Best of the Maldives: Iconic Island – Soneva Gili

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Soneva Gili - One Palm Island

When people ask ‘What are the Maldives like?’, my first response is always, ‘You know those pictures of a tropical island that is a plot of sand with a single palm tree like in the cartoons? That is the Maldives. Just think of over a thousand of those.’

Well, of course, they are not all that miniscule, but it gets the notion across in a dramatic way. I find that I have to add a bit of hyperbole because most people struggle to truly get their head around the smallness of the islands. When you tell people the islands are small, they think ‘oh, probably takes just a short while to drive around.’ No, it takes a short while to WALK around.

But is there an island that actually fits that iconic stereotype. In fact, I use a photograph of such an island as the background to my About page.

It turns out the name of this dollop of sand is called…wait for it…One Palm Island. Not much in the imagination department, but I guess it is what it says on the tin. It’s just off the ‘coast’ of Soneva Gili about a few hundred yards into the atoll. The Soneva site describes the private dinner you can have there…

“Private dining on One Palm Island. Imagine a tiny strip of sand with one lone palm tree. Imagine the island twinkling in candlelight, surrounded only by the sea and the stars above. A private barbeque dinner on One Palm Island is an experience you will never forget.”

New Yorker - tropical island

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Best of the Maldives Online: Resort Stories – Maldives.net.mv

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Maldives net mv

 

I wish I had said that.

That’s what I keep find myself saying following Maldive.net.mv’s Twitter stream of, among other things, great scoops and stories on Maldives resorts. Fortunately, my pride is not so strong that I am beyond a plenty of borrowing from their leads (with full and proper attribution of course). And so, @maldives (how did they snare that tag?) has become my richest online source of leads for ‘Best Of’ candidates, not to mention my most frequented Maldive web site of late.

Actually, it is more than a website. Maldives.net.mv would also be a contender for the ‘Best Integrated Web’ distinction. They seamlessly and effectively use Twitter and Facebook to complement their web content. In fact, their Twitter stream is probably the best on the Maldives itself. It is smart not to simply mirror the same content across all three media, but instead tailor what is shown where and how it is shown.

The site at the heart of all this digital activity is a real star in its own right. There is not much advertising, just a discrete area to do bookings if interested and a top banner. The writing style is very current and very professional. None of the ‘destination dross’ that spins out of too many travel writers. Part of their secret is that the site is run and written by local Maldivians. So they have the inside track not to mention heartfelt affection on their subject. Still, sometimes material written by locals can sometimes get out of touch with what really interest the foreign visitors. But not at Maldives.net.mv where the stories and approach remain fresh and on the mark.

Bookmark, Friend and Follow it now.

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What I Didn’t See

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Blog Pix - Shortcut.lnk

My 2011 summer tour was a huge success in ferreting out all sorts of impressive and quirky distinctions of the resorts I visited and elsewhere. After last week’s follow up round of new posts, I am now up to 180 ‘Best Ofs’ with that number again in the wings. I’ve even had to revamp the Best Of page which has given me the opportunity to integrate another great Sakis piece (everywhere I went, people knew about Sakis and his work).

I have now visited 28 resorts and yet there are a number of things I have yet to see. Given the frenetic arms race of the resorts to outdo one another with creative offerings and twists, these seem to me to be some candidates that range from obvious to obscure. I’ve broken them down into a few categories…

Enjoying the water…

  • Water slide – The ‘water slide’ keeps popping up in Six Senses concept CAD pictures (see above) as a villa attachment. Six Sense Laamu ended up abandoning that design, but why not a simple water slide in a kids pool or even off a jetty into the ocean?
  • Beach Wheelchair – Another obvious innovation overdue for the Maldives.
  • Sculling – First thing in the morning and into twilight, the Maldive waters, especially in the lagoons, is as calm as any lake or Thames River. A larger sized single scull or skiff would be a unique offering and provide a distinctive exercise opportunity. They have introduced rowing with the trans-equatorial crossing project. Would be ideal for a resort with a big lagoon. [NOTE: Any resort that wants to introduce this, I have a world class rower interested in marine biology who would be happy to come down to teach some Maldivian staff how to scull.]
  • In Ocean Dining – A couple of resorts are offering ‘in pool dining’, but how about ‘in ocean dining’. Some shallow lagoon with relative shallow water. Not feet in water or sand, but both!
  • Star Shaped Over Water Restaurant – I was impressed with the W Retreat’s ‘Fish’ restaurant which has an ‘H’ shaped deck for the diners. This shape meant that lots of tables could be arranged ‘right over the water’. It made me wonder why more resorts didn’t adopt such a ‘pronged’ decking design to optimise the ‘best tables’ even more. My Dad mocked up some drawings of what I’m talking about below.

