worldtraveller73

Hadahaa Atoll,
Park Hyatt Maldives
Maldives

The Hadahaa Island is a gorgeous place. It’s simply one of the most attractive beach holidays on earth. One of the things that makes this place so darn appealing is that you have the entire island to yourself (and maybe 100 other guests) in an environment like this. It’s small enough to be easily explored, it has no day tourists, and looks great from every angle.






































Its hard to have words that describe the beauty of a place like this. Being stranded in luxury on a remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean is something that should be on everyone's bucket list.

worldtraveller73

Back of house tour.
Park Hyatt Maldives

One of the interesting features that the Park Hyatt Maldives formalized since our last visit is the “back of house” tour. The tour features a walk through of the living areas of the private island, and what it takes to run a hotel in the middle of nowhere. During our visit, the tour was running twice a week in the early afternoon. Overall, it’s a pretty impressive effort of what it takes to make all the magic happen. Its easy to be critical about things when travel. Requests don't get completed, room service arrives cold or late. One thing I learned about the Hadahaa adventure is that the total service experience doesn’t happen by accident. It's even more staggering when you consider that this place is in the middle of nowhere and everything has to be shipped in at great distances.

The back of house is in the center of the island of Hadahaa. The staff compound is in a circular format. There are up to 175 staff working for the Park Hyatt Maldives (including the part time ones; gardners, plumbers etc) and 90 staff living on site. Most of the staff are double, if not dormitory style bunked.

The resort has it’s own waste management facility which includes organic composting, manual separation of all trash for recyclables and solid wastes. Amazingly, someone is sorting all trash from the villas and other areas to minimize the waste footprint.

There were giant laundry machines responsible for the crisp sheets in our villas.







Diesel generators power the island. There are four of them on site, with extras in case mechanical failure.



There was also an area for general administrative offices a staff canteen for food, in addition to a soccer field for some healthy exercise.







Being in the middle of nowhere, all repairs need to be made on site. Staff were repairing office chairs and other assorted pieces of furniture that needed attention.



There was also a large cell tower in the middle of the island for all of the digital communications. They’ve done such a good job hiding this thing, because it’s not visible from other parts of the island unless you are looking for it. Overall, I found the cellular coverage good to very good throughout the villas. I didn't use Skype or VOIP, or download movies, but the coverage for email was excellent.



The resort desalinates their own water, instead of bringing in more expensive bottled water. The bottling station uses high temperature washing to clean all the water bottles prior to re-filling them. Any glass bottles that are accidentally broken on site are taken off the island and disposed of by crushing in an organic manner.





The back of house tour was a pretty fascinating insight into how the resort runs. It's probably not something I'd be interested in seeing at every hotel i stayed at. Given the unique distance challenges here in the South Maldives, I found the experience to be engaging and fascinating on how they execute a luxury stay in the middle of nowhere. It also built a lot of goodwill on my part towards the staff in how they deal with problems. Many of them have to make substantial sacrifices to move to paradise. The ninety staff have to stay on site since there is no commuting to and from the private island. When they do so, they have to double bunk in order to serve guests, with limited privacy compared to the opposite end of the spectrum for their fortunate guests who get among the most private hotel rooms in the Hyatt franchise. The staff also live in basic accommodations, compared with the luxury that Hyatt aims to achieve for their guests. Indeed, the tour was a terrific look into a day in the life of hotel operations. It's highly recommended if you happen to stay here and have an interest in the travel industry.

worldtraveller73

Snorkelling House reef.
Hadahaa, Maldives

One of the features of the Park Hyatt Maldives that doesn’t always get mentioned is the excellent house reef. It is by far the best house reef I’ve ever experienced across the world. From almost half the island, corals exist on the entire north side of the island. From the dawn jetty or the dusk jetty, you can snorkel halfway around the island seeing a variety of marine life. The visibility is usually excellent. The corals are also in excellent shape and have not had any damage from being stepped on.



























In addition to spectacular underwater life, we were fortunate enough that we were able to get a swim past of several grey tip reef sharks. It’s pretty terrifying to see one of these things coming toward you- I had the underwater camera at the time and managed to keep still enough to get some photographs. MrsWT73 and I were swimming together and likely looked bigger than we actually were. They say that they are harmless, but I wouldn’t make a habit of provoking them. Our first sighting was out by the drop off near the water villas at feeding time around 5 PM. Keeping our eye on him, he circled through the reef shallows, checking us out before he headed out to open waters.









