Best of the Maldives: Kids Club Old School Arcade Games – SAii Lagoon

SAii Lagoon - kids club basketball

Maldives is the ultimate escape destination. Sequestered in the middle of the Indian Ocean, can you isolate yourself from the rest of the world and modern-day life if you like. But escaping the ubiquitous diaspora of the digital web is tricky even here. And even harder with active children seeking constant stimulation. If they have had enough salt, sun and sand for the day, but you don’t want them retreating into an electronic screen, SAii Lagoon’s (with its own retro sounding name) “Junior Beach Club and Camp” offers a range of nostalgic arcade games to pass the time and burn off whatever energy they have left. I enjoyed the walk down memory lane seeing the basketball shooting, air hockey, hoop toss, and variety of others straight from our local entertainment center.

SAii Lagoon - kids club air hockey

Best of the Maldives: Dhivehi for Couples – SAii Lagoon

SAii Lagoon - couple dhivehi

Mother Language Day today. If you want to delve into Dhivehi for a taste of local culture, it’s often fun to do it with a partner to both learn with as well as to practice with. SAii Lagoon’s Le Be Well spa offers a “Dhivehi for Couples” experience”:

  • “Love, after all, is one of the classic motivations for picking up a new language. When you learn a new language with your partner, it’s a bonding understand one of the most rewarding aspects of you try to communicate with them in their own language – Dhivehi, while fostering an appreciation for the traditions, religions, arts, and history of the Maldivians.”

You might wonder what would be the use of a relatively obscure language aside from impressing Maldivian staff on your resort visits? One possibility is to have your own personal code back home to converse in. We always remember meeting good friends for dinner years ago who we knew would try to pay for the meal and we wanted to pay. During the meal, they had a chat in Chinese which they said was just a family matter, but it turns out it was them scheming how to get the bill. Another example of such a shared secret language is the “Divine” language in the film “The Fifth Element”. Writer/Director Luc Besson invented the 400-word language for the character Leeloo (played by Milla Jovovich) to speak. Only Beeson and Jovovich learned the language and practiced it regularly to help it become natural for Jovovich. They ended up getting married after the film’s release so maybe a private shared language does have romantic effect.

Could Dhivehi be your language of love?

 

Best of the Maldives: Beach Front Kids Club – SAii Lagoon

SAii Lagoon - beach front kids club

The Maldives have come a long way from when it was mostly a destination for divers and honeymooners neither of which brought along little ones. Now (except for a few resorts positioning themselves as “adult only” or “children restricted”), the vast majority of resorts not only welcome children, but cater to them with a range of treats and activities some of which make the adults envious. The centrepiece of family-friendliness is the pervasive “kids club”. These havens of youthful and safe play spaces include all sorts of exciting features, but even the most lavishly equipped and designed tend to be tucked away somewhere in the interior of the island. SAii Lagoon’s Koimala & Maalimi’s Junior Beach Club and Camp has treated its young guests to seaside venue as picturesque as the one their parent’s are enjoying with keenly savoured peace and quiet.

   

Best of the Maldives: Co-Working – The Crossroads

SAii Lagoon - coworking

The remote working revolution, powered by the pandemic lock-down, has transformed the extent to which people can unshackle themselves from the location (and time) constraints of doing their job. Some people have taken advantage of their new found freedom to work in the cozy idyll of a shed at the bottom of their garden. But others have taken the workplace revamp to the extremes extending their Maldives holidays by doing a bit of work abroad.

“Residences” and long-term stays (ie. months) have risen dramatically here. A good Internet connection and a growing standardisation of teleconferencing as the default mode of doing business make this increasingly feasible and appealing. It used to be that face-to-face included was the default and you did teleconferencing when you really had to, but now the situation has flipped).

