Arrival to paradise

White soft sand, blue skies and the clearest and bluest water I've ever seen - that's how I'd describe the Maldives. As soon as we got off the sea plane to our island resort, you could see how this place has the hype that it does to rival places like Bora Bora, Seychelles, etc. For those of you who have been to Australia, it's like Whitehaven beach with a resort on it and shade (for Adam!) The Maldives are a collection of islands south of India where the closet country is Sri Lanka. I think in most cases, there is one resort per island, since many if them are small. We arrived to Male, the capital of Maldives, direct from KL. There are also direct flights from Bangkok but majority of flights in the area stopover in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I believe it's probably easiest to come here via London or Dubai on Emirates.  Maldives was somewhere we have always wanted to go an we had originally planned to come here for our honeymoon but decided to go to Australia instead because I could get a bunch of time off. We are staying at Veligandu Island Resort and Spa, which in the north Ari Atolle, as they call it here.

It was very hard to make a decision on what island/resort to choose but I'm quite happy with our choice! There are a lot to choose from and almost every international chain has a resort here. If our resort is so beautiful, I wonder what the Four Seasons or Shangri-la resorts look like with room only rates. We chose our resort because it had a meal plan option as well. We are on a full board plan, which is similar to a cruise where your drinks and excursions are on top, which works for us since we don't drink. The food so far has been fantastic-its buffet style although there are many grill stations and a person that cuts fresh fruit for you including the ones you don't usually see in a buffet because they can't cut enough of it such as kiwis, etc. Adam has tried many more types of fish and just realized how much he likes a grilled Yellowfin tuna steak! The chefs and majority of the workers are actually from India - so food has tones of flavor  with some Indian food thrown in as well! The Maldivian people also appear to have Indian origin from what I can tell so far. Of course the Indian people always ask us, "are you from India?" and we give them our usual long winded response of being Canadian with our parents from Africa but our great grandparents being Indian. We opted  for a Jacuzzi water Villa as there  aren't many places in the world that they build these! I can snorkel directly off of our suite - sun is too strong here for Adam to join unfortunately. We are on the Sunrise side of the resort - option for sunrise or sunset - both are great options. The sunrise side has more of a chance of seeing dolphins though! One side of our villa has 2 beach chairs and the Jacuzzi/hot tub with a view of the ocean and the second balcony has 2 more loungers and the stairs to walk into the sea!

Maldives is a Muslim country which is likely why there were good flights from Malaysia, UAE, etc. Our arrival forms were quite interesting - on the actual card, they say they prohibit bringing in Alcohol, pork or pork products, Pornography, firearms and a bunch of those things I can't recall anymore. Most countries landing card says they restrict you from bringing in drugs, fruits and vegetables from another county! We stayed in Male for the night or rather 5 hours before we came to the island via sea plane, which was an interesting experience in itself. We stayed at an extremely lack luster hotel which was fine considering we basically took a nap there since we arrived at our hotel at 11 pm ish after taking an "airport ferry" to Male and left to go back to the airport at 5 am. I had requested the earliest transfer which I initially regretted based on how much sleep we got but that quickly faded when we arrived in the Island! From the sea plane, you could see some of the other islands in a way you couldn't have been able to in an airplane because they fly at a higher altitude above the clouds. Some islands are close enough to Male that they can be accessed by speed boat but most are too far away. We've only been here a day and a half and I already know that I won't want to leave especially since that means its closer to when we have to return home to real life :( I really feel like my soul was meant to live in a warm place!