Trip to Sun Island, Maldives -
April 2004
A short summary
On this page you will find some more practical information. Hopefully this can be useful to you if you are lucky enough to be heading for Sun Island soon :-)
Arrival at Sun Island
As described on the previous page the
check in was pretty fast. It was great being welcomed to the reception by a
cold towel and a drink served in a coconut :-). If you are at the resort on
an all inclusive program you will get a list of your “rights” on the island.
You can even participate on an introduction meeting – available in German,
Italian and English. We missed this meeting so I’m not sure if it is worth
going to or not.
We also got a map indicating where the different facilities are located. The fact is, it is a small island it is pretty hard to get lost :-)
The
list also includes the rules of all inclusive. Meals are served at Maaniya
restaurant (I have posted more information further down on the page) for
those who stay in Deluxe or Super Deluxe bungalows and you can get drinks at
various places around the island. e.g. Maaniya restaurant during meals; the
Mekuna bar (main bar - no. 5 on the map); the pool bar (no 2);and in the
beach bar (no 16). All Inclusive visitor (AI) drinks are only available
between 10 am and 1 am.
So what can you get? Well, you can
get bottled water, soft drinks (Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite etc), canned
juice (apple, orange, pineapple etc), beer (Lion, Becks etc), wine (house
wine by the glass red or white) and different spirits (vodka, gin, rum etc)
Our room and bungalow
Our
reservation was for super deluxe bungalow and we ended up in room 247
(located near the beach bar – 16 on the map). When we first mentioned to
people that we were going to an island that was “only” 1 ½ km long and 500
meters wide people in general said “that tiny”. But it didn’t feel that tiny
when we walked to the restaurant 3 times a day :-). It took us about 10
minute to walk there. If you take a look at the map you can see that the
bungalows on the island are lined up facing the beach all around the island.
The beauty of it is that the bungalows are not strikingly visible from the
beach as they are well hidden by palms and other trees. Each bungalow has
both an entrance and a back door leading out to the beach area. On the tiled
porch there were 2 chairs and a little table – with a clean beach towel for
each of us. There were also 2 wooden sun beds assigned to each room (the
room numbers are painted on them). There was also a little tap on this side
so that it was possible to wash the sand of the feet before going into the
bungalow.
The
room itself was pretty nice and clean. It had a tiled floor, light walls and
it was actually quite big. Apart from a large bed we had a couple of chairs
and a small table, a desk with a chair, a TV (with channels like National
Geographic, CNN, BBC, Star Movies and some German and Italian channels), a
mini bar and small safe. With a hot climate it was nice to find that the
room had both air conditioning which was operated by a remote control and a
fan in the ceiling. To save some electricity we had to insert the room key
ring into a slot when entering the room and this activated the power in the
room.
The contents in the mini bar were not included in our all inclusive stay so we didn’t actually get stuff from it. But we used it to cool down the 1 ½ liter of water that you get for free every evening.
The
TV had some other cool features by the way. From the remote it was possible
to get a wake up call, it was possible to get a listing of your bill so far
and it was also possible to connect to the internet. I tried sending a mail
but it was not that easy because of the wireless keyboard wasn’t all that
great. But it is a pretty cool feature :-) The TV also gave us information
on departure. The night before we left we could check out when we would get
a wake up call, when our luggage would be picked up etc. I recommend taking
a sea plane back to Male’ because we saw some people that had to get up at
like 3 am to catch a boat in order to catch an early flight in Male’.
The
bath room was also very nice. Apart from the toilet and the sink there was a
bath tub and a bidet. There was also a door that gave us access to a small
outside area which had a shower and I really enjoyed taking my showers out
there (just watch out if you take a shower at dusk...the mosquito can be a
bit annoying). On a small island like this all the freshwater is produced
from sea water and it is important to not use too much water. Due to this
you don’t get that much water pressure in the shower :-) Instead of having
little bottles of shampoo there were dispensers in the shower with soap,
shower gel and shampoo. As always there were little bars with soap and a
hair dryer.
I had brought along a plug converter for my laptop but when we came to our room we were pleasantly surprised to see that there was a plug converter in one of the plugs already. But I was glad I brought along my own because the original one kept acting up and sparks were flying everywhere :-)
The room was “cleaned” several times a day. When we came back after being gone we would notice that the towels had been folded, bed spread was folded etc.
