Raffles Maldives where my heart now resides Where to start? This is a special place from the euphoric moment you arrive to the painstaking moment you have to leave. I have visited the Maldives many times since I was a child staying In some beautiful resorts but none compare to this. Island The Island is the most beautiful I have ever seen, it is dense with greenery and foliage with screensaver perfect palm trees along the entire island, the interior is also beautifully lush with plants and flowers to cover all the pathways, there is not a single spot on the island where you don’t feel like you are in a true tropical paradise. The smells even on the island will last with you, at night they discretely light incense along all the walkways and I swear they even make all the staff wear perfume because they all smell amazing. The lagoon is beautiful with ample space for swimming and the coral is some of the healthiest I have seen in the Maldives, its teeming with marine life and the actual corals themselves are beautiful. We saw Turtles, eagle rays, sharks and even dolphins during our stay along with plenty of fish. Villas The villas are huge and amazing, we stayed at the beach villa and the water villa both on the sunrise side. The pictures speak for themselves so I will just talk a little about the pros of each and the cons if I can find any. We loved and hugely appreciated the complimentary Aloe Vera, it was such a good idea and a life saver. The beach villa has a much larger bathroom and there is just something about being on the actual island with the sand under your feet and the palm trees over your head. The getting ready area is also nicer in the beach villa so getting ready together for dinner in the evening feels more fun. The bathtub in the beach villa is huge but almost too huge as it took ours over an hour to fill and didn’t stay hot very easily. It is incredibly private which is fantastic the only thing I would say is it’s not as much fun lounging around the outside of your villa as its so hidden you don’t feel as on the beach on your decking and you can’t even see the sea. This is up to you if you like this level of privacy over being on the actual beach. The beach villa has an outdoor shower which we love and the water villa doesn’t. The water villa is visually stunning from every corner of the villa, the huge infinity pool is gorgeous and there is no better place in the world to lounge about just being mesmerised by the water. The water villa is made up of three distinct rooms, a living room, the bedroom and a bathroom all of which are enormous. The bed must have been 10 foot wide still with plenty of space around it, you will never be lacking for space at this resort. The water villas are not attached to the island and you have to take a 1 minute speed boat which is available 24 hours a day and is actually very fun when Ismail or Zain are driving and if you are extremely lucky as we were you may even get some Dolphins come and have a play with the boat. Tips: The sunset side is less windy on the island, has a calmer lagoon and a bigger beach but the jungle look of the sunrise side is more beautiful and is also where the best snorkelling is. Food/drinks The food is exceptional! The thing that I was maybe most grateful for, which is a huge annoyance for me at other resorts, is we paid for full board and it was a true full board with the only chargeable extra being lobster and that was a very reasonable $70 (reasonable for the Maldives). At other resorts you will pay thousands extra for full board to get there and every single item on the menu that you would want to eat there is a surcharge on and all you get is a pick of 3 average dishes you would not want. Not the case here I was ecstatic to see the menus are vast and the quality is phenomenal. There are 3 restaurants Thari, Yuzu and Firepit. Thari is the main restaurant and is open every day for breakfast and lunch and most days for dinner. The breakfast is a la carte which is not the norm in the Maldives and while I do think a buffet breakfast works better the food here is incredible and you can tailor virtually all of the dishes to your liking so you won’t feel you have a lack of choice. Lunch will always be at Thari and is incredible with a huge choice of Asian and western dishes but trust me when I say just order anything Thai, Chef Kay (forgive me if that’s spelt incorrectly) is nothing short of one of the most talented chefs I have had the pleasure of being cooked for by, she even prepared an entire Thai feast for us one night of all off menu dishes and that meal will live with me for the rest of my life. Yuzu is fantastic too and is the restaurant attached to the water villas, its Japanese/Peruvian, the quality is top notch but I do have a couple of suggestions for improvement, there needs to be more variety in the main courses and I would probably alter the idea of the restaurant to a more Robatayaki style restaurant and menu, it would make it vastly more popular and better in my opinion. Firepit is in a beautiful romantic setting and who doesn’t love a BBQ, the quality of the produce is incredible again, the meat is all grilled to perfection apart from the steaks, internally they are perfect but they need more of a crust on the outside rather than just some grill marks but I’m being very fussy there. The long bar is amazing and I couldn’t believe more guests didn’t make more use of it, MK as we called him (Madhan Kumar) is nothing short of the best barman in the world! Every single night he made us an off menu personalised cocktail that each night we thought couldn’t be topped but each time he managed it. We would play around with it and give him one word to make a cocktail out of it and he nailed it, I’ve never had better drinks in my life. He’s also a