FridayAs several other people mentioned in their TRs, we woke up very early on our first morning in MLE. By 5:30am Island Time (PH is 1 hour ahead of MLE; they do it for daylight savings purposes), we were up and couldn’t fall back asleep. We just hung out in the villa as it was still dark outside but by 6:30, it started to get light so we went outside to our private beach access and looked at the water as the sun started to rise. Here are a few pictures of the outside of our villa in the light:
Outdoor shower and bathtub:
Inside of villa (that whole corner of windows has sliding doors to close out the light, but during the day, it was really nice to have all the light come into the villa):
Private pool and path to beach:
Outdoor couch near private pool:
Beach outside our villa:
Never gave this crab permission to use our private beach access
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Path from the beach to our villa (little bit of a sand cliff because the tide was high in the morning):
Back of our villa:
Another view of the pool:
The sun didn't come up directly on our side of the island, so we walked to one of the jetties, saw the PH MLE sign that most people are welcomed to the hotel by (we came in from the other jetty the night before because the water was calmer on the other side) and watched the sun come up. It was a bit of a cloudy morning so it wasn’t the best sunrise, but it was still beautiful to look at. Because it was so early and there are so few people on the island, all we heard were the waves and it was very relaxing to just sit out on the jetty and take in the view.
When you walk anywhere on the island (on the inside, not on the beach), this is how the pathway looks:
Dusk Jetty:
Sitting area on Dusk Jetty:
Some pictures of the cloudy but beautiful sunrise:
Hotel welcome sign:
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After watching the sunrise, we took a quick walk around the island to see where everything was. After our walk, we went for breakfast, which consisted of fresh fruit and freshly squeezed juice. Breakfast at the hotel is served at the main hotel dining room, which has semi-indoor and outside seating and overlooks the pool and beach – can’t imagine a nicer place to eat breakfast. This is when we started to realize how incredible the service at the hotel was. Somehow, the waiter that seated us knew that we were the Kosher couple and that we’d only be having fruit. The Director of Food & Beverages also came out to introduce himself to us and asked us if there was anything he can possibly do to further accommodate our dietary restrictions. We could tell that he really felt bad that we would just be eating fruit for breakfast everyday, but we assured him that it was more than enough for us and that everything was perfect. At that point we decided to not ask them if it was possible to use our pan and spatula to make some eggs. The fruit was more than enough and we had some oatmeal packs in our room in case we wanted to eat a bit more. More importantly though, I got the feeling that they would have said yes if I would’ve have asked (I’m pretty sure the staff at PH MLE isn’t aware of the word “no”) and we didn’t feel comfortable asking them to go above and beyond for us. They were already being very accommodating and we didn’t want to push it and be a burden on them. The chef also came out to say good morning to us and asked us how our POM meals were the night before. We told him everything was perfect but I asked him if it would be easier if I gave him a menu of which meals we’d like to eat every night so that he can take them out to defrost in the morning and then it would only take about 20-30 minutes to heat up once we called saying that we were ready for dinner. He said sure so I wrote out a list and gave it to him. Every guest of the hotel is assigned a member of the Guest Services Team to assist with anything that they may need, so the chef told us to call the person that we were assigned, Ameez, about 30 minutes before we wanted to eat and then Ameez would let him know.
Fruit Breakfast:
View from The Dining Room (outdoor seating):
The Dining Room:
After breakfast, we stopped by the activities desk on the way back to our villa to pick up our snorkeling gear (provided by the hotel for free) and we also made reservations to go scuba diving on Sunday morning. After quickly changing, we went to the Dawn Jetty to snorkel. The hotel has two jetties – the Dawn jetty and Dusk jetty. Both have ladders going down in to the water to snorkel. The person at the activities desk told us that usually, the water at one jetty will be a little rougher than the other (depending on the tide). Just to be clear though, by no means is either side rough. One of them will just be as calm as a lake while the other has a bit of a current. We jumped into the water, put our heads underwater, and were just amazed at what we saw. We’ve been snorkeling before but the fish and coral in the Maldives are like no other. Instead of trying to describe it, I’ll once again just let some pictures do the talking. I haven't gone through all the GoPro footage from the trip yet so here are just a few pictures that I plucked out. I hope to go through the footage soon so if I do, I'll hopefully add more pictures to later parts of the TR. Also, just a disclaimer, I don't really know anything about photography so I'm not sure why the clarity one some of the pictures isn't that great, nor do I know how to edit them to make it better. All I'll say is that as nice as some of the pictures may be, they don't even come close to what the views looked like in person. You'll all just have to go to MLE to see the real thing
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I found Dory looking for Nemo:
Then I found Nemo:
And some other pictures of fish and coral:
After a few minutes of snorkeling, DW decided that she would be more comfortable with a life jacket so I ran back to the activities desk to rent one for her. The hotel charges $10/day for them, so we returned it before Shabbos and then took another one out for her for the rest of our trip.
