Maldives Honeymoon (The Residence at Dhigurah)

[orlandoamber]

I’ve been promising to do this mini trip report since getting back from our honeymoon earlier this month, so here goes

We spent 2 weeks at The Residence Dhigurah and enjoyed every moment. We were first timers to the Maldives however we have certainly caught the bug… we will most certainly be back! Disney and snorkelling are our favourite things, so I think we’ve found our favourite places in Florida and the Maldives.

I’m going to split this into a few different sections:
1. Travel
2. The Island(s)
3. Our villa
4. Snorkelling/wildlife (inc. excursions)
5. Food, drinks and entertainment (all inclusive offering)

Please feel free to ask any questions you might have and to request other photos of certain things… I’m sure we will have them!

[orlandoamber]

Travel

By way of background for anyone who doesn’t know, to get to the Maldives you fly into the main airport, Male, and then you have to get either a speedboat, seaplane or domestic flight to your island destination. In the winter, British Airways offer direct flights to Male from the UK, however from the end of April, these stop and you have to go indirect which adds to the travel when you already have the speedboat/plane at Male regardless.

Anyway, as it was our honeymoon, we decided to go all out and book The Residence despite it being both a domestic flight AND speedboat away from Male because, we thought, we’re probably never going to put up with that much travel again (ha, good try Amber, we’re totally going back for our anniversary at some point!).

Our journey started at Birmingham airport where we flew to Dubai with Emirates and then onto Male. The Emirates flights were great, lovely planes and (for an airplane) good food. Be warned however, the Shake Shack in Dubai airport is extortionate! £55 to be precise… but a nice taste of Florida after our first flight

After our second flight, we arrived in Male!

Unfortunately the queue for security at the airport was insane and it took us almost two hours to get through. Once were through though, we found a representative from The Residence who showed us to the domestic airport terminal where we checked in for the next flight and got access to a lounge with some light refreshments and sofas.

A while later, we boarded the final flight (yay!) which was under an hour. It was a tiny plane and the propellers were so loud - they were making announcements and we couldn’t hear a word of it! Once we disembarked, we were whisked straight onto a speedboat which got us to The Residence in 10 minutes.

While it’s a long journey, it’s totally worth it for what lies ahead…

[orlandoamber]

The Island(s)

By staying at The Residence Dhigurah, you also get full access to The Residence Falhumaafushi. They are connected by a wooden bridge that runs over the most beautiful sandbank. At dusk, you only have to stay still on the bridge for a couple of minutes and you’re almost guaranteed to see turtles, sharks and rays. It really is beautiful and having access to two islands definitely played a part in our decision to stay here.

Dhigurah is the newer of the two islands and I believe every villa has its own private pool. Falhumaafushi is slightly older and has some rooms without pools, so you tend to find the main pool is busier at Falhumaafushi than the one at Dhigurah. Each pool has a series of Bali beds around the deck and some inside the pool at the Falhumaafushi.

Each villa is given bicycles to ride across the bridge to the other island and just generally on the pathways. You can of course walk everywhere too and there’s golf buggies to pick you up if you want a lift somewhere e.g. we used them a couple of times when we were going to a restaurant on the other island of an evening.

Each island has a dive centre with house reef (more on that later), plus a buffet restaurant, a beach bar restaurant and a fine dining restaurant - so you essentially have access to 6 restaurants across the two islands.

Both islands are beautiful; lush with greenery, sandy coves and crystal clear water. It really is paradise.

[orlandoamber]

Our Villa

The Residence at Dhigurah have beach villas, over water villas and lagoon pool villas. As mentioned earlier, I believe all villas here come with a pool.

We booked a lagoon pool villa, of which there are 20 on the island. They’re located in the serene, crystal clear lagoon waters, accessed via a small pathway from the island (the pathway just leads to your villa, compared to over water villas which are further out on the water accessed via a long bridge type path just for over water villas). To us, we felt the lagoon pool villa was a good compromise between a beach villa and over water villa as we essentially had an over water villa in terms of our pool etc. all being out on stilts, while we were so close to the main island (some of the over water villas, especially at the ends, take a while to get back to the island from!).

Each villa gets two bicycles which are parked outside when you arrive. You also get life jackets provided in the room.

