If our planning this week works out, the wife will finally got a life-long wish of visiting the Maldives: we’re planning to head there in June this year, and hopefully with our ang mo bud, Matt whom we have been persuading to join us for another family vacation for years now since our 2012 trip to Telunas Beach Resort haha. We’re aiming for a ten day trip – a little longer than the time most people in our neck of the woods would typically spend on a Maldives trip. Heck. Even the local travel agent we spoke to to arrange for the private resort segment of the trip sounded shocked that we were planning for a ten day trip! She exclaimed “Are you sure? You’d get bored!” LOL.
Before deciding on the Maldives, we actually had several vacation spots in consideration for the roughly 10 days stretch I had away from work: including trips to Kota Kinabalu, Penang, Langkawi, a return to Rawa Island or Telunas, Sydney, and even a cruise. Japan in June was dropped as I may be making a work trip there come September – more on that later – and we’re also putting together a plan for a two week Japan vacation at year end too. Likewise for Bintan: we’re already booked in for a 4 days-long stay over the National Day long weekend this year.
Of the remaining places, the Telunas Beach Resort now offers a private island package with all the luxury trimmings absent from the more mainstream island accommodations we stayed at during our 2012 trip, but it also comes significantly bumped prices to boot now though. Rawa Island continues to have its charm and its pristine beach continues to impress, going with the recent reviews on Tripadvisor. But apart from the comparable to Maldives white sandy beach at Rawa, there’s scant marine or reef life in the waters itself. Ling had little enthusiasm for a trip to Sydney – possibly because it’s still not too long ago when we had two significant vacations to Australia. And given the recent tensions between Malaysia and Singapore, in part to the return of our island’s long term adversary to lead the Malaysian government, I wasn’t too sure about spending a week in Penang or Langkawi either. And finally, we actually nearly booked ourselves for a 5D4N cruise on the Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas that would also disembark at Penang and Phuket islands.
We’ll still do a cruise in the near future, but finally decided on the Maldives just before the weekend, in most part because our ang mo friend mused that this sounded for him the most interesting trip of the bunch we proposed. And if these islands were the only way to entice him to join us, Maldives it would be then!
There were the usual first things that we were mindful of though before deciding to proceed with the planning for this June trip though:
Weather wise, June isn’t really the ideal time for travel to the Maldives: it’s the rainy season in that part of the world. But visitors who’ve visited in June also say it’s really a matter of luck of whether you get rain or not. And invariably, rain usually comprises of a short downpour before the sun comes up again. And a longer stay also increases the likelihood of getting clear and sunny days too. As a direct consequence of the monsoon weather expected, June is also off-peak season for the Maldives: which means lower rates all round and less dense crowds.
Scoot offers direct flights to the islands, with the journey taking about 4 hrs 40 minutes. The outbound flight from Singapore will land in the late evening at 8:25PM – hiss boo! – but the return flight home will likewise also take off at night at 9:05PM – hooray!
Peter has been taking swimming lessons for over a year now, but he hasn’t learned yet to dive underwater. Something we’ll have to speak to his coach and see if he can start learning this all important skill soon.
I’ll have to pick-up all manner of waterproof equipment for picture taking during the snorkeling activities: including flotation straps now too, and possibly a dedicated underwater compact camera too.
The trip will be broadly in two segments: a stay on a private island, and a longer stay at the local or public islands.
It was pretty intense looking through the accommodations over the week, given the huge number of options in the region, and the astronomical prices of water villas on the private islands. We decided to work out our private island stay first and wrap the rest of the trip around that. Next posts in this series will gradually cover our accommodation plans!
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