We had a few additional sightings during our stay. Needless to say, we needed a few cocktails that evening after that first encounter!

worldtraveller73

Managers Reception
Park Hyatt Maldives

One of the new features of staying at the Park Hyatt Maldives was the managers reception on Saturday nights. At sunset, the beach bar offers a sunset cocktail, etagiere snacks and some with live entertainment. I met the manager here. Although truthfully, I didn’t have much conversation with him. He pretty much greeted me, got me a drink and went onto the next arriving group. All in all though, the manager's reception was a nice feature for those that are on a longer stay.

worldtraveller73

Sunsets at Hadahaa,
Park Hyatt Maldives

Closing out our stay are the beautiful sunsets. Hadahaa has some amazing ones and they look beautiful almost no matter where you are on the island. The island is the perfect place to grab some bubbles and spend some time with a loved one with views like this at your doorstep almost every evening.

















During our stay, I happened to cross paths with Flyertalk member lucky9876coins and author of the Boarding Area blog One Mile at a Time. I had a nice chat with him at breakfast and we shared our opinions of the resort. He was among the only people at the resort working with a laptop over the breakfast hour. I have to admire his dedication to work, despite being in such a beautiful environment.

All in all, the Park Hyatt Maldives remains my favorite beach destination. It’s the ultimate beach holiday resort for an adult couple. It has beautiful beaches, heaps of privacy, a setting to die for and the remoteness that makes the place unique. The stay was just as good the second time around. Five days was way to short!!

krazykanuck

Looks amazing! Though my first thought when I saw the gigantic washing machine was to think back to Breaking Bad!

Fredrik74

Great report.

The absolute highlight for me so far is Male. I've seen pics of various resorts before and however luxurious I just know it isn't for me. Male on the other hand is a place I've been very curious to know more about.

bhamsan01

We just returned from Vietnam on Saturday flying CX (also contemplating whether to put together a TR, as we visited Saigon, Vung Tau, and Da Lat) and utilized the Bamboo lounge. No option for FIN. The lounge provided some really good views of the tarmac from certain seating areas, but judging by your photos, you made the right choice.

worldtraveller73

Leeli Lounge (contract)
Nasir Ibrahim International Airport
Male, Maldives

We were originally booked leaving the Maldives to fly on Air India’s flight from Male to Bangalore, then onward to New Delhi via their Boeing 787 aircraft. Despite monitoring the flight bookings prior to departure, Air India decided to downgrade the frequency of the Male to Bangalore flight at the last minute. This included an outright cancellation of our date a mere 14 days before we were supposed to fly them and 3 days before we were to leave home in Canada to depart on our trip. Aeroplan offered a free award change the travel dates of our India segments based on remaining reward inventory (not a lot), but that would have meant a shorter stay at the Park Hyatt Maldives, or another $500 - $1,500 room stay in the Maldives to stay an extra day, or alternately, we could accept a downgrade to economy and re-route via Thiruvananthapuram on a single class of service aircraft (side note: I still can’t pronounce Thiruvananthapuram properly!). We opted for the re-route, keeping the same travel dates, but losing our Air India Boeing 787 experience. Aeroplan compensation was promised by the Aeroplan call center which has yet to arrive; claiming 30 days to review our "circumstances" plus an additional 8 – 12 weeks to post.

We were up for departure from the Park Hyatt at the awful hour of 3:30 AM for our transfer to Koodhoo airport. We were on the boat by 4:30 AM, and arrived at the airport at 5 AM for a 6 AM Q22 142 Maldivian domestic flight. I was cursing Air India at this point, which wasn’t a great first impression for Air India leaving us in this early departure slot. Despite this, there were some beautiful atolls on the way up.



On arrival at Ibrahim Nasir Domestic Airport, we were met by our usual Park Hyatt ground representative and escorted back to the Moomia Maldivian Domestic Lounge to wait transfer to our international flight. I had fully expected to be out on the street up at the Traders Bar at the Hulehule hotel, so this was a nice added feature to be taken care of by being offered the domestic lounge to hang out in. Despite being a nice new lounge, the plates and glassware wasn’t super clean. We checked emails and killed some time before our check in for Air India opened.

We were in the Moomia Domestic lounge for about 1 hour when we got our second taste of the Air India experience. Using the lounge wifi, I signed into Flight Track Pro and learned that a 1 hour and 40 minute flight delay was posted, 2 hours before our flight. Sooo disappointing!! All that early wake up and early travel from the Park Hyatt Maldives was for nothing. Air India was not off to a good first impression.