To further help you whistle while you work, SAii Lagoon has introduced the first ever co-working space in the Maldives:

  • “Crossroads Maldives is set to open the Maldives first-ever co-working space in the Maldives located at The Marina at CROSSROADS Maldives..‘Your SPACE’ at CROSSROADS Maldives would be the first of its kind in the Maldives where freelancers, remote workers, start-ups, and other independent professionals can work together in the communal setting. Offering flexible membership levels from hot desk to designated desks and spaces, members would be able to enjoy complimentary return transfers from Malé, free Wi-Fi, secretarial services including printing, scanning, mail delivery, meeting room booking and self-service coffee and tea. Additional benefits include exclusive discounts from the diverse range of dining and shopping outlets at The Marina.”

Other resorts have added enhanced work spaces in the villas (now tagged with the new tag of “Remote Working”), but SAii Lagoon and Hard Rock have introduced a space dedicated to such working in their Crossroad centre. That way one can get some privacy and other business support services for getting some vital work done (hopefully, so you can stay even longer in paradise with all the fires put out at home).

This is a bit of a special topic for me as one of my other websites/blogs has been looking at the concept of remote and flexible working long before it became trendy – Dynamic Work. As it happens, I am posting this piece from another island paradise, the Galapagos, where Lori and I are taking our Maldives-honed diving skills for a different type of diving adventure and our first ever live-aboard experience.

Why have a faux background on your Zoom call, when you can have the real thing?

  

Best of the Maldives: Unicorns – SAii Lagoon

SAii Lagoon - unicorn party

· “Always be yourself. Unless You can be a Unicorn. Then Always be a Unicorn”

Happy Halloween! An occasion where all sorts of mystical creatures emerge.  After more than 20 years of visiting the Maldives, I might not have seen a whale shark yet, but I have seen a unicorn. Not just once, but twice. At the Hard Rock and SAii Lagoon’s kids club who host an “awesome Unicorn Party”. Then, later at the main restaurant buffer Unicorn Froot Loops not only provided another encountered with this mystical creature, but also satisfied my American-bred addiction to high-fructose corn-syrup.

SAii Lagoon - unicorn cereal

Best of the Maldives: Crab Biryani – SAii Lagoon / Hard Rock

Hard Rock - crab biryani

Ocean Indian cuisine in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Hard Rock and SAii Lagoon’s Ministry of Crab serves up a true delicacy crab biryani which we thoroughly enjoyed during our visit there:

  • “Cooked with 1.5kg of the finest Mud crab from Sri Lanka, this is the largest deshelled crab dish on our menu and preserves the ideologies of the traditional biryani with our own take on it. Each clay pot serves 6, includes 12 eggs and is accompanied with a Fresh Mint Sambol, hand ground on our Miris Gala and the Classic Malay pickle.”

I do love when resorts bring local flavours to luxury ingredients. With this post, I am adding a “Crab” tag so that this crustacean can take its place alongside its culinary crustacean, Lobster.

Best of the Maldives: Personal Fragrance – SAii Lagoon

SAii Lagoon - MIY 1

Instagram can save the sights and sounds of your trip to paradise, but how to do preserve the scents? The tropical flowers, the salty sea air, the crisp coral sands. I asked that question with my #26 of installment #5 of “Haven’t Seen Yet”, but thanks to SAii Lagoon “M.I.Y” (ie. “Mix It Yourself”) bar, I can finally tick that one off.

The M.I.Y. boutique lets you prepare a customised bouquet from their extensive array of aroma’s in the “Aroma Lab”. “M.I.Y.” is also a reverse acronym for “Yim” Thai word “Yim”, meaning “to smile”. So, the Aroma Lab motto is, “Make a scent that makes you smile.”

The process includes product testing to ensure your skin’s suitability and affinity with the customised formula. You can wear the final olfactory cocktail directly or have it added to you shampoo and soap in your room as well throughout your stay. Finally, each formula is kept for when you return to SAii Lagoon.

Makes scents to me!

SAii Lagoon - MIY 2