The ‘Best’ keeps getting better. And I’ve had to revamp the ‘Best Of’ page a bit more to accommodate all of the accumulating resort highlights. For starters, I have split the page into two tabbed pages since there are simply so many ‘Best Ofs’ to list. I have broken the groups in ‘Activity’ and ‘Infrastructure’.
While I was making those changes and updating the page, I added a few other breakout tags. I’ve split out the following…
Reef-frames are the only things with better labels as I have this week updated the ‘Tags’ used on Maldives Complete. Of course, you can always use Google or the Search facility on the blog to search for text like ‘snorkelling’ or ‘surfing’. But, text search will indiscriminately bring up any mention whatsoever of that word. Tags are used by sites to indicate important topics in the post or page. If you select one of the ‘Tags’ at the bottom of the posts (or in the ‘tag cloud’ – see above – which highlight the most prevalent tags scaled to proportion of their use), then it will bring you all the posts that are focused on that subject.
For a long time, I have had a collection of tags corresponding to the various ‘Best of the Maldives’ categories (eg. Sport, Activity, Service, Online). And over time, those have morphed a bit as certain sub-categories grew big enough to merit their own break out (eg. Surfing, Shopping). For starters this week, I have added another breakout to ‘Activity’ which is ‘Boating’.
But I have also added the following Tags which don’t relate to ‘Best Of’ categories, but rather to my other types of posts…
“歡迎來到完美馬爾代夫的中文版。 鑒於中國是目前來訪這天堂般美麗的地方數目最多的遊客， 和這個網站探訪者最多之一， 我將會儘以我所能使您可以更容易尋找資訊。 感謝陳景翔先生 為這個網站做的翻譯工作。 網站其中占比較大的一部分就是‘博客’頁，並且索引在 ‘最好去的地方’ 頁中裡。我們已經把 ‘最好去的地方’ 的主題以及類別翻譯了, 以便您找到感興趣的主題。若是您想深入閱讀我們的‘博客’頁或其他文章我只能建議您載入Google 翻譯或其他網上翻譯服務。 感謝您的探訪。 我們希望在未來提供更多的中文材料。”
Welcome to the Chinese version of Maldives Complete. Respecting that China is now the biggest visitor to this paradise, and one of the biggest visitors to the site, I thought that I would do what I could to make it easier for you to follow the information. Thanks to Daniel Chan, he helped me with translations of some of the key text to help you use the site. One of the big areas of the site is the ‘Blog’ much of which is indexed in the ‘Best Of’ page. We have translated the ‘Best Of’ subjects to help you locate topics of interest. I can only suggest that if you then want to read the article, load it into Google Translate or some equivalent web service. Thank you for visiting. We hope to offer more Chinese language material in the future.
The paragraph directly above is the English translation to the paragraph above that which is now featured on the Home page of newly launched Chinese version of Maldives Complete. Just press on the Chinese flag icon on the Home page (see below).
I haven’t translated absolutely everything. Some of the background pages in the ‘About’ section don’t get much traffic and are less interesting to prospective visitors. Also, the Blog was really too much of a project to translate. If you add it up, it now has over 250 pages of written text in its posts. If people are really keen on the content Google Translate at least will give them an idea of what I am referring to. I have translated the subjects of the ‘Best Of’s so at least they will be able to easily find certain topics of interest.
I especially like Daniel’s interpretation of the site name in Chinese…
“For the title, I have translated it as “完美馬爾代夫”, where the “complete” term is placed at the front (the Chinese and English sentence structures are quite the opposite) and interpreted as ‘totally perfect’.”
Totally Perfect!
“How is the house reef?”
That is one of the most common and critical questions prospective visitors ask when considering a Maldives resort. One of the marquee Maldivian activities, perhaps the best in the world, is snorkelling. And the main event to snorkelling is the ‘house reef’.
When I was first introduced to the Maldives by friend and colleague Andy Lees, his main words of advice were to make sure the resort had a great house reef. Of course, the sun, the sand and the overall paradise can be more than enough for a spectacular holiday for many. Also, those resorts poorly endowed in this all things reefy almost always offer many excursions to take guests to excellent nearby reefs for snorkelling.
I’ve covered the subject of house reefs on several occasions…’Closest House Reef’, ‘Best House Reef’, ‘House Reef Drop Off’.
But the subject has come up so frequently that I have decided to add a ‘House Reef Quality’ parameter to the Maldives Complete database of resorts. The breakdown is fairly basic, but it will provide some general help to people who do want to filter on this variable…
You can filter on this item (see snapshot of ‘Resort Finder’ page above) and the information is included in the Resort Profiles.
A lot of folks are connecting up with me by email and on our Facebook page. I appreciate all the kind words of support and endorsement. In the About page, I did a bit of a credits page about the various helpers who assisted in getting Maldives Complete on the web, but I neglected to mention anything about the webmaster himself (ie. me).
Furthermore, my visits to the Maldives now numbers 17 different resorts and so I thought it would be helpful to share precisely which ones (and ‘when’ as things change quite a bit over time) for people particularly interested in deeper details on those for which I do have first hand information. I’ve assembled the list and a snapshot from each trip as well as a potted history of my background in a Bio page here.
Finally, the background to this new page is a photograph from my all time favourite photographer of the Maldives, Sakis Papadopoulos. Sakis has kindly shared a collection of his photographs for my use on the site and over time I plan to migrate most of the site graphics to those from Sakis.
As I mentioned way back at the outset of Maldives Complete, I had originally thought that I might build a website called ‘Maldives for Families’ out of the conviction that this destination was so superbly suited for adults and children alike. Little did I know that online, especially at Trip Advisor, there is a massive debate between this school of thought and the view that the Maldives is no place for children. So of the ‘anti-children’ views try to argue based on patronising forced logic (eg. long-haul flights not suitable for children who are going to kick seats and cry, loud and obnoxious children will spoil my idyllic holiday that I paid thousands for, specialised medical treatment is not immediately at hand). I always speak out in support of children being welcome, but in the end I appreciate ‘to each his own’.
To support people finding just the right resort for them, I’ve added a field to the Maldives Complete database which delineates the resorts into one of 5 categories about how ‘Child Friendly’ they are…
So you can filter in the Resort Finder on ‘Children Welcome’ I have also added a note box to the resort Profile which provides additional detail about the restrictions, facilities and ‘Best Of’ offerings. Finally, for further reference. Trip Advisor also has a handy FAQ on the topic.