Enjoying the vistas of the unique seascape…

  • Observation tower – For years now the trend in the Maldives has been to ‘go down’ (ie. underwater) for the super-luxury jaw-dropping attractions. A few top resorts are starting to ‘go up’ with some two story and roof top structures. These elevated places are actually quite appealing because they provide a broader vista over the turquoise and sapphire seas surrounding. For a long time, ‘going up’ has been a big approach to attractions (eg. Eiffel Tower, London Eye, Seattle Space Needle, Toronto Tower). For a super-luxe looking for that next ‘wow’ thing, I suspect this sort of feature might spark some possibilities.
  • Hot Air Balloon – Champagne ballooning…ah, duh. Modify the basket so it floats when it lands on water. No shortage of landing places. Nor shortage of aerial scenery. A senior official in the Ministry of Tourism thought that a resort had tried this years ago, but I couldn’t find any reference to it.
  • Skydiving – A group did a one-off skydiving trip in the Maldives out of Hanimaadhoo airport a few years back, but never followed it up with more. Parasailing is already quite popular and tandem jumps seems like the next step up to enjoy the distinctive views.

Neglected delicacies….

  • Banoffee Pie with Coconut Cream – Easy to make. A crowd pleaser. Local ingredients and tastes. Why is this not on the dessert menus?
  • Gourmet sausages – A big visitor population is British and a staple of the English breakfast is the sausage. Lots of people like a good sausage for breakfast and they are easy to prepare and serve. But sausages in the Maldives are always these anaemic little tasteless things. A number of specialty sausages are made from venison and other meats so an enterprising Maldivian could create a small business of gourmet sausages made from something other than pork. The closest I have come upon is Kurumba’s beef sausages.

Special sports…

  • Golf hole from one island to the next – The dearth of golf is one of the great holes (pun totally intended) in the Maldives offerings in the minds of many affluent travellers. And yet the Maldives has such great potential to fashion a ‘Holes to Play Before You Die’. Essentially, a tee on one island with the green on another. The greatest water hazard ever. Club Med Kani or Kandooma could set this up tomorrow.
  • Clay Tennis Court – Bit of a old-school, traditional cachet. Less baking hot, easier on your feet and typically more fun for recreational players than asphalt without the difficult maintenance requirement of grass courts.
  • Motorised Hammock – For those who are training for Olympic calibre indolence, I can’t imagine better training kit than a motorised hammock. In fact, I can’t imagine any place on earth that wouldn’t be made better by but the Maldives seems a natural with its soporific qualities.

Water restaurant layout design

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Best of the Maldives: Beach Canopy – Club Med Kani

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Club Med Kani canopy

When it comes to Club Med Kani, it is not all go, go, go. But even if relaxing on the beach under the shade of a palm tree is your thing, then Kani does that ‘big’ too.

Palm vistas surround the island, but beach side is the most dramatic and about a half kilometre in length. Facing out onto the lagoon, they were planted years ago in striking, neat rows by the previous resident. Forget the thatches umbrellas peppering most resort beaches, this boulevard of palm provides the living, natural, towering shade for as far as the eye can see.

Club Med Kani beach canopy

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Best of the Maldives: Fish Frenzy – Velassaru

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Velassaru fish in lagoon

A perfectly tranquil lake-like ocean with shimmering shades of mottled blue…then suddenly it erupts with a hundred tiny splashes. What the…?

This is fish hunting. Big fish going after little fish. The little fish congregate in big schools for some sort of anonymity in numbers, but it only seems to concentrate the opportunity for the big fish like trevallys and jacks. These predators also work in teams casually circling, or should I say ‘encircling,’ their targets until…Wham…they dart through the schools trying to snap at any unfortunately glassfish or blenny they can get their teeth into. The prey shift gears from their near suspended animation to an immediate emergency retreat to any exit they can find including right out of the water into the sky if that means safety.

It is a delightful ‘Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom’ spectacle that you see across the Maldives. But, we were especially captivated by it during our very first trip to the Maldives visiting ‘Laguna Beach’, now redeveloped and renamed to Velassaru. My favourite picture ever taken in the Maldives came about because we were woken from our sleep all the way over in our bungalow early in the morning from the racket of one of these ‘feeding frenzies’. While we have seen many similar sights, we always felt that they were never quite as stunning as what we witnessed with predictable regularity and consistently large scale as what we saw at Velassaru.

