lifestyle porn theatre of Instagram.
The most prominent travel bloggers do boast big numbers, but most of these Followers are living vicariously through the posts admiring a destination they will never have the means nor inclination to actually visit. These bloggers get their readers all excited with no place for them to go.
The Maldives Complete Blog has never really been about getting people excited about the Maldives. Lots of conventional travel media like Conde Nast and your local city paper does plenty of that. This blog has always been about providing posts that can help people decide on the right resort for them. By tagging the various properties and sub-topics, people can explore distinctive details by either resorts that interest them, or the aspects that do. The most prevalent question I get from readers is “With all the Maldives resorts (increasing in number every day), how do I choose?” The answer is (as described in my most popular post “How to Choose the Perfect Maldives Resort”) to (a) filter to short list by core objective criteria (mostly budget, but a few other fundamentals), and (b) look at the posts about each property on the short list to get a subjective feel for the property’s particular strengths and personality.
But the popular “Best of the Maldives” Category is not the only area covered in the blog:
- Snorkeling – One of my big crusades over the years has been evangelising the Maldives as having the Best Snorkelling in the World and as a result I have featured a number of posts focusing on the activity of snorkelling (as well as pioneering “World Snorkel Day” celebrated annually on the 30th June).
- Tour – I travel to the Maldives once every year to research the latest developments at the destination and to visit new resorts. I conclude every resort visit with a post that is not a “review” per se (ie. “this is good and this is not good”, nor gushing over the palm trees and pina colada like every first-timer Instagrammer and celebrity junket pablum), but a description that tries to capture the vibe and distinctive feel of the resort.
- Lists – These are assortment of items I have come across at various resorts that are fun to curate into a handy catalogue like White Villas, Fish Schools, or Heart Themes.
- QI – A collection of counterintuitive factoids the make this intriguing destination curiouser and curiouser.
- Fashionista Galleries – An exhibition of the exhibitionists. Keeping up with the times in the digiverse, the big step change in “blogging” and took place with the advent of “micro-blogging”. All of those social media sites – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest – were inspired in structure and ethos by the original design points of blogging, ie. easy posting/sharing of content combined with the ability for others to comment on it. Noting a surge of fashion shoots, both official for marketing campaigns and unofficial for “influencers” setting out their wares, I decided to have some fun curating some of this content as a way to explore it and its dynamics.
- Miscellaneous – I feature a number of meta-categories to talk about the business of the Maldives itself. “Industry” talks about major developments in the resort industry. “Site” discusses changes in the Maldives Complete website itself (including the closest thing to a “User Guide”) for some advanced functionality. “Other” is just random stuff I couldn’t resist which includes fun series such as “QI” and the annual “April Fools” post.
Best of the Maldives: Music Video – Jumeirah Vittaveli
First on the playlist for a morning serenade is Mantreas’ music video on location in the Maldives. Jumeirah Vittaveli posted “The new Spanish band @mantraes filmed the video for their launch hit song ‘No Te Esperaba’ at Jumeirah Vittaveli – watch and dream…”
Best of the Maldives: Radio Show – Heritance Araah
If you can have a show breakfast in the pool, then why not a breakfast show in the pool? German radio station RTL has flown its morning crew to Heritance Aarah for a month of pool-side performances: DJ Arno reports:
- “I am lucky enough to be able to broadcast from the Maldives with my morning crew team for the next three weeks. Wonderful in the middle of one of the largest lagoons in the Maldives. Villas on stilts, crystal-clear water, endless white beaches, luscious palm trees and super great restaurants – really everything you only know from postcards. Beautiful! I hope I can bring you that holiday feeling to Berlin on the radio. Or even better: You win the dream trip yourself. Every day at 7:05 am I give you a trip to the Maldives worth 15,000 euros. I hope we listen to 104.6 RTL. And maybe in the Maldives instead of in my dark living room.”
No better way to start you day. In the Maldives, that is.
Best of the Maldives: Dhoni Pool Breakfast – Fushifaru
A number of resorts offer breakfast in a boat, but I think Fushifaru is the only resort that offers breakfast in a boat (thanks Paola). A number of resort offer breakfast in the pool, but again Fushifaru seems to be the first to offer breakfast in a boat in the pool. And not just any boat, but a charmingly stylish traditional dhoni.
Whatever floats your boat (that certainly does).
Best of the Maldives: Hydrofoiling – Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru
The hottest addition to the Laccadive ocean is yet another flashy water sport in the Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru stable – hydrofoiling. Featured in Maldives.net:
- “Brought to the Maldives in partnership with ocean innovators Ocean Group Pvt Ltd, hydrofoils redefine what’s possible on a board: a unique chance to become one with the water, gliding knife-like over its surface at thrilling speeds using a hydrodynamically designed fin with wings.”
There are four “experiences” to chose from:
- Kite Foiling
- Slingshot Wake Foil
- Lift Foil
- Naish Wing-Surfer
Hydrofoiling is a long standing “Finally Seen” (#20 from post #8) as well as a handy prompt to add the long overdue tag for “Water Sports”.
