Adaaran Vadoo’s greeting combines the musicality of Komandoo with the cultural touch of Anantara with their Japanese drumming on arrivals. The Taiko (???) in the picture above produces a profound baritone sounds which provides a nice balance of respectful solemnity and vibrant colour.
Welcome!
“I don’t even know half these people!”– 12 pains of Christmas, Twisted Christmas
As delightful as holiday greetings are to receive, sending them can be an exhausting tasks. If hours hunched over the kitchen table scrawling out notes can brings on sore shoulders and writers cramp, then the greeting you need is Anantara’s. After a traditional Thai greeting of a discrete bow with clasped hands, an Anantara spa therapist offers a 5 minute head and neck massage while you are sitting in reception and registering. Not only one of the best first impressions ever, but also smart marketing of free samples to promote the spa (it didn’t take my wife much thinking or delay to sign up for the full treatment at Anantara Spa).
Happy Advent!
The official T-minus countdown to the big Christmas celebration. Typically marked by the daily ritual of opening an Advent Calendar window which builds the anticipation and exercises the ‘opening’ muscles so you don’t hurt yourself from over exertion on Christmas morning.
The other big Advent tradition is Christmas greetings. The mail will start to swell with colourful messages from friends and family near and far. In the USA, there is a prominent school of yuletide greetings, which my wife Lori prescribe, which provides a personal touch by making their own cards, typically including a family photo as well as a brief update of the year gone by. Our 2011 creation (see photo below of inside at bottom) features a snapshot of our July trip to the Maldives as well as a reference to my Dad’s seaside-centric book, Shorelines, that I mentioned last week.
As it happens, ‘Greetings’ are a big part of the Maldives resort experience. With every resort on its own island, there is always a build of anticipation as you cross the ocean by speedboat or by seaplane and suddenly ‘your island’ emerges in the distance. Most resorts cap this grand arrival with their own special touches. The cooling, scented cloth and refreshing tropical drink are de rigeur. But on top of those, they add even more special welcomes. I’ve already written Komandoo’s A Cappella Greeting.
In honour of this resort ‘Greeting’ tradition in this very Season of Greetings, this entire week I will be featuring various distinctive greetings from the Maldives resorts. I’ve also broken out a special ‘Greeting’ tag/category on the Best of Maldives page. The first to feature is one that speaks to the personal touch and photographic approach of American Xmas cards – W Retreat.
W Retreat starts its greeting at the seaplane terminal with its own, top flight (pun intended) transfer lounge. As you approach the lounge, a staff member comes out to greet you and takes your picture next to the hotel crest. Its ‘Welcome Mat’ at the entrance says ‘Good Morning’ (and changes 3 times a day to ‘Good Afternoon’ and ‘Good Evening’). Instead of starting your stay with paperwork, that is an underwhelming formality at most resorts, the W welcomes you by sitting down with you to take your details and get to know you. Below I have a picture of my welcome by Mohamed Nirumal.
But the real treat, so simple yet so effective, is that when you take your seaplane ride and get ushered to your room, on your table is a frame photo of you taken back at the lounge (see above). Not only is it one of the most personal welcome gifts you will ever get at a resort, but all the staff at the resort use the photo on file to know who you are so they can give completely individualised service including calling you by name (one of the questions they ask in the personal interview is how you liked to be addressed).
WoW!
If you’re looking for hot foods instead of hot drinks, then Meeru’s Hot Rock Restaurant’s delicacies sizzle all the way to your table and then some…
“Featuring seafood, steak, chicken or exotic game cooked at your table on volcanic “hot rocks”. Located on the Pavilion Bar Pool deck.”
For a full, detailed review check out this comprehensive write up complete with plenty of pictures by ‘Humble Jim’s Pam’ on the Meeru forum…
“By day you can get the impression the Hot Rock is 'just’ a snack bar. But that would be so very misleading. We were bowled over by the service, quality (and quantity for that matter) of the food. We had a beautifully laid out table and were positioned just by the infinity pool with another couple nearby at another table… There was Kangaroo as well as Ostrich on the main menu but we both had decided to go for the Brazilian beef fillet…Even though we were new to the whole Hot Rock thing we soon got going with it…I can honestly say it was the best beef I have tasted anywhere and as a Yorkshire girl I can tell you that's saying something really profound. Before too long it was 'Mission Accomplished' on the lava front!”
At first glance, one would expect that refreshing pina coladas and tropical coolers would be more the order of the day than a steaming mug of brew. Coffee and tea is more the craving for those colder, cloudier climes (like today which saw our first frost of the year at our home in England).
But for those visitors like myself who hail from those areas, our caffeine and other pet addictions don’t necessarily disappear despite the sunshine. I still love a satisfying latte in the morning or a cappuccino to top off a lovely meal. I find that one of the find things I have when I get back home is a fresh cup of home brewed coffee as one of the things that I miss during my trips to the Maldives. Relatively few resorts get this important beverage just right by the standards of the European and American cafe and Starbucks culture (though the rise and popularity of Nespresso machines have become de rigeur accessories for a 5-star room these days). Those that do don’t have anywhere near the decadent array of choice that we are also spoiled by. But Kandooma has introduced its Bokkuraa Coffee Club with a broad range of specialty coffees and teas served in an stylish outdoor cafe. It even has soy milk.