We always chalked up the difference to ‘first-timer nostalgia’. But then we had the chance to re-visit the island on our last trip in July and what did we see the very minute we stepped off the boat…cinematic feeding frenzy. In the picture above, you can see the vast shoals of tiny, silvery fish in the lagoon. The light-shaded shapes in the midst of them are the wake of reef sharks who have joined the trevallys in their stalking. The fish wisely clear a path as the juvenile sharks wiggle through their masses. The picture below shows the dynamic more clearly and you can click on it to see even more close up.

I’m suspecting that the intensity of the feeding frenzy action at Velassaru has something to do with its massive shallow lagoon. In the direction of the water villas, the lagoon extends for 2 kilometres. While the long, sandy table means no house reef, I think it does attract more schools like this looking for the protection of the shallows.

Velassaru shark hunting

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Best of the Maldives – Nautical Restaurant: Meeru

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Meeru - Goma restaurant 2

 

 

The wooden deck of a classic schooner…the perfect romantic complement to a ocean adventure. Many resorts offer various boat trips for sunrise and sunset cruises with a whole range of boats. But if you don’t want to pay a supplemental excursion fee and or if your sea legs are not the best (though with the calm waters of the Maldives, seasickness is rarely an issue), then Meeru offers a nautical evening for its guests without any extra costs (aside from the food consumed in its restaurant) and without leaving the dock.

It has turned the Goma sailing ship into one of its resort restaurants. As it happens, my family took a sunrise cruise on the Goma back when it was part of ‘Rangali’ (then known as ‘Hilton Rangali) before its retirement into stationary culinary service.

“Goma was built by Philippe Laurella, in 1992, on Velidu, a local island in Noonu Atoll, in the northern Maldives. In Dhivehi, the local language, Goma is an ancient royal title, reserved for a princess. Philippe, a Frenchman, arrived in the Maldives in 1978, fell in love, marrived a local woman and works as a boat builder, fisherman and artist. Goma is 22 m (70 feet) long by 7 m(23 feet) wide. Her built up area is 196 cm and she displaces 39 tons. Her hull dimensions reflect the traditional dhoni design that the hull is 1/3 the length, providing better stability. In 1993, Goma was purchased by Afeef, the Owner of Meeru Island Resort, and operated as a safari boat.”

It’s complete menu and further background is available here.

 

Meeru - Goma restaurant 1

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Best of the Maldives – Music: W Retreat

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W Symetry CD

Music is as integral to the W Retreat as the colour blue is to the Maldive waters.

It’s certainly not just background. Nor is it merely a special touch (some resorts do get the music horribly wrong with dated pop which is almost more grating than muzak). At the W Retreat, music is more of an obsession.

First of all the infrastructure. Music is piped everywhere. Through high-quality Bose systems. The jetties are lined with speakers. They are sprinkled around the pool and dining areas. Each room has quad sound in the rooms and a sub-woofer (see picture below)! No other resort has sub-woofers in every room. The stereo is also piped to the back deck and the outdoor bathroom. The fitness centre provides high quality head-sets to listen to while you work out with disposable ear pads for hygiene (see photo below right).

The music is a big focus for the W chain and they have a Director of Music Michael Angelo who produces special mix play list for the W Retreat streamed from New York. The video on their monitors (in the room and around the resort) highlight various music artists. W signature music is available on CDs for sale at the mini-bar (see photo above). W Hotels Worldwide has also just released the W Hotels APP for iPhone allowing you to stream more than 40 hours of music for free (as well as book hotels and even order room service while you are at a W Hotel).

Keeping the music fresh is resident DJ (yes, ‘resident’…add that to the list of ‘Best Jobs in the World’) Kit Diesel. He plays tracks at the bar at sunset and then moves onto the ’15 Degrees’ nightclub later in the evening. Mostly ‘chill out’ and ‘club’ music prevails, but when my wife and I came into the nightclub one night (before the younger set had started to arrive), he subtly and considerately shifted the mix to a funky selection closer to our generation (some Barry White). DJ Kit also offers mixing lessons and you get a personalised CD of your mixing session.

As the first W Retreat ‘Best Of’ from my tour, I must also note that, not unexpectedly, my visit there yielded a massive number of pieces to write about. The W concept from the outset has prized distinctive touches and creative service so I fully anticipated all sorts of curious distinctives. And the W didn’t let me down. To date, the dominant resort in the ‘Best Of’ derby has been the delectable Four Season Landaa Giraavaru, but now the W stands shoulder to shoulder with them in terms of the number of total pieces I have lined up on each (hard to say definitively at this stage as a number of items still require research).

