Holiday Shopping

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Vadoo mug 1   Vadoo mug 2

This weekend in the USA is sort of the unofficial starting pistol for the Christmas shopping season. While purists bemoan the creep of holiday decorations, promos and music into the days before Thanksgiving, discretion dictates that one holds off until one has woken from one’s turkey-induced slumber before melting the credit card.

Finding the right gifts is a challenge during Maldive ‘holidays’ as well. One of my pet peeves, as I’ve already written, are resorts that don’t take even more money off me by offering me more enticing mementos and gifts. But some resorts do really provide some notable shopping options. In fact, I’ve now broken out a separate ‘Shopping’ tag in the Blog and hence a devoted section in the ‘Best of Maldives’ page featuring the posts so far – Shoe Shopping at Reethi Rah, Dive Centre Shirts at Palm Beach, Wood Craft and Fashion Boutique at Kanuhura, and Largest Shop at Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru.

I also have a gift / memento tip – the resort/fish mug. I found the one shown in the pictures above at Vadoo, but I have spotted them at other gift boutiques around the Maldives. The mug is really nicely done. A classic island aerial portrait on one side. I always put the aerial shot of the island I am next visiting as my PC wallpaper to get me geared up for the trip. The aerial views really capture so much of what the Maldives experience is about. Also, it has classic fish spotter chart on the opposite side that we spend so much time pouring over at the end of a day’s diving or snorkelling. Finally, it is finished off with a lovely aquatic blue on the handle and inside.

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Best of the Maldives: Dive Centre Shirts – Palm Beach

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Palm Beach dive shirts 2

 

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!

 

Palm Beach dive shirts

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Best of the Maldives: Ingredient Theme – Club Med Kani

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Club Med Kani buffet

 

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…

  • Cucumber Spring Rolls (hand made a station)
  • Cucumber and Mango Kebab
  • Cucumber Oliver Tapanade
  • Cucumber Sushi with Fish Roe
  • Cucumber Salad with Vinegar and Honey
  • Cucumber Thai Salad
  • Cucumber and Smoker Fish Sandwich
  • Yogurt and Cucumber Soup
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Best of the Maldives: Wood Craft – Kanuhura

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Kanuhura wood 2

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.

Kanuhura wood 3

Kanuhura wood

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Best of the Maldives: Water Driving Range – Palm Beach

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Palm Beach ocean driving range

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!

Palm Beach ocean driving range 2

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Best of Maldives Online – TA Ratings: Cocoa Island

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Trip Advisor Top Resort

 

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.

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New7Blunders of Nature

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New 7 Wonders of Nature

From proud show of world travel highpoints to an embarrassing show of world travel wannabees. ‘New7Wonders of Nature announcement this week of its 7 ‘winners’ vindicated the Maldives Marketing and Public Relation Corporation’s bold move to withdraw from the suspiciously dodgy campaign. I’m as much up for a good publicity stunt to draw attention in a fun and creative way, but when the New7Wonders group started trying to extort big bucks from participants, its true colours showed and the Maldives wisely withdrew. Now this hokum has run out of time (it had been going on for years) for bilking keen tourism agencies and had to finally come to some conclusion. It was kind of like the TV series Lost that captured the imagination at first, then got tired, and in the end was exposed as an aimless exercise. The end result announced this week was no more satisfying than Lost’s final perplexing and insulting episode.

  • “Amazon in South America; Halong Bay, Vietnam; Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil; Jeju Island, South Korea; Komodo, Indonesia, Puerto Princesa Underground River, the Philippines; and Table Mountain, South Africa.”

Really, that’s the ‘7 Natural Wonders of the World’? If that’s them, then the Maldives is right to withdraw itself from such weak company. The results reinforce the increasingly evident assessment that the whole campaign was simply a vehicle for the most desperate destinations to try to get some exposure and faux bragging rights.

For starters, the Grand Canyon doesn’t even make the list. The Grand Canyon is one of those jaw-dropping, jelly-kneed natural wonders that top everyone’s list who actually know something about the world of travel. Not having the Grand Canyon on the list is like not have the Great Pyramids on the list of Ancient Wonders of the World. I feel sorry for the people who end of going to Iguazu Falls instead of Victoria Falls or Table Mountain instead of Everest.

For a more respectable list of 7 Natural Wonders check out – http://sevennaturalwonders.org/the-original.

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World Travel Market 2011

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World Travel Market

WTM 2011 Maldives

Maldives came to London last week.