At one point while snorkeling, a blacktip reef shark swam past us. Unfortunately, I don’t have a clear picture of it on my GoPro but we were about 8-10 feet away from it. Like the people at the dive center told us, the sharks around the hotel generally mind their own business and don’t bother swimmers, but it was enough to make DW cancel her scuba reservation because she didn’t want to run into more sharks when she was deeper down and couldn’t just swim right back up to the jetty.
After snorkeling for about an hour, we went to the public beach area to just sit on the lounge chairs and take in the beautiful views. We decided to sit there instead of our private beach access because there wasn’t much sitting room at our beach access. Some of the villas have about 15-20 feet between where the sand starts and the water, while others (like ours) only have a couple of feet and don’t really have much room to sit. It really just depends where on the island you’re located and I believe that most/all of the villas that have room to sit on the beach are the beach villas, while the ones with less/no room are the pool villas. Either way, any time we sat at the public beach area, at most there was one other couple sitting out. Because the hotel has so few villas, regardless of what you’re doing or where you’re sitting (aside from meals), you barely see more than a few other people. Within minutes of sitting down on the lounge chairs, someone from the staff brought over a cold bottle of water in an ice bucket with cups. They did this anytime we sat down at the pool or beach and constantly checked to see if our bottle needed a refill; another example of the first class service. They also brought around fruitkabobs for us and the other guests to eat.
View of beach from Pool area:
Beach:
Here are some pictures of the beach sitting area. I didn't have any good ones (my bad) so here are a few from Google Images:
After sitting out for a bit, we needed to get back in the water because the sun was so strong, so we went snorkeling again, this time off the Dusk Jetty. I didn’t think it would be possible, but the views off this jetty were even better than the other jetty. (The pictures that I posted above are a mix of pictures taken off both jetties.)
After snorkeling for about another hour, we went back to our villa, ate some food that we brought with for lunch, and then spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out by our private pool.
As Hyatt Diamond members, we were entitled to two free drinks every night at happy hour but we were so exhausted from being out in the sun all day (and still a little jetlag), so we decided to skip out on happy hour and instead hang out at our villa until Shabbos. About 45 minutes before candle lighting, I gave Ameez a call and let him know that we’d like to eat dinner at about 7pm. I had also told him earlier in the day that we couldn’t use electricity from sundown Friday night until sundown Saturday night so we wouldn’t be able to answer our phone if he tried calling us. He told me he already knew because when he saw that he’d be having guests that keep Kosher, he read up on Judaism and what it entails. He also told us that if we’d like, he can stop by our villa every few hours on Shabbos to see if we needed any lights turned on or off etc. I know I’m getting repetitive when I say this, but this hotel just has first class service all the way. They just go above and beyond in ensuring that their guests have the best time possible.
The food arrived a few minutes after DW lit candles and after davening, we ate our meal on our private deck. Besides for the POM meals, we also brought Tradition soups, which I prepared right before candle lighting. For the POM meals, we had honey mustard corn beef with sides of popcorn cauliflower and onion mashed potatoes and stuffed chicken capon w/ pastrami with sides of garlic string beans and mushroom rice. The corn beef was amazing and tasted like it was just made. The portion was also VERY generous. The chicken capon was also really good, but there was only one, which I found to be a bit of a small portion. All the sides were good too, but our favorite was definitely the string beans. Not sure how they weren’t soggy after being frozen and reheated. We were going to take a walk around the island after dinner but we were so exhausted that we just went to sleep. Overall great first day in MLE!
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