With the assistance of the Park Hyatt ground handler in Male, we were escorted over to the International Terminal and checked ourselves in at the Air India Counter. I was able to convince the ground agent to give us a lounge voucher, despite our first two segments being in economy. I explained the downgrade situation and this was accepted by the ground manager. The Air India Maharajah was smiling at us on arrival to the check in desks. My first thought was that the Maharajah was: “Smiling that I screwed up your flights!”





After checking our bags, we went for lunch at the nearby airport café patio. It’s a bit of a no mans land on the airport island bit its still absolutely beautiful compared to the small North American airport in the neighborhood near you.



After lunch, we returned to the International terminal. We had ourselves stamped out of the Maldives and headed through the duty free section to the lounge. We were given a voucher by Air India for the Neeri Lounge. There are two contract lounges in Ibrahim Nasir Airport. When we got to the Neeri Lounge, there was a sign on the door asking customers to visit the other Leeli Lounge. We headed over to the Leeli Lounge next to the food courts and entered into a space reminiscent of many Plaza Premium Lounges around the world. It’s not listed as a Plaza Premium lounge, but if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck… It’s the closest facsimile of a Plaza Premium Lounge that you’ll find.







At least Air India had colorful boarding passes. Air India wins the award for the most RED colored boarding passes in existence.



The Leeli Lounge follows the tradition of other Plaza Premium Lounges. It is a dark space, with some natural light, along with clean furnishings. The same chairs are here as in our Oman and Vancouver Plaza Premium experiences. It was by far the nicest lounge in the Maldives that we had experienced so far.







The Leeli Lounge room had a relaxing chair lounge room that was mostly unused on our visit. After a holiday in the Maldives, you should already be pretty relaxed!



Unfortunately, this sign broke my heart, but it wasn’t something that was totally unexpected.



There were some limited snack offerings. As with other Plaza Premium lounges, the food did not appear to be too appealing. I personally find that Plaza Premium type lounges usually come short on the food offerings and fall into the “eat only in case of emergency” category.





Overall, the Leeli Lounge is a reasonable place to hang out. It won’t be the number one lounge on anyone’s list but it’s far more comfortable than the crowded terminal.

worldtraveller73

Air India
Economy Class (Single Class of Service)
MLE – TRV (Ibrahim Nasir International Airport – Thiruvananthapuram International Airport)
AI264 – Economy Class (X)
Scheduled: 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Actual: 1:20 PM – 3:00 PM
April 14, 2015
Booked: Airbus 319
Flown: Airbus 320

We headed down to the gate after waiting away flight delays in the lounge. At T + 150 (two hours and 29 minutes late - crikey ) we finally got the go ahead to board. We walked straight out onto the apron in the bright sun toward our plane.







On board the plane, they had us board by the rear of the aircraft using stairs. They had ripped out rows 1-4 on the right hand side of the plane to accommodate a flat stretcher. The ground agents spent about 15 minutes attempting to board the medical condition patient that seemed to have a severe leg injury. In hind sight, I suspect this was the reason why we had a two and a half hour delay. Our plane was performing double duty as an international medi-vac.

My first Air India flight and there are no mistaking the company colors. Everything is red and orange.









Rows 2-4 were completely missing thanks to the stretcher spot.



We finally departed the Maldives on the sole Maldivian runway 36 N. The airport only has one runway and no taxi ways. On the climb out, I took some photographs of the Sheraton Full Moon Resort which is getting ever closer to the man made island. It seems as though there is a massive land reclamation project that is underway and the islands are almost attached – at least almost attached by Maldivian standards. Take a look a the right hand side of this sandy photograph...



There were some other great views on the climb out of other north Male atolls.



Lunch was served on this short 90 minute international leg. Today’s Air India food offering was a chicken curry, with rice and an unidentified yellow sauce that my palate was not able to easily identify for lunch.



On closer examination of the Airbus 320, it was a really old model. It was actually really filthy and hadn’t had a good clean in a while. It probably won the award for the dirtiest plane I’ve ever been on. I don’t mean the odd dust ball. I mean the entire thing needed a deep clean scrub. There were left over newspapers and water bottles from the past flight left in the seats on our arrival, fixtures and tables were covered in deep seated dirt, and fasteners were worn and tired. The seats were also filthy!





After the surgical examination, we were on approach to Trivandrum. It was a quick right turn in to the airport on the coast. The spotting was really great from the window as there were some great churches on the sea board which would have been really interesting to visit.



