Maldives Tour 2018 – Makunudu

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Makunudu tour

Maldives Classic. A great way to start off was to visit a resort that evoked so much of the classic Maldivian character that we have fallen in love with over the past two decades. A number of resorts claim to have indigenous inspiration and plenty have touches drawn from the local aesthetic, but few have been so completely infused with the style and materials of a traditional Maldivian village as Makunudu.

I remember describing the Komandoo villa, with its homey feel, as a friend’s beach house we had been invited to visit. Makunudu had a similar feel, except that the owners of the beach houses are Maldivian. It feels like these villas might have been houses built generations ago with traditional techniques (eg. weaving, tying) and materials (eg. thatch, bamboo), but have been updated over the years with the contemporary amenities. Like a French auberge, English cottage, or Swiss Chalet with fitted with modern conveniences.

The resort actually has undertaken some relatively recent refurbishments which are extremely astute. First, smartening up the bathrooms. Some refreshed stone and slate with updated fixtures (eg. rain showers) give this important room a fresh feel. But perhaps the best investment was their purchase of not only highest quality beds, but also mattress toppers (literally) on top of them all (literally) wrapped up with high thread count bed linen. The bed was simply one of the most comfortable I have slept in.

What they did not fritter away money on are amenities that not only do many Maldives fans find unnecessary, they actually find them to be a detraction – TV, gym, buggies.

I didn’t know that much about Makunudu before my visit. I think that is because it was a bit older and until the arrival of new management this past year, had not kept up. But the new management has really made some sound investments in the right places to make it a very compelling 4+ star option. I haven’t written a single “Best of the Maldives” piece about Makunudu to date, but I am coming away with lots of post material for the future (stay tuned).

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Tour #9–Arrival Male Airport

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Bunyamin picture

#BucketList.  No not a trip the Maldives (that bucket is overflowing now).  But getting my picture taken with the legendary Bunyamin Ahmed. Being Friends on Facebook, I anticipated the encounter with my own twist on his iconic pose (see below).

The meeting was the sunniest part of a very inclement arrival. Rain was pelting down on Male airport so hard that the Turkish Airlines flight had to divert and wait for it to settle. But like most rainstorms in the Maldives, this was just passing through. In fact, when we passed the airport into the adjacent South Male atoll, the weather was quite sunny. The pilot took a 15 minute loop and tried again for a much smoother landing that we would have had otherwise.

Thus begins Maldives Complete’s 9th annual tour of resorts (our 15 visit to the Maldives overall).

I will also be doing my traditional micro-blog report on the TripAdvisor Forum with a snapshot profile of the following key points of each resort and stay…

  • Ambience (first impressions and overall feel)
  • Snorkel Spotting (what I saw snorkelling)
  • Favourite Food (served)
  • Weather (always a popular topic)
  • First World Problem (the most petty criticism I can find)
  • Most Reminded Me Of (comparing it to another resort)
  • Learned Something New (fun fact of the day)
  • Welcome Drink
  • Pina colada test (one of our acid tests as this simple treat varies so much from place to place)

Bring on paradise!

Bunyamin picture 2

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Haven’t Seen Yet – 13

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Off to the Maldives again today! Despite being our 9th tour of islands (after this trip we will have stayed at over 90 resort which as far as we can tell is still the most of any one in the world) and our 15th visit there overall, we still are looking forward to seeing so many things that we have not yet seen there in our two decades of visiting. In anticipation, here is my bi-annual list of “Things I Haven’t Seen In the Maldives…Yet (But Probably Should)…