special human being who is fascinating to talk to with a wide breadth of knowledge and an enormous heart. A massive shoutout goes to Madura who may be one of the coolest people I’ve met and Champok from Yapa bar who was amazing as well. Drinks are expensive but you expect that in the Maldives and at least they are double the size of what we get in London. The wine is the worst value item on the island with the average cost of a bottle on the menu being well into the hundreds of dollars, we chose to stick to the few options under $100 and none were very nice so I would like to see a little bit better value on the wines or at least some nicer ones for the price still, a £10 bottle in the UK could easily cost you over $100 here. I understand it’s the Maldives and its expensive but there are better quality cheaper wines you can buy for the same price rather than what they had. Spa The spa is incredible and you have to try the Raffles signature massage, the people here are incredible and so lovely, when they saw I was sunburnt they rushed over with a spray to help. Dessy we will miss your smile and all of the girls. Forgive me I can’t remember his name but make sure you do a yoga session as we did one sunset yoga and it opened our eyes to Yoga and he really made us appreciate it, we had to prioritise what we did but next year we will definitely be doing a private yoga session. Service I have saved the best until last, I have never had service like it, there was not a single member of the Raffles family that even slightly let the team down, my girlfriend and I were blown away by every single interaction we had on the island and have even made some friends. There are many people I need to name and I will mention them all because every one of them deserved it. I will start with the resort manager Yogeswaran, this is a man who made an impression every time you saw him and he clearly knows exactly what he was doing running his team, he made sure to call you by name every time he saw you and made sure everything was ok, his visibility was noticed and appreciated. A feature I am sure was installed by him is every member of staff knew your name, you could be walking round the island see a staff member you had never seen before and have no idea who they were and they would greet you by name and ask how you were, that is such an easy way of making your guests feel like they are valued and adds such a personal touch. The people are simply what makes this resort, I’ve made friends with many of them and love all of them, the next part of this review is basically a message to each of them and if any of you are lucky enough to go here look out for these special people. Mohamed Areej, the man is a legend! We were excited to see him every day and every day he greeted us like family, he did whatever he could to make sure every meal and every moment was special and memorable. His smiling face lit up our hearts every time we saw him. On his final night with us before we left we made sure to make it a memorable one and it was in fact Areej who picked up on our love of the Thai food and set up the special feast prepared by Chef Kay with every single item being a surprise and even convinced me into trying mango sticky rice (knowing I hate rice pudding) and was absolutely right in his certainty that I would love it. We miss him and can’t wait to see him when we return next year. Zahuvaan is the kindest most sweet natured man I have ever met, he was genuinely pleased to see us every day and we were ecstatic when we saw him. He was a delight to talk to and we spent many evening talking to him so much we had nearly forgotten to eat. There was not any way he could have been better and I feel honoured to call him a friend and will miss him every day and will be counting down the days until we can greet him with a hug again. Kuralay, your sweet gentle nature warmed our hearts every interaction we had with you, your soft heart radiated through you and onto everyone you touched. I promise to find some Roshen chocolate and try it in your honour haha. Ahmed, one of the most intelligent people I have had the privilege of meeting and speaking to you about the culture and some of the challenges the Maldives faces was fascinating. We genuinely wish you all the best for the future and hope our paths cross again. Asif, the boss as I called him (although I’m sure I’m not the first), no words I could write would do justice to the level of man you are, you couldn’t do enough for us and your truly pure honest kindness was really felt by us. As you said to me when we left this is not goodbye its see you soon. The security staff are the unsung heroes as most guests I think sadly ignore them but Ahmed, Dhaish and Shanaanu were a pleasure to see every day and every time we saw them we couldn’t wait to tell them what fish we had seen or just generally what we had done that day. They were like a welcome home every time you got off the boat to whichever island you were staying on. Zain my friend that snorkelling trip we did together around the entire island will stay with me forever and I will miss you until we see each other again. My advice to anyone reading this is go snorkelling with as many of the Maldivians on the island as you can and if you go with Zain be prepared for his freediving. Maish our housekeeper was incredibly kind and a very talented photographer who even noticed that I mentioned I love Manta Rays and that night when we came back to our villa he had created a Manta Ray. Our Butler Azuhaan took care of everything we needed and was a pleasure to have as our Butler, thank you so much for the Special send off and I hope you will be there to greet us when we return. I cannot wait to return next year as our hearts now truly reside in Raffles Meradhoo Maldives.
216 reviews 
