Every day is day of the dolphin at Paradise Island with their signature dolphin shaped pool. If you can’t swim *with* a dolphin, then swin *in* one…
Best of the Maldives: Buffet Sculpture – Paradise Island
Paradise Island has long adorned its lavish buffets with elaborate fruit carvings and other striking decorations, but one of its “food sculptures” uses a few tricks beneath the surface. What appears to be a gigantic butter sculpture of fish cavorting around some coral is really only fin deep:
- “The white sculpture is actually a fish fin carving showing the symbol of Maldives , and it’s made of thermocol and at last glaze .”
Best of the Maldives: Pageant – Paradise Island
The holidays are filled with treats and at Paradise Island this week one fashion feast is the annual holiday pageant where one lucky sun-kissed guest will be crowned “Miss Paradise”….
- “’Miss Paradise’ is one of the evening events included in our Christmas and New Year program. The participants/pageants are from the in-house guests and panel of judges are also selected from the house. It is a short event conducted at the Main Bar floor with a small runway selecting and announcing the winners.”
Most Christmas pageants I’ve ever been to involve toddlers dressed up as shepherds and sheep falling over each other while they mumble out contrived verses.
Best of the Maldives: Geocaching – Thulhagiri / Paradise Island
If you fancy a bit of personal archaeology into the Digital Age, then you can undertake your own digging about for a Maldives geocache.
Thulhgiri (that resort’s first Best of the Maldives award) and Paradise Island are the two resorts which feature geochaches in the Maldives (there are 8 in total across the country). As the Paradise Island description says…
“If you are bored wink by snorkeling, diving, swimming, looking for fish, shells, sharks, manta’s, crabs or just of relaxing and enjoying the beach and the sun, this box can be a little alteration.”
Another “Finally Seen” (Not Yet Seen Part 8 – item #25). As I’ve mentioned so many times, the Maldives exudes a tropical paradise pirate treasure mystique. And so “treasure hunts” are particularly appropriate entertainment during a visit (so much so that with this post, I’m adding a category tag “Treasure”). We used to stage them for our kids, but with geocaching, all ages can join in the fun.
Best of the Maldives: Fruit Art – Paradise Island
Bed art, tub art, towel art, tree art. How about Fruit Art? The creations by chef Riju Kumar at Paradise Island are a carving cornucopia of Cucurbitaceae. He does both an exquisite array of floral geometric designs (see above) as well as renditions of animals and people. He uses a variety of fruits but mostly sticking to the melon family with watermelons and pumpkins.
With these inspired works, I have created a new category of “Maldives Fruit Art” in the Maldives Complete Pinterest collection. Usually on my boards, I try to show a range of resorts. But the prolific prodigy at Paradise has filled up the collection right from the get go.
Gourd-geous!
Best of the Maldives: Room Height – Paradise Island / The Haven
Check out the post the time on this entry. How cool is that?
Looking for something to mark this unique moment of ‘12’, I’ve chosen Paradise Island’s Haven Suite doors which are 12 feet tall. So are the showers. The drench showers do really feel like rain from heaven. In England, we moved to a converted barn just to get that vertical, cathedral-like spaciousness.
Big island means big stuff, The spaciousness is as vertical as it is horizontal in places especially The Haven Suites. Spa rooms were bigger than many gardens in the UK. And there were 15 of them. The spa seemed to go on for acres. And the spa entry itself had 3 distinct and distinctive water fountains with water cascading down.
I guess combined with their basketball supremacy and their super sized Haven Suites, Paradise Island is the also best for tall people.
Best of the Maldives: Parakeets – Paradise Island
You can get up close and personal with musical creatures on land as well. Paradise Island features an extremely friendly family trio (mom, dad and kid) of parakeets. My Maldive expert network informs me that another resort also has one, but Paradise Island has 3! The video clip above shows just how appreciative they are of their fans!
Best of the Maldives: Beach Web Surfing – Paradise Island
Another surfer’s Paradise in the Maldives. This time for ‘web surfers’. And offered up by the eponymous Paradise Island. The resort not only offers wifi that extends to the beach in front of their reception, but also they have run power outlets to the tables. As a result, you can surf for hours without running out of juice (well, you might need a top up for your pina colada).
Rising Tide of Quality
Every time I go to the Maldives, I am struck by the relentlessly rising tide of quality. Refurbishments, extensions, additions. Not just at the super-premium deluxe end of the market where the ever escalating arms race for wow factors marches on. But, also at the ‘regular’ 5-stars and even middle market properties. More and more resorts are playing more tasteful and appropriate soft jazz and acoustic rather than the pop chart songs which all too often jarred a sundowner. Tasteful colours and décor have replaced pervasive white walls and pedestrian prints/drawings of tropical scenes.
Some features were innovative when introduced, but are now getting more and more commonplace, eg…
- Telescopes
- Outdoor cinemas (made possible by the emergence of cheap, digital projectors)
- Resort label bottled water
- Hydroponic gardens
With such constant change, it is not surprising that after nearly 4 years of Maldives Complete, some of the early assessments on the ‘Best of the Maldives’ would reshuffle a bit. It is coming time that some of the ‘Best’ crowns get passed on to successors. I did choose the blog format so people could alert me to rivals for these distinctions. As time goes on and more research is accomplished, I’m starting to uncover some instances that trump the incumbent.
On my latest tour, I come upon a number specific features where the resort arguably surpass the reigning ‘Best of’ such as…
- Basketball: Paradise Island has a complete, regulation court in great shape (photo below)
- Gym Vista: Gili Lankanfushi has a broader expanse of big picture windows from a second story vista (photo above)
Best of the Maldives: Match Volleyball – Paradise Island
Let the games begin.
London proudly hosts the world this fortnight and Team Maldives has arrived to compete in badminton, athletics and swimming.
If the Maldives ever hosts the Olympics, the first sport sorted will obviously be beach volleyball. Beach volleyball is super popular in the Olympics and was the second fastest sell-out of tickets after Athletics. Lots of resorts offer great beach volleyball courts and many of the resorts sport quite competitive teams, but the Wembley of the beach volleyball circuit is on Paradise Island.
The resort pitch includes lighting (for night games) and a sheltered (against sun or rain) seating area. The picture above was against Club Med (playing in yellow and blue) where there was quite a buzz with a crowd of both staff and guests.
I made the quick switch from Maldives-trotter to flying over to New York to help with NBC’s Olympics coverage so I’m getting lots of beach volleyball, football, table tennis, field hockey and a dozen other sports on the go at any time.
I love the Telegraph’s profile entry on their Maldives in their Olympic guide which could almost serve as a cheer for the Paradise Island beach volley team: “The country's history in six words – Paradise, paradise, paradise, tsunami, paradise, paradise.”