  1. Underwater Concert – Especially for one of the resorts with an underwater restaurant [ABOVE].
  2. Underwater Easter Egg Hunt – Shangri-La Villingilli advertised it in their newsletter, but I’m not sure they ended up doing it as I can find nothing about it on the web and they are not responding to my enquiries. An inspired concept where guest would get different prizes based on the colour of the eggs they discovered like a bottle of champagne or a free spa treatment.
    Havent Seen - Underwater Easter Egg Hunt
  3. Gold Leaf Coffee – The ultimate “Golf Blend”.
    Hanvet Seen - Gold Leaf Coffee
  4. Fish-Shaped Ice Cream Cones – No comment needed.
    Havent Seen - Fish Shaped Ice Cream Cones
  5. Watermelon Cocktails – One of our favorite items at any Maldives meal is it ripe and juicy watermelon. Now watermelon cocktails are becoming popular so I’d be surprised not to see them at resorts soon.
    Havent Seen - Watermelon Cocktails
  6. Floating Mansion Boat – Slick modernistic design, luxury yachts, and spacious mansion-sized villas all a becoming de rigeur in the super premium properties.  So only a matter of time when someone puts them all together.
    Havent Seen - Floating Mansion Boat
  7. Rooftop Pools – Always a big fan of a bit of an elevated vista especially in this country of such low lying landscape (thanks Paola).
    Havent Seen - Rooftop Pools
  8. Float Pools – I’ve seen lots of floats in pools, but this is the first time I’ve seen a pool in floats.
    Havent Seen - Float Pools
  9. Whale Shark Floats – Of all the dozens of floats that launch onto the Maldives lagoons every day for an Instagram snap, how have one (or both) of these whale shark float not migrated there??
    Havent Seen - Whatl Shark Float
  10. Clear Bottom Inflatable Boat – Any clear-bottom boat is a winner in the Maldives to provide a means to observe the subaquatic sensations.  This one is particularly stable and safe for the less comfortable swimmers (though only supervised as winds and currents could easily push such an inflatable into the open ocean).
    Havent Seen - Clear Bottom Inflatable Raft
  11. Flexible Wooden Loungers – One of the give-aways to the true quality (regardless of how they have graded themselves) of a property is the quality of the loungers. At the bottom of the scale are the cheap, white, plastic jobs. The more sophisticated resorts have fancier adjustable, wheeled, cushioned wooden loungers. But the crème-de-la-crème looks to me to be this flexible design.

  12. Gyrotonic – We got introduced to this yoga, dance, pilates fusion by our friend Dean in Boston.
    Havent Seen - Gyrotonic
  13. Waterfall Table – I love innovative water features and I love creative dining tables. So you can imagine how much I love this creation…
    Havent Seen - Waterfall Table
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Sharing Daily…It’s Worth It

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Seth Godin - maldives beach

Happy Birthday to Seth Godin. Seth is of my inspirations to the wide range of blogging that I do, the most prominent of which is Maldives Complete here. These days you can’t swing a palm frond without hitting a blogger (especially in the Maldives), but when I started in 2009, the whole medium was quite novel. Seth was one of the first to embrace and extoll the platform and provided lots of tip and insights both explicitly and through example of his own work.

  • “This is post 7,000” – “The secret to writing a daily blog is to write every day. And to queue it up and blog it. There is no other secret…The discipline of sharing something daily is priceless. Sometimes there are typos. I hope that they’re rare and I try to fix them. Over time, the blog adds up. People remember a blog post a year after I wrote it. Or they begin a practice, take an action, make a connection, something that grows over time. The blog resonates with people in so many fields, it’s thrilling to see how it can provoke positive action. It’s true that I’d write this blog even if no one read it, but I want to thank you for reading it, for being here day after day. It’s more fun that way.”
  • “Susdat” – “Writer’s block is a myth, a recent invention, a cultural malady. More important than the output, though, is the act itself. The act of doing it every day. When you commit to a practice, you will certainly have days when you don’t feel like it, when you believe it’s not your best work, when the muse deserts you. But, when you keep your commitment, the muse returns. When you keep your commitment, the work happens. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it, buys it, sponsors it or shares it. It matters that you show up. Show up, sit down and type.”
  • “Gaztelugatxe” – “There’s an island off the coast of Spain that houses a church. The church has 230 steps to the top, and it’s said that it’s worth the climb. What a great expression. Gaztelugatxe can now mean, ‘it’s a lot of steps, but worth it.’ The opposite of fast and easy but worthless.”

