Hello friends! I am excited to bring you this three-parter on our Maldives honeymoon, mostly because I’ve not done a travel post in ages and I am excited to be doing it again!

To be honest, Maldives was not on our radar at first! Actually, I don’t think we had any firm honeymoon desires, except that because we were so busy with wedding planning, we wanted our honeymoon to be as relaxing and fuss-free as possible. My sister talked about her experience in Club Med Bintan, and the idea of an all-inclusive holiday sounded good. From there, we started looking at the various Club Meds – my husband always leaned towards the idea of a resort somewhere tropical, whereas I was leaning towards… somewhere in Japan (no surprises for everyone here!). Either Hokkaido, so we could finally learn to ski, or Okinawa because I love Okinawa.

But, Club Med also has two resorts in Maldives and the first time I reached out to a Club Med travel agent, the price for the resorts in the Maldives were pretty similar for the ones in Japan. That’s when we started looking more seriously at Maldives, and I found Wu, who is a travel consultant who specialises in resorts in Maldives.

I’ve gotta admit, meeting Wu from Intriq Wanderer was the game changer (here’s his Facebook page). He knows so many resorts and he had so many options – from those way cheaper than Club Med to those on par or more expensive, and he had endless amounts of patience to answer our questions and give us recommendations. After a few weeks of whatsapp chats with him, my husband and I managed to narrow it down to two resorts in the Maldvies (by then, Club Med was quite firmly out of our minds) and thanks to the help of a Dayrean who also booked with Wu before, we picked Raaya by Atmosphere as our honeymoon location!

Wu also gave us lots of help with the flight timings and he recommended we arrive in Maldives the night before and stay in a transit hotel to maximise our time at the resort. Really, as a travel consultant, he was amazing for us as first time travellers.

Anyway, Wu recommended three hotels and we went with Samann Host, not expecting anything fancy because we booked the cheapest option thinking it would be just for one night. Well… obviously it would have exceeded expectations because why else would I write about it? We were very impressed with the level of communication between Wu and the two hotels because we didn’t have to worry about anything from the moment we landed in Malé. We were met at the airport by staff from Samann Host and once all the guests were gathered, driven to the hotel where we were given a glass of mango juice and check in procedures were carried out.

For three star hotels, we are used to doing check-in and then bringing the bags up ourselves. But even though it was already 11pm by the time check-in procedures (which included information on what time we had to leave tomorrow to go to the resort) were done, we were told not to worry about our bags as they would bring it up for us and head straight to our room. There, we have a lovely surprise when we found the bed was decorated for our honeymoon and we were given a cake! I had only liaised with Wu to ask for honeymoon privileges for the resort, so this was a very nice touch.

The room wasn’t huge but it was comfortably sized and honestly very worth it for what we paid. We spent a comfortable night there and the hotel even packed breakfast for us as we were meant to leave for the seaplane before the breakfast buffet even opened. They sent us back to the airport, where we were met by Raaya staff, making it a very seamless transfer for us.

There, we were put on the first seaplane to Raaya (only downside is that I didn’t get to experience the seaplane lounge, which I hear is quite good) and off we went!

Next time: Our Raaya experience!