On arrival, we were super impressed as we were shown around our room by a lovely staff member. They’d also laid out champagne and some traditional snacks for us. He showed us how to access the dining options via the tv so you could see the themes for the buffets and a la carte opening times, which was really useful. The tv also included lots of other channels, none of which we watched though (other than football a couple of times) as, well, you’re in the Maldives - you don’t need a tv!

The lagoon pool villas are laid out with a hall way as you walk in, bedroom on the left which leads onto the deck and pool, and to the right of the hall way is the super large bathroom followed by an outdoor shower (there’s an indoor one too). The bathroom comes with The Residence toiletries and some very nice Ben Sherman soap! The bed was amazing, super huge and comfy, and well… you could open the blinds and see the Indian Ocean straight from where you’re lying!

The pool was gorgeous and much bigger than we expected! It was always warm and it was so nice to have our own private space. We didn’t use the main pool at Dhigurah at all even though it was beautiful, just because we had our own (we did use the Falhumaafushi one a few times when we were over there though). The sun beds we got were super comfy, there was a side table for each to put your drinks on, and then a main table and chairs on the deck too.

As you walked down the private path to our villa, you would see an array of fish and almost always baby black tip reef sharks. You could then go on our deck, walk down the steps straight into the sea and they would swim right past you. For anyone scared of actually swimming with the bigger sharks (although they won’t hurt you), this is a great way to have an experience with them without the concern as they’re small(ish!) and you can stand up. We also saw rays from our villa deck and lots of fish, including huge puffa fish.

There’s a mini bar in the room that is stocked with pretty much anything you want (we were premium all inclusive, so a caveat that I’m not sure what those not with this would get). Ordinarily it comes with different canned drinks, beers, juices etc. and two packets of Pringles per day. You can request alternatives e.g. Diet Coke. They also provide fresh water in glass bottles daily and deliver fresh fruit to you. If you’re premium all inclusive, you also get 1 bottle of alcohol in your room daily (if requested), so we often got a bottle of Prosecco.

The air con was really good and there were also fans on the ceilings. What we really loved was how high the ceilings were; they were vaulted and beautiful. There was also a safe, a wardrobe each, a desk, bathrobes, slippers - everything you could think of! They even included mosquito repellent (although we didn’t get bitten at all without using it until our last day when one rogue mosquito attacked us!).

There was a phone in the room that was brilliant. Reception always answered immediately, answering any questions any booking the fine dining restaurants for you (or a buggy if you wanted a lift anywhere). You could also contact the spa and dive centre direct on speed dial. Such good service!

I would highly recommend the lagoon pool villas and we would definitely stay in one if we returned. The location of them is perfect, right between the main buffet dining room and the bridge to Falhumaafushi. They’re also very close to the dive centre and house reef, while being adequately frequented themselves by marine life too! We often went for a snorkel off the back of the villa in high tide and saw many fish (but the reef and some other areas were better generally). The water was also the most calm across the whole island here, even on some windier days. We think these villas are perfect… if only I could be back there now with some Prosecco in hand spotting sharks from my pink flamingo.

[orlandoamber]

Snorkelling/wildlife (inc. excursions)

One of our main reasons for coming to the Maldives was for the rich marine life and clear waters. We both love snorkelling but before this trip, we’d not snorkelled with sharks in the wild before… that was certainly about to change!

Sharks
The Residence is highly populated by black tip reef sharks - there are the baby ones all around the lagoon villas and larger ones (up to about 5ft) around the reefs, bridge and deeper areas of the beaches.

On our first day, we discovered a beautiful beach on Falhumaafushi which had some coral just off the shore. We immediately saw our first shark… I couldn’t believe it! On one of the next days, we then went to a deeper section near the bridge/sandbank and got circled by 4 very large black tips… it was incredible and I can’t believe I wasn’t scared

We saw several more black tips while snorkelling throughout the trip, including very large ones on the reefs - you pretty much couldn’t go in the water without seeing one!

We also saw a nurse shark from the bridge and on our last day, we saw a large white tip shark on the reef.

Here’s some photos of black tips we’ve downloaded from the go pro:

Turtles
We love turtles! We had an amazing experience snorkelling with a turtle for ages in Mauritius in early 2020 so we have a soft spot for them.

You can see turtles at The Residence every day at dusk on the bridge between the islands. They tend to be at the ends of both bridges, as they rejoin each island. This is a really great place to stand and spot them if you don’t want to snorkel. Some of them are huge, bigger than I’ve ever seen anywhere else.