As we landed at Trivandum, we stayed on board for the 45 minute stopover. A good number of local travelers got off. The military boarded to conduct a carry on bag inspection and asked all travelers to identify which bags were theirs. The check was quite through and I spotted them checking the bathrooms and tapping on all the cabinetry. The plane was also groomed and vacuumed.

worldtraveller73

Air India
Economy Class (Single Class of Service)
TRV – MAA (Thiruvananthapuram International Airport – Chennai Madras International)
AI264 – Economy Class (X)
Scheduled: 3:10 PM – 4:20 PM
Actual: 4:21 PM – Beyond Late
April 14, 2015
Booked: Airbus 319
Flown: Airbus 320

At T + 61 minutes (1 hour and 1 minute late) we departed TRV. Again it was another seaborne departure and a nice view of the coast line. We flew over some really rural hills on our climb to altitude.







We were served an additional snack. This time it was a cello wrapped sandwich along with a piece of fruit cake. Air India was quite through with the protective saran wrap as it was featured on almost all of their in flight catering. It went a little ways to relieve any concerns about eating contaminated food. By the time our fifth Air India flight came around, I was tearing into these snack offerings without a second thought.



The in flight meal featured promotional material of Air India Bazaar. Every sheet is a winner. Scratch off the portion to claim your rice cooker or sari at a discount. Just pay the shipping and handling fee with Western Style Sky Mall pricing. Not kidding. . .



We kept the same seats for this leg and had an empty one next to us in the 3 - 3 configuration.

Passing the time, I looked at the air map. It was a little different in that Air India doesn’t really use the hub and spoke method. Instead, the routes look more like a rail map with lines going out everywhere. Every flight is a milk run. I initially thought that there would be easy traffic between the Maldives and Delhi or Mumbai. If Emirates, Ethiad and Singapore Airlines can bring people from around the world to the Maldives, then Air India would be likely to get in on that action as well? Right? Wrong – it seems that Male isn’t a big market for the populations of North India. It’s not a big market as almost all flights take 2 – 3 stops to get to Mumbai from Male. Even as a hard core mileage runner, I think I'd be crazy to voluntarily try this routing again, it would have been a smoother process to fly Singapore Airlines Maldives - Singapore - Delhi or Sri Lankan from Male - Colombo - Delhi.





We had a quick approach into Chennai. We over flew what appeared to be a Daimler Chrysler factory complete with test track, some western looking luxury apartments, and some smaller Indian homes that didn’t appear to have super clean streets surrounding them.





We arrived to the gate 55 minutes late and disembarked. It was dusty and hot out. We were pretty tired by this slow "direct" flight as well, especially after that 3 AM wake up call.





All in, flying Air India was an interesting experience. Our flights were delayed substantially. The food was clean and edible but the planes were downright filthy. The service was just average and things just didn’t seem to run smoothly. Furthermore, the service levels were apathetic regarding the delays. It's as if the staff and airline have completely given up trying to run any type of on time performance. The worst part was that our journey wasn’t over all just yet as we had yet another leg to get to our final destination. It was, at least, a highly entertaining travel experience.

worldtraveller73

From my esteemed and past YVR based colleague AMRivlin who had visited the Saigon lounge in 2009, he didn't have too many nice things to say about it in the Singapore Airlines forum. I pretty much jumped at the alternate option when it was presented by staff. I hope you enjoyed your travels bhamasan01 through Vietnam. I certainly enjoyed it.

Thank you Fredrik74. In short, Male was awesome. I'd love to have spent more time there. It's the kind of place that you'd enjoy just that much more with a friend or local acquaintance to show you around. Either way, even just scratching the surface, I would have loved to spend more time exploring the streets and authentic lifestyle of Male.

Thank you krazykanuck. It's amazing what equipment you can find on a private island in the middle of nowhere.

quirrow

Nice TR, I especially enjoyed your underwater pics from the Maldives. I stayed at the Park Hyatt Maldives too and enjoyed snorkelling in the house reef, definitely one of the best spots to snorkel in and I got a close encounter with a giant turtle there!

And when I read about your experience with Air India, it mirrors my past reserved trip with them too. I had purchased a one way ticket from Delhi to Mumbai for a non-stop flight on what was supposed to be their 77W, but supposedly I got re-booked on their A321 with a stop-over. Basically I learnt that when taking Air India, you can get a small jet instead of a wide body and even get a free stop in some unknown city.

Madone59

Your photos are spectacular ^, especially the Vietnam ones. Thank you for sharing! I am looking forward to the rest.

sgh

Terrific trip report! Looking forward to the rest !

As someone who grew up in India, I can attest to the fact that Air India is a horrible airline. The last time I was on it was 20 years ago and it was terrible. I go out of my way to avoid it and would recommend that others do the same.For travel within India, I would highly recommend Indigo and Jet Airways.