Per my previous post, “Love in the Maldives” is a romantic romp through a very typical visit to the Maldives (with some atypical bits thrown in for a bit of contrived plot). I’ve produced a sort of “Everything Wrong With…” (with a touch of “Everything Right With”) reaction commentary video to help everyone navigate the contorted fiction from the fun fact. Enjoy!
Given its paradise backdrop, I’ve always been surprised there hasn’t been more films set there (none really). Until I came across this Hallmark production, “Love in the Maldives”.
The watermark of “Hallmark” is important because, for those of you outside the USA, it is a brand noted for being sweet and a bit cheesy. And this production certainly lived up to those brand values. It was almost a promo piece of the Maldives with a contrived soap opera love story tacked on. That said, given how much effort it went to portray the Maldives and all of its attractions, I was struck by how many mistakes and misrepresentations there were (stay tuned for my follow up piece on those).
But hat tip to Conrad Maldives…or “Anrad” as it appeared in the film (the “Conrad” name had the “C” blotted out on the coconuts given to guests as their welcome drink). And the heroine of the story stays in a villa called the “Marata” which is a real thing, but really called the “Muraka”.
The film only appears to be available in the USA at the moment, though I have seen it pop up on streaming services or if you have a VPN you might be able to find it. As a said, I will share a highlights video later this week with commentary.
Happy Kissing Day! Maldives is a world-renowned destination for (a) romance, and (b) underwater delights. So where else to break a word record for underwater kissing?! LUX South Ari Atoll hosted the sub-aquatic smooch:
Romance everywhere in the Maldives…above and below the water.
I’ve still not seen “Pickleball”, but now the very latest racquet sport trend is “Padel Tennis”. And that *has* been introduced by Emerald with the installation of 2 soft Astro-turf courts in apropos cerulean blue.
The Maldives exists at that sweet spot right on the edge of land and ocean. The lagoon shallows make it one of the best places in the world for wading in mill pond calm water with refreshing ocean cooling your feet. Soneva Jani brings that vibe into its Den kids club with its in-water table tennis set-up. Cool!
While most visitors to the Maldives come for the solar-powered heat therapy, Joali Being also offers the counterpoint treatment of cryotherapy:
If you can’t get the people to paradise, bring paradise to the people. COVID’s travel restrictions spurred the development and adoption of many innovations to bridge the new distances imposed between us. Soneva Fushi introduced the especially immersive (and high tech) virtual reality electronic escape:
Happy Birthday Alan Turing. Recent events in technology have brought Mr. Turing’s name to global headlines more than ever both with the rise of ChatGPT and other striking artificial intelligence tools. Turing famously proposed the “Turing Test” which stated:
I’ve come across more and more AI tools being released to the wild and thought that I would have another go at trying them out in the Maldives context. Instead of looking at what AI could do for guests, I wanted to explore what AI could do for the Maldives Complete website. I ran the site through 2 prominent offerings:
The collection above was from Microsoft. Frankly, it didn’t seem that “intelligent” at all. It essential just pulled prominently tagged content (eg. headers, titles) from the site and populated some of other templates, and then used some subject searching to find a bunch of relevant images to slap on it. That said, I have talked with some web designers who proposed revamping the Maldives Complete UX and they didn’t propose doing much different. Maybe the bar for the intelligence AI is lower than we think.
We love seeing sharks in the Maldives…this Neon Bull Shark art installation by Carla O’Brien was an especially bright sighting at the Ritz Carlton Maldives:
The piece is part of the resort’s 14 piece art collection of modern works in a variety of media.
Maldives spas offer all sorts of detox treatments, but Soneva Jani offers a digital detox button in all their villas. Just push this button on the wall and the wifi is switched off! Lest the kids think they can escape to the Kids Club to resume their device addiction, it too has a technology free zone in it.