We also saw a large one when walking back on jetty from the fine dining restaurant on the Falhumaafushi island one evening. It was just chilling near the beach and was happy for us to sit and watch it!

Snorkelling with them was amazing. We snorkelled with our first turtle off the Falhumaafushi beach - it was a complete surprise and it was just gliding next to us. Beautiful.

We then saw lots and lots of them at both reefs. Some far away, and some really close to us. Sometimes more than one at once! They also sleep on the reef and so if you went at about 9am you could see them sleeping which was so cute

Rays
Several different types of ray frequented the area between both islands, including eagle rays, cowtail rays and even an elusive porcupine ray! I love how elegant they are.

A highlight was swimming with a huge cowtail ray (again off the Falhumaafushi beach; it was really good there for a casual midday snorkel!) - he really whipped up the sand!

The reefs and fish
As mentioned earlier, there were two reefs - one near the Dhigurah dive centre and one near the Falhumaafushi dive centre. Both were good but we preferred the Dhigurah one - it was hidden behind some rocks that looked like walls and we called them the gates to heaven!

As well as the bigger marine life mentioned above, there were stunning fish on both reefs including puffa fish, trigger fish, trumpet fish, barracudas, parrot fish, angel fish and a selection of eels, lobsters and crabs. We saw one lobster that would’ve cost some serious money if he was ever caught!

Here’s some photos from the reefs:

We even found Nemo and Dory!

Sunset Dolphin Cruise
On our last night, we went on a sunset dolphin cruise. You can pay for this or if you’re premium all inclusive, it comes as part of the package.

This was a stunning cruise on a traditional dhoni boat (two boats went out from the resort at the same time, both going slightly different routes and communicating so we had the best chance to find dolphins). We were served champagne while we cruised out.

The cruise itself was beautiful anyway, but we were lucky enough to see spinner dolphins. They were beautiful and some came right out of the water spinning and doing tricks for us!

These are screenshots from a video but you can just about make out the dolphin leaving the water and then spinning:

You could sit inside, outside or on the top of the boat. We opted to sit on the top of the boat, however we did nearly fall off a couple of times running from side to side to see the dolphins

We saw a pod of about 15 at one point. This was definitely a highlight of the trip.

Other wildlife
There are fruit bats that fly between the islands and hang upside down on the trees. They basically look like flying foxes they’re quite cute but we definitely had a few near misses of them almost flying into us!

There were also lots of lizards around both islands, of all different sizes! Very cute, although they nearly caused me to crash my bike a few times as they darted across the paths

[orlandoamber]

Food, drinks and entertainment (premium all inclusive offering)

This has to be one of my favourite parts of the holiday! As you may know, I always write a live food report when we go to Florida and to be honest, I could have done the same here… it was the best all inclusive offering I’ve ever seen - and we are well travelled!

Breakfast

There was a main Dining Room on each island that served buffet breakfast. We only ever used the one on Dhigurah as it was a couple of mins walk from our villa, so I can only presume the breakfast at the Falhumaafushi Dining Room was the same/similar.

There were so many options including all the standard full English fare, eggs cooked to order, pancakes/crepes cooked to order, waffles, and some Indian options (there was always an Indian section in the Dining Room for all meal times).

There were several selections of juices and also fizz!

Everything we had for breakfast was lovely however we didn’t actually go that often because lunch was sooo good and on one day we tried to eat all 3 meals we almost burst so we tended to stick to 2 big meals per day!

Obviously I had to have a classic American pancakes, bacon and maple syrup. My favourite breakfast!

The breakfast donut wall:

As part of our Premium All Inclusive package, we also got a floating breakfast delivered to our villa pool once during our stay. You could order literally anything you wanted (hot options, pastries, fruit etc.)! This was amazing.

Lunch

WOW is all I can say… I’ve never known all inclusive lunch to be this good. The options were:

1. Dhigurah Dining Room

This is the same place we’d have breakfast (it’s right by the sea/beach).

This started out as a buffet lunch which was great and we had a very memorable pesto prawn dish here which was really tasty. Half way through the holiday it then changed and began trialling an a la carte lunch menu which included some excellent options including chicken wings, steaks, pastas, to be honest pretty much anything you could think of…

2. Cafe del Sol (Dhigurah Beach Club)

This place is next to the main Dhigurah pool and is a restaurant and bar. Monday to Saturday it also has a DJ between 21.30-23.30. More on that later

It served a la carte lunch options and you could choose 3 courses. Some of the starters were more like main courses though and I have no idea how you’d eat all 3 courses at lunch!