The World Travel Market is Europe’s largest travel and tourism trade fair filling the entire Excel exhibition centre in London. It is an opportunity for tourism agencies and major players to convene with existing customers very efficiently (in fact, sort of a treadmill fashion of one meeting after another from morning until night) as well with prospective new customers who are exploring new destinations to add to their portfolio.

The Maldives contingent was proudly represented front and centre of the ‘Indian Ocean’ hall right as you walk in the door (photo below) with a harried group of Ministry of Tourism, Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation and staff from various resorts. It was a great chance to meet the movers and shakers of the Maldives resort industry just a tube ride away. I caught up with Senior Marketing Officer Aminath Hudha (see photo above) of the MMPRC who was the very first person in the Maldives to help me get Maldives Complete off the ground. I also met up with resort managers both veteran (Champa, Villa, Universal) and newcomer (Dusit Thani, Viceroy). But the highlight of the day was finally meeting one of my Maldives heroes, Adrian Neville. We chatted into the evening about all things resort and Maldives comparing notes, stories and perspective.

I was a delight to welcome Maldivians to the British shores for once after so many years of them welcoming me to theirs.

WTM 2011 hall

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Best of the Maldives: Longest Shoreline – Kuredu

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Shorelines Edwin Lynn

Happy Birthday Dad.

Today is my father, Edwin Lynn’s, birthday. And probably his best present is his recently published book ‘Shorelines’. It’s a present for himself to see this distillation of a life’s work of insight and reflection come to reality. It is also a present to everyone who is inspired by the ocean and draws wisdom and serenity from it. As such, it seemed to be just right for the Maldives.

I grew up in a seaside town north of Boston, Massachusetts called Ipswich. It features one of the longest and finest beaches in the northeast USA…Crane Beach. It was there that my Dad would regularly brave the cold and sleep deprivation to catch a sunrise over the ocean. On a couple of occasions I was enticed to join this ritual lured more by the promise of fresh Marty’s donuts at the end than the celestial spectacle.

My Dad always favoured seaside holidays and during them got even more opportunity to watch the sunrise (or set on western shores). My Dad even got the opportunity to visit the Maldives when we took my parents to Conrad Hilton Rangali in 2000 (see photo below). Of course, one of the great luxuries of the Maldives is that you can easily watch both sunrises and sunsets!

In honour of ‘Shorelines’ and the lengthy, white sand Crane Beach that inspired him, today’s ‘Best of Maldives’ is its Longest ‘Shoreline’ or really ‘Beach’. A number of islands have long shorelines, but they interrupted by structures or rocks or something else blocking the way. According to Maldives legendary guru, Adrian Neville, Kuredu is “still the longest beach and so fine”. This assertion is confirmed by the island size data in the Maldives Complete database.  Gan is a very long island, but the ‘resort’ beach is limited. Kuramathi and Palm Beach are also a longer islands, but the ‘beach’ is broken up by infrastructure and some inaccessible rock/coral croppings.

May your shorelines be as refreshing and inspiring as a Maldivian sunrise.

Edwin Lynn Conrad Rangali 2

Edwin Lynn Conrad Rangali 1

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Best of the Maldives: Repeater Honour – Komandoo

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Komandoo - tshirts repeater

11-11-11.

A bit of a numerically milestone event. Especially for British and Americans for whom ’11-11’ has long represented a day of honours for the nations’ veterans. The date itself marks the end of the First World War (aka Armistice Day) which goes even further as it officially ended on the ‘11th Hour’ today. Now in 2011, the 11’s string further. The day is a holiday of respect and remembrance for all who have served country. Often the day is marked with musical parades, wearing uniforms and erecting plaques.

Komandoo has a similar tradition every day for its ‘veterans’. Like all guests there, returning resort heroes are welcomed with a singing corps. Every repeater also gets a special ceremonial uniform in the form of t-shirt featuring one turtle (very prevalent around Komandoo especially with the nearby Kuredu caves) for every stay they have had (see photo above). After 4 stays, you get a custom plaque naming your villa after you for the duration of your stay (see photo below). After 7 stays, you get a special gift package presented by management.

I am a bit of a t-shirt aficionado (and in fact get stroppy when the resorts don’t sell good t-shirts). Not only is using turtle as ‘belt notches’ fun, but I also love the similar designs that Komandoo gives to honeymooners which has two turtles holding hands/flippers (see photo bottom).

May your 11-11-11 be a memorable one.

Komandoo - repeater plaque

Komandoo - plaque

Komandoo - tshirts

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