The first two posts referenced above talk about ‘daily practice’ and while I may not post every day, I would say that I do something on Maldives Complete every day – respond to emails, update date, investigate leads, research pieces, etc.  His thoughts help to express the answer to the 2nd most frequently asked question that I get (the first being “What is the best resort”), and that is “Why do you do Maldives Complete?”.

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Piscine Pelotons

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A post shared by Patrik Jonson (@scubaartfoto) on

The sub-aquatic landscape of the Maldives is also filled with its own photogenic teams of sporty packs in a daily Tour de Fish forming colourful underwater tapestries (thanks Verena)…

  1. Blue Striped Snappers
    Fish - Yellow Striped Snappers
        
  2. Fusilier
    Fish - Glass Fish
       
  3. Moorish Idol
    Fish - Moorish Idol
      
  4. Yellow Sweepers
    Fish - Yellow Sweepers
       
  5. Orange Anthias
    Fish - Orange Anthia
       
  6. Convict Surgeonfish
    Fish - Convict Surgeonfish
       
  7. Oriental Sweetlips
    Fish - Oriental Sweetlips
        
  8. Humpback Snapper
    Fish - Humpback Snapper
       
  9. Gold Spot Emperor
    Fish - Gold Spot Emperor
        
  10. Humbug Dascyllus
    Fish - Humbug Damsel Fish
       
  11. Yellow-fin Surgeonfish
    Fish - Yellow Fin Surgeonfish
       
Posted in: Lists, Ocean \ Tagged:

Best of the Maldives: Family Reviews – Anantara Dhigu

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TA family reviews

Even with nearly 100 stays in the Maldives, my knowledge of the destination pales in comparison of the travel community whose aggregate experience is many orders of magnitude larger. A while back I did some crude attempts data mining the great store of insight in TripAdvisor reviews and Forum about the resorts most frequently suggested by Destination Experts as well as the resorts most frequently asked about. Those posts are a bit out of date now, but it was still a curious exercise. Now DE’s Stu and Nikki have done their own investigation into the stars of the family properties in the Maldives. They measured the number of reviews that were tagged as “Family” stays as an indicator of popularity for various resorts in the family segment. The results can be found above (with a link to the original document). Not surprisingly, the bottom group is comprised largely of the “Adults Only” (or “Children Restricted”) resorts.

  

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Best of the Maldives: Cinema Pillows – Finolhu

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Finolhu - cinema seating

“Stay Out of the Sun Day” today! It was established to encourage everyone to give our skin a break from the sun’s ray. If you are going to sequester yourself inside today, then you might as well be as comfy as lying on the soft white sands of the beach or a cushy lilo. Something like the giant Fatboy cushions at Finolhu’s cinema room. We have a cinema room at home and one of the best parts is being able to enjoy a blockbuster is lounging in consummate comfort while doing so. So you can tune into your favourite tropical island flick like “Swiss Family Robinson” or “Castaway” and enjoy all of the tropical scenery completely out of the sun.

Finolhu - cinema cushions

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Best of the Maldives: Postcard Service – One & Only Reethi Rah

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One and Only Reethi Rah postcards

One of my pet peeves when I visit a resort is if they don’t have postcards that show the resort. Postcards might seem a bit of a throwback, but we still send them to family who enjoy getting a real thing from our worldwide destinations. Aside from simply finding a good card of where you are, you can also run into a bit of kafuffle finding stamps and even a box to post them in (though all resorts will take them and post them), One & Only Reethi Rah does it all for you they provide fine postcards of the resort for you in your room *and* once you write them, they wil stamp and post them for you. Wish I was there!

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Best of the Maldives: Retro Games – Finolhu

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Finolhu - pin ball

If you enjoy playing around on retro icons, but prefer something a bit more masculine, then check out Finolhu’s very own man cave complete with a collection of retro games including vintage “Baywatch” pinball (see above) and the classic PacMan (see below). In fact, the whole setting is a nostalgic throw back with retro sweets, décor, and soundtrack.

Finolhu - pac man

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