Heritance Aarah is another entry into the solid $1000/night 5-star range – stylish property, attentive service, full range of amenities and features, gourmet food. All offered as a premium all-inclusive package so you can relax and enjoy as much of the food and drink as you like.
The Standard ticks all the boxes including value for money. So often the more affordably priced properties are priced to accommodate some shortcoming in the resort (eg. proximity to Male affecting views, distance from Male affecting transferring, lack of house reef). The Standard meets all the standards of Maldives 5-star luxury, but at a sub-$1000 room rate (for most rooms during most months). Gourmet food in the outlets including overwater bar and overwater restaurant. A breathtaking experience that won’t take your life savings away.
We are off on our 21st visit to the Maldives after which we will have stayed at 120 resorts:
We are experiencing the full gamut of transfer transport – international, domestic and seaplane flights (and speedboat to boot).
We will also explore a new ”atoll”, which also happens to consist of a single island– Fuvahmulah. It’s getting harder to find resorts we haven’t been to so we decided take a few days at an island/atoll long on our bucket list.
Tune in for new discoveries and a range of “Best of the Maldives”.
As we prepare for our 21st visit to the Maldives, we aren’t getting any younger. Now in our mid-sixties, battling an incessant array of health issues seems to be a new avocation in this chapter of our lives. So we are more empathetic to the prospective visitors who enquire about the access to emergency medical care (eg. parents with very young children, or anyone with a long-term health condition). Most (at least 5 star) resorts have resident doctors. For those looking for more extensive medical facilities, the conventional answer in the past would be to look at the Male atoll properties for ready access to the country’s main hospital in Male. But in recent years, tourism-funded growth has funded hospitals in many of the big atolls:
When we visited Jumeirah Dhevanafushi (now Raffles Meradhoo), the GM highlighted the proximity of the Gaafu ALifu hospital to the island and the fact that the GM had met with the hospital to coordinate care protocols if a guest needed medical attention. While notable, I didn’t think this distinctive measure quite merited its own “Best of the Maldives” post, but I thought it would be good to call out those resorts closest to each of the major atoll hospitals:
I long been an a-fish-ionado of maps to provide a range of creative visualisations to guide humans, but someone has thoughtful crafted this cartographical guide for our piscatory residents and passers-through.
The Maldives resorts are renowned for their abundant hospitality which starts the moment you step off the boat onto the island jetty. These welcomes are often amped up a bit more for repeaters with some extra treats or gestures. I’ve seen dozens of these greetings and goodies, but none nearly as extravagant at Sun Siyam Vilu Reef ‘s.
Now this repeater welcome was a bit exceptional in its own right as it was honouring a guest, nicknamed “Mama”, who was arriving for her 41st visit! The extravaganza included:
Now this might seem perhaps an anomaly for this exceptional visitor, but Lori and I also received much of this treatment ourselves and we saw many other guests receive various samplings of the above.
Fresh fruit abounds on the Maldives breakfast buffets, but sometimes you want something a little sweeter and spreadable. There are jams and marmalades a plenty as well, but a compote is that happy medium between fruit and conserves. You can add it to your toast, pancakes, waffles, cereal, etc. My favourite is adding compote to my morning yogurt (“breakfast dessert”). And the widest selection of compotes I have come across is Sun Siyam Iru Veli whose buffet selection included:
Joali is the artistic epicentre of the Maldives with its art-themed resort, and now it is training the next generation of artists who might someday grace the property with their own works:
A world beyond the plastic gimp bracelets and Flintstone-like clay ashtrays I made at camp!
Amilla Maldives is a veritable catalogue of the ideal accessibility for a tropical resort. I’ve already highlighted a number of prominent accessibility initiatives and features at Amilla, but I’ve decided to add this post to cover all of the smaller (but just as helpful) touches that they just keep adding:
In the Maldives, some hard surface badminton courts are indoor, and there a many outdoor courts in the sand, but Meeru offers the professional court outdoors for those who want a bit of al fresco competition.