The menu was again really varied. Our favourites included the polenta Brie cheese starter, the Onion Burger and a Greek souvlaki pitta dish. A highlight was also the fries… some of the best we’ve ever had and I still dream about them now. Delicious!

3. Falhumaafushi Dining Room / Beach Club

I’ve combined these two as while there was a Beach Club on Falhumaafushi (like Cafe del Sol on Dhigurah), the menu was also the same (a la carte) at the Falhumaafushi Dining Room. So you could either eat at the outside (covered) bar, on the sand, or in the Dining Room. We did a mixture of this.

This was a different a la carte menu to Cafe del Sol and included some really high end options including filet steak and Singaporean chilli crab. There were also good wraps, pastas, pizzas etc.

They also did the really nice fries!

4. Falhumaa

This is a French inspired fine dining restaurant set on stilts over the water. I’ll cover this in the dinner section below, but you could also get lunch here (we did once and it was gorgeous, as is the dinner).

5. Li Bai / Long Island

This is currently an Italian inspired a la carte restaurant (as per the name, it used to be Asian inspired - unsure if it will change back to that in future). Again, I’ll cover this in the dinner section below (we actually didn’t go for lunch).


Tapas

Between lunch and dinner, tapas was available at Cafe del Sol on Dhigurah and at the Beach Club on Falhumaafushi. The menus were different on both but we only ate at Cafe del Sol for tapas.

Options included fish and chips, octopus, croquettes, prawns and the BEST scallop dish I’ve ever had. There was a cream sauce and a tomato sauce with them and just wow… we had them a few times!

Dinner

More amazing options coming up here

1. Dhigurah Dining Room

Dinner was of course served every evening at the Dhigurah Dining Room. I presume Falhumaafushi Dining Room also operated similarly however we didn’t go over there for dinner.

There was always an Indian buffet section, a themed buffet section (alternating between themes such as international, American, Asian, Mexican etc.) and a large live cooking and grill station. You could get fresh, choose your own pasta every evening (pretty sure this was an option most lunch times too); an array of meat and fish freshly grilled including squid, steak and lobster (yes, lobster on a buffet grill station!); and usually one special live cooking station to match the buffet theme, e.g. one night they were making Greek gyros!

Everything we had here was amazing and it would have been no problem if this was the only restaurant on the island (I always usually look for somewhere all inclusive with multiple dining options).

It was also home to very lovely staff who made the dining experience exceptional.

One of my random buffet plates (I loved the poppadoms!)

2. Falhumaa

This is the French inspired fine dining restaurant set over the water out on stilts at the Falhumaafushi island. It’s open for lunch and dinner; you must book ahead via calling reception using your villa phone. Men must wear trousers or they will give them a skirt to wrap around their legs while dining.

The setting is stunning over the water and the inside is beautiful. We took this photo at lunch time when it wasn’t busy but it’s much harder to get a reservation on the evening. I think we ate there 3 times for dinner and once for lunch.

You can also eat outside on the deck watching the fish which we were lucky enough to do on our final night.

There was either a set menu to choose from fully included in the all inclusive package (it wasn’t very set… there were loads of options!), or being premium all inclusive we received a $73 credit towards a different a la carte menu (I think slightly less credit at lunch time). We tried both options.

The set menu included an array of different things such as tuna, steak and mille-feuille. Everything came with cool accompaniments including different foams. Delicious!

Hidden Mickey dessert?!

One night, we decided to treat ourselves and order Kobe Wagyu MB7 Darling Downs steak from the a la carte menu. This was $100 each so the $73 contribution was helpful! This was divine, a real treat. Absolutely delicious and really special.

My husband(!) also went a la carte another evening, getting the Lobster Thermidor. A real spectacle!

I also had another lovely wagyu steak on this evening (MB5 this time so not quite as special as the MB7, but still good!).

Overall this is an amazing place to dine and if you come here, I recommend you keep rebooking as soon as you’ve eaten there so you can go as much as possible (there’s no limits on how many times you can go to the restaurants)! It’s out of this world good, especially when you combine food quality and setting


3. Li Bai / Long Island

As mentioned above, this is currently serving an Italian inspired menu and similar to the Falhumaa, men need to wear long trousers. It is located on Dhigurah, not far from Cafe del Sol so it was good to eat here and then go for drinks after!