Facilities at Sun Island
The Maaniya restaurant
All
the main meals are served in the Maaniya restaurant located near the lobby
(4 on the map). At our first meal we were designated a table and a waiter –
which we had to stick to throughout our stay. The food in the Maaniya
restaurant is based on a buffet style meal and the selection of food was
excellent. For breakfast (served from 7.30 am to 9.30 am) we had a great
selection of cereals, bread, muffins, rolls, fruit, toast, eggs any way you
want them, beans, bacon…
well,
due to the fact the this is a Muslim country we only got beef bacon :-) For
lunch and dinner (from 12.30 to 2 pm and from 7.30 pm to 9 pm) there was a
great selection of soups, salads, pasta, meat, fish and lots of sweet stuff
for dessert. During our stay we didn’t run into the same menu twice. I have
attached an example of a menu on a given day.
This menu was posted at the entrance of the restaurant before breakfast
every day. The temperature on the food was measured to make sure that the
food was warm enough.
Even
if the Maaniya restaurant has a 1000 seats it was never really crowded when
we went to get our food. After dinner we had to sign for the drinks that we
had had during our lunch and dinner meal. This is the method used whenever
you pick up something on the island. We just had to show our blue wristband
indicating that we were there on all inclusive stay and we had to state our
room number.
Other restaurants
There
are also two other restaurants on the island. On the jetty where we first
arrived is an Italian restaurant called Alpontile and on the opposite
side of the island (outside the water bungalows) you can find a place called
Sun Star and they serve Thai and Chinese food. We tried Sun Star one
evening and it was a nice meal. We like the Thai cuisine and it was nice to
have tom yam goong (shrimp soup), chicken in green curry and grilled fish.
If you want to go to the Italian restaurant or the Thai restaurant you can
just notify the desk at the Maaniya restaurant and you will get a 20%
discount voucher. Our meal at the Thai restaurant cost us 40 US dollars.
Ice cream was pretty expensive to buy at the beach bar. Nikki and I had an ice cream each and that cost us 10 US dollars. It is cheaper to buy ice cream by the scoops at the Italian restaurant where 2 scoops in a cup cost about 2 US dollars.
Shopping
If you have forgotten something at home you don’t have to worry. There are a
few shops on the island where you can get the essentials. In the souvenir
shop we were able to buy postcards and stamps to send greeting to friends
and family (which took about 12 days to reach Norway). In the same shop we
were also able to buy sun cream, t-shirts etc. Other shops sell cameras and
equipment, watches, jewelry etc.
Getting there
We
booked our trip through the Norwegian company Paradisreiser/Messereiser (www.maldivene.no).
The flight to the Maldives was a bit long for us with lots of take-offs and
landings (stops in Copenhagen, Vienna and Dubai). I was not very impressed
with Lauda Air. First of all I think that a long haul flight like
this deserves a bigger plane - this flight was a Boeing 737. After dinner
there was a line that stretched half of the length of the plane just to get
to the toilet and when there is just one aisle it was hard for the flight
attendants to get food trolleys back and forth. This combination flight is
also a bit strange because some people got off in Dubai at like 3 am while
the other continued on to the Maldives. The people getting off in Dubai
didn’t seem very interested in sleeping so you basically had half of the
plane drinking and chatting because they were getting off soon and the other
half trying to sleep because the entire night would be spent on the plane.
And I also have to mention the entertainment onboard. The second movie that
was shown on the flight was Spy Kids 3-D. I find it a bit strange that they
run a movie made for kids at like 2 am, on a flight where there is not that
many people and a movie that was made to be best seen in 3D. Well, I had
already seen it at the movies :-). If we go to the Maldives again I think we
might check other options of getting there. Some friends of our used
Kodak travel when
they went to Sun Island.
All inclusive or not?
I guess it is possible to
calculate if you will profit by going all inclusive or not. For us it was
great to be able to just eat and drink without having to think about the
cost. Drinks are not very cheap on Sun Island if you want to buy them. I
think that a glass of wine and a glass of beer was about 10 US dollars. That
is not very expensive compared to Norwegian prices of course but compared to
Asian prices it is quite steep. A bottle of 1,5 liters of water is 3 US
dollars. During our stay at Sun Island we spent about 190 US dollars. This
was spent on the Reef Explorer snorkeling trip, eating at the Sun Star
restaurant, buying postcards/stamps etc at the souvenir shop etc.
Links
http://www.sun-island.com/ - official page
http://www.sunislandmaldives.com/ - another good “official” page
http://www.visitmaldives.com.mv/ - for more information about the Maldives in general
http://www.sunisland-malediven.de/ - a German page about Sun Island with an active forum
http://www.sunislandmaldives.co.uk/ - trip report from Carl in the UK