Today is the biggest shopping day of the year in the world It is the biggest shopping day in the biggest consumer economy in the world. ‘Black Friday’ as in dubbed. ‘Black’ as in both ‘in the black’ (like the stores P&L’s expect to be at the end, and ‘black’ as in horrendously frenetic.
My wife has a ritual of buying a t-shirt from every dive centre that she has dived from. Some are basic and some are better. As I have previously written, one of my pet peeves is when resorts don’t have nice t-shirts for sale. The pedestrian white shirts with dodgy appliqué graphics of fish just don’t do it for me. Get some decent cotton, a subtle colour and do some subtle styling.
That is what the Palm Beach Dive Centre has done. Not surprising with the Italian characteristic flair for style. They had the most extensive array of tops we have ever come upon in the Maldives. All with appealing colours. All of the decoration is embroidered tastefully.
You may not think of the Maldives for holiday shopping any more than you would think of Target for romance, but this MSNBC report dispels that myth as well.
Happy Shopping!
Happy Thanksgiving Pilgrims!
The spirit of the day is appreciation and gratitude (which must come relatively easy for anyone who finds themselves in the Maldives today), but the centrepiece of the American tradition is food. In particular, one main ingredient – turkey. Dubbed ‘Turkey Day’, meals for the next weeks revolves around various poultry combinations from the big bird…leftover turkey, turkey sandwiches, turkey curry, turkey soup, etc.
In this spirit, Club Med Kani has such a food theme every day! In stark contrast to a typical Thanksgiving feast, the focus is on healthy eating. When I visited, the theme was ‘Cucumber’ and the buffet featured…
The ‘traditional’ gift for 6th anniversary might be iron, but the USA has adapted a ‘Modern’ version of the anniversary gifts which specifies ‘wood objects’ as the gift of choice. And so if you are looking for an appropriate gift to celebrate this milestone of blogging, then Kanuhura is your first place to check out.
Wood is a thematic element throughout the resort. It extends the overall aesthetic which focuses on Nature. Every room features a wooden piece of wall sculpture (see picture below). My favourite use of wood is the coffee tables in the Handhuvaru Bar which are carved from trees downed by the tsunami which hit the island.
All of the pieces are made at the Haruge Maldivian Cultural Center at the resort using traditional artisan techniques. You can watch them working at the centre or during Maldivian Feast nights (cooked by women from local island) and the artisans come out and do demonstrations during the meal.
If you want to purchase a bit of Kanuhura to take home with you, then the same artisan workshop that creates all of these pieces also produces various items for sale. They sell various plates, serving items and other pieces made from Kanuhura wood.
This week marks my 6th anniversary of blogging. I actually first cut my teeth on digital media a number of years prior to the launch of the Maldives Complete blog. I first started writing about “Leadership and Management / Turning Adversity to Advantage.” The traditional anniversary gift for 6 years is ‘iron’,’ so I guess the best place for me to go to celebrate my 6th anniversary would be somewhere I could get out a few 9-irons to practice my swing (not to mention a timely USA’s win this weekend in the President’s Cup).
While Meeru has a conventional driving range (with an adjacent executive course) and Kuredu has 3-par course, Palm Beach has taken the concept ‘out’ a bit. You also might have heard all of those fantastic stories about the proposed floating golf course. Well, Palm Beach has taken the first steps with a ‘floating driving range’. Bobbing mini-greens with flag anchored in the lagoon provide distance markers for a driving cage set up on the shore side.
In so doing, Palm Beach has also created the world’s biggest water hazard. Lest you fear that all of those golf balls should prove a hazard of another sort to marine life, actually the balls are specially made of biodegradable material which breaks down into fish food after 48 hours in the water. You can get 10 for $2, or 100 for $8.
The golf centre also features golf pro Alberto (featured in the picture at top) who will help you on your swing and there are several putting green holes to practice your short game.
Fore!
If you really want to poll for the best of somewhere to travel, then one of the most credible popular juries is TripAdvisor. No fees, no advertising bias, no select group. It is completely open to the entire world of travel and travellers. That doesn’t mean it is perfect. All sorts of biases can creep into any population sample and opinion gathering. But at TA is tops for structural objectivity. For some time, the top of the leader board for Maldive resorts is Cocoa Island. In fact, this year, Cocoa Island was rated one of TripAdvisor's top resorts worldwide for 'Luxury'.
But as I say when people ask me my expert opinion on ‘Which resort is the very best resort in the Maldives?’, my response is, “There is no ‘best’…only the ‘best for you’.” It’s all very diverse and subjective. It’s like asking ‘what is the best ice cream flavour?’ That was one of my major motivations for developing the Finder page so people could filter the 100+ resorts based on the criteria that mattered to them.