As with Falhumaa, there was either an extensive, included set menu or a $73 contribution to a different a la carte menu (again, I think the contribution is slightly less for lunch).

I believe we went here 3 times, sometimes on the set menu and sometimes not. The prices were more reasonable here so the $73 contribution tended to cover the whole meal (or the vast majority) if you ordered from the a la carte menu anyway, so it didn’t really matter what you did.

We had a variety of great dishes here, including risottos, pastas, soups and a really, really good molten chocolate cake dessert.

Drinks

This was another wow for us. We only really drink cocktails and the staff would literally make anything we wanted from scratch. There were extensive cocktails menus with different options in each restaurant and bar area, plus they’d make any other classic cocktails. I love strawberry daiquiris and would spend every day alternating between frozen and non frozen ones. They also did very different options such as kiwi daiquiris!

We also sometimes played cocktail roulette with our favourite waiters who would surprise us with different cocktail options great fun!

If you’re looking for somewhere with an extensive bar and excellent cocktails, this is the place for you. I’m not sure of the exact differences the premium all inclusive got us, but I think we had access to higher end spirits, milkshakes, more fizz etc.

Entertainment

Being the Maldives, the main entertainment is obviously the nature/marine life in the day time, but I also just wanted to cover briefly in this section the night time entertainment which we really enjoyed.

Many nights we spent just chilling in our pool after dinner with a bottle of Prosecco, however we equally loved Cafe del Sol at night. They would move the chill chairs/sofas that are there in the day time and set up a DJ booth for two hours each evening (apart from Sundays). There was dancing, cocktails and so much fun to be had for a couple of hours after dinner each evening, while being discreet and tucked away so if you didn’t want to join in, you didn’t have to. We really loved having this option and it would draw us back to The Residence again (we’re not usually ones for dancing but we were here!). They also showed a film here on a Sunday but we didn’t go to that.

Basically the food and drink offerings were AMAZING throughout both islands

[mskitty]

Looking forward to this

[ClaireNJ]

t

Originally Posted by orlandoamber

Travel

By way of background for anyone who doesn’t know, to get to the Maldives you fly into the main airport, Male, and then you have to get either a speedboat, seaplane or domestic flight to your island destination. In the winter, British Airways offer direct flights to Male from the UK, however from the end of April, these stop and you have to go indirect which adds to the travel when you already have the speedboat/plane at Male regardless.

Anyway, as it was our honeymoon, we decided to go all out and book The Residence despite it being both a domestic flight AND speedboat away from Male because, we thought, we’re probably never going to put up with that much travel again (ha, good try Amber, we’re totally going back for our anniversary at some point!).

Our journey started at Birmingham airport where we flew to Dubai with Emirates and then onto Male. The Emirates flights were great, lovely planes and (for an airplane) good food. Be warned however, the Shake Shack in Dubai airport is extortionate! £55 to be precise… but a nice taste of Florida after our first flight

After our second flight, we arrived in Male!

Unfortunately the queue for security at the airport was insane and it took us almost two hours to get through. Once were through though, we found a representative from The Residence who showed us to the domestic airport terminal where we checked in for the next flight and got access to a lounge with some light refreshments and sofas.

A while later, we boarded the final flight (yay!) which was under an hour. It was a tiny plane and the propellers were so loud - they were making announcements and we couldn’t hear a word of it! Once we disembarked, we were whisked straight onto a speedboat which got us to The Residence in 10 minutes.

While it’s a long journey, it’s totally worth it for what lies ahead…

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Congratulations on your wedding 🥂🍾🥂🍾
I thought I recognised those burgers love Shake Shack airport food is always pricey 😳
We had our honeymoon in Maldives back in October 1988, when it was a lot cheaper 😂😂😂

[Wordsworth]

Looking forward to this, although I am put off by the prospect of a small plane. 😂

[orlandoamber]

Originally Posted by ClaireNJ

t
Congratulations on your wedding 🥂🍾🥂🍾
I thought I recognised those burgers love Shake Shack airport food is always pricey 😳
We had our honeymoon in Maldives back in October 1988, when it was a lot cheaper 😂😂😂

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Thank you 😍

Oh wow that’s amazing, I bet the marine life was even more abundant then!