Here’s an odd bit of travel fact: when it comes to the Maldives and these private resort islands, unlike the majority of many other island-type resorts elsewhere in the world, you get exactly what you see in those stunning pictures. We’ve had friends on FB who go on annual Maldives vacations and return with the classic picturesque photos – beaches of powdery white sand, turquoise clear water, and over water villas – with the sea and reef life literally at your door-step. I’ve not read of anyone who says otherwise! Unfortunately, a stay at these private resort islands routinely will cost your arms, hands and all the fingers on them – their rates run from easily a thousand per night at the minimum, to truly eye-watering five digit dollar rates.
But we’ve just confirmed our ten day stay @ Maldives come June with flight bookings, and hooray – our ang mo bud will be joining us. Hopefully, he’ll write a blog entry or two for us again!
From the get go though, we decided not to just stay on a private island for the entirety of a Maldives trip, but to also set aside an equal if not longer amount of time on the public islands. It wasn’t just that if we were going to make the trip to the islands we shouldn’t try to maximize our stay. A stay on these local islands is at least much cheaper than those pricey private resorts. But our inclusion of a substantial public island segment also stems from my genuine interest in cultural immersion. As tempting as it might be to enjoy vacation exclusivity, I’ve always felt that a key reason of our making these trips out of Singapore is for us to get exposed to more authentic and local experiences that are unlike our own, even if these can still finally be somewhat curated for short-stay foreigners like us – not unlike the Balinese artisan workshops we had last year. I guess it comes down to finding a balance between enjoying the best a place has to offer, but at the same time lookout and be opened to opportunities to see how persons in a different part of the world live their lives. But our search for an appropriate public island has spanned for a week now with no end in sight – just like the ongoing US Government Shutdown (couldn’t resist that joke haha). I’ll write a separate post about that later once we’ve decided on where to stay for the segment of that trip.
In the mean time, we’ve just finalized the private island segment of our ten day trip. This was the comparatively easier bit to arrange, and we’d started working through this first before making any other accommodation and flight bookings. I haven’t yet read how many private resorts there are in the Maldives, but from the islands’ Wikitravel-entry, there are 80 islands with tourist resorts: which means the number of resorts will be at least that number.
In a sense, the reason why our private island segment was easier to decide was because we had just two requirements: we didn’t want to spend beyond a particular amount per night, and we were looking for an over water villa or equivalent. And what made this search fairly easy was that there just weren’t many water villas who were in this price bracket! I reckon we could have been a bit more generous in our budget projection and expanded our search a bit more, but it’s just nigh impossible to shake myself off this consciousness that we should be prudent in spending and get our “value for money”. It’s built-into our Singaporean DNA haha.
We initially planned to stay at a private island for just three days – enough to get a taste of exclusive island living that’s nothing like how the locals live. The resorts I took a close look at were the mid-rangers, and my list included Meeru Island Resort, Kuredu Island Resort, Sun Siyam Ira, Reethi Beach Resort, Fihalhohi Island Resort, and Olhuveli Beach & Spa. Not all of these resorts had water villas that are large enough for 2 adults and 2 kids, and we had to be mindful too of the equally as expensive speedboat or seaplane transfers involved. And not all the booking sites included these transfer charges upfront either.
So, over the weekend, we bounced between the last three on the list as their overall package costs were largely in the same ballpark – Reethi, Fihalhohi, and Oluveli. Oddly, in Olhuveli’s case, the usual third party sites limited the occupancy of their starter water villas to three – which meant that we’d had to check directly with the resort, and this is what we saw:
Of the three shortlisted, the Olhuveli’s water villa finally looked a bit more appealing, and we were all ready to grit our teeth and make the non-refundable SGD3.4K booking over the weekend… until I stumbled on a package deal offered from a local travel agent that was offering a 4 Day stay for SGD2.6K, full-board including transfers and albeit for a water villa sans jacuzzi. That 4 Day package rate was even cheaper than the hotel’s advertised rates for 3 Days. So, after a quick check to make sure that the package and agent was legit – what with the number of travel agent closure these days – we made a booking and paid up the first third as deposit. The following morning I had some more back and forth with the agent to discuss a few more details – and by end of the day, the agent issued confirmation documents.
And even then, I was still a little leery whether this transaction was legit. So, I wrote Olhuveli directly to ask if they’d received from a travel agent a confirmed booking for a party of four for a 4D3N stay. The resort took a while to reply, but it was in the affirmative when they finally did – which provided relief and made it possible for us to quickly book the flights.
More to come soon!
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