W Retreat sub woofer     W Retreat headsets

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Best of the Maldives – Pre-Schoolers: Kandooma

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Kandooma pool

As I have written before, I was originally going to call Maldives Complete by the name of ‘Maldives For Families’. There were so many websites heralding it as a destination for romance/honeymoon or diving, but I always thought of it as an outstanding place for children (eg. calm water, bounded area, no motor vehicles, caring culture). Fortunately, more and more resorts are specifically catering to children with excellent kids clubs and a range of other creative offerings like Rangali’s ‘Ice Cream Spa’ and Naladhu’s Storytelling.

One of the most prominent aspects that struck me about Kandooma was its excellent suitability for children of pre-school age, namely 2-6. Less than 2 years old and Bandos has a special service catering for them. Over 6 years old, kids start to snorkel and Kandooma has limited snorkelling. But in between, Kandooma is their paradise.

The resort is geared up in a very friendly way to start with. They have a big kids club. They have lots of family villas. Both villas that interconnect and villas designed to accommodate 4 or more. There are 6 units that accommodate 6 people. Two separate bedrooms and comfortable lounges that convert to beds in the living area. Could do 7 in a pinch. Also, could do 2 couples with the kids in the living room.  They are not the only family villas in the Maldives, but probably the best value.

Another big bonus is that kids under 12 eat free under in any restaurant. Their main restaurant is charming with tasty (not gourmet) food. They do have a seaside restaurant that specialises in lobster if Mom and Dad want a treat). In fact, Kandooma has just enough 5* touches to make Mom and Dad feel like they are having a treat, but not so fancy that Mom and Dad have to feel self-conscious about their young ones scampering about.

And that atmosphere is another big tick. Lots of resorts welcome children, but fewer actually have an ambiance that bubbles over with juvenile frolicking. Kandooma has that buoyant energy especially around its mammoth pool (see above). I’m still researching, but I think it covers more surface area than any in the Maldives. I emphasize surface area, because in volume it is quite modest with its pervasively shallow depth (about a metre). Just perfect young ones. It’s right next to the main restaurant so kids can get more splash time in while Mom and Dad linger over a meal.

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Best of the Maldives – Sports: Kuredu

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Kuredu football pitch

 

Usually, Best of the Maldives has to focus in on quite particular if not peculiar features in order to justify calling them the ‘Best Of’ among such high quality offerings in the country. So calling Kuredu something as broad and bold as the ‘Best for Sports’ takes a bit of justification.

Yes, Kuredu, especially with it’s larger size, ticks all of the boxes for sports activities on offer with lots of courts, pitches and a fully stocked watersports centre. The pitches include a brand new, all weather pitch (see above) that would rival the best Mirihi has to offer.

And if there is one sport for which the Maldives is famous, it is diving. And Kuredu is one of the tops for that. Already distinguished for its best wreck dive and best turtle dive in all the Maldives.

And then there the one sport for which the Maldives is least famous. Or at least famous for its absence. Golf. The biggest thing that keeps prospective guests away from the Maldives is the lack of golf. And Kuredu has the dominance here with quite an extensive golf club. It’s not Augusta or St. Andrews, but it is enough to keep a golf addict from suffering withdrawals. Actually, several resorts have some form of golfing now, but Kuredu’s is the largest and most extensive.

Finally, there is a sporty atmosphere. It struck me and I commented on it in my initial tour post (viz. Darren and Allison). A lot of resorts have sports facilities, but frankly, many times they are there more for show and to tick a box give how little they are used. And who can blame the guests? Even the most driven, triathlon mega-athlete would be seduced into a soporific indolence by the intoxicating calm and tranquillity of the Maldives. But many Kuredu guest seem a bit immune to that environmental opiate (though those who choose can and do certainly recline comatose on the beautiful beaches if they opt). Every single pitch and court was in active use when I visited the island.

As a final word, our hearts go to all the staff and guests who suffered the tragedy of this week’s fatal accident on the island. Any such loss is terrible, but is made particularly jarring in contrast to such a lovely place and a lovely celebration the couple were enjoying.

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Best of the Maldives – A Capella Greeting: Komandoo

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Komandoo welcome song

 

All of the Maldives resorts welcome their guests with various treats from tropical drinks, scented cold towels and even music, but Komandoo is the first I have seen to have their own welcome song. Delivered with heart and enthusiasm accompanies by bodu-beru drumming, it is really warm fun. The full sensory experience welcome (scented towels, refreshing drink, dulcet tones, and pleasing smiles).

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