Vilamendhoo Island Resort & Spa

Vilamendhoo managed to perfectly fill the role of both being a private and intimate place, while also feeling just large and systemized enough that we felt that everything was constantly under control and well managed. For safety-maniacs like ourselves, that’s a plus, but we can also see why someone would find it less charming.

Housereef

One of the best things about Vilamendhoo is the reef. It’s like a choose-your-own-snorkeling-adventure, where you never get tired of what is on offer without ever having to leave the island itself. There is so much reef to enjoy, and each “leg” of the reef feels different, to the point where just taking a lap around the island (not entirely literally, you can’t actually swim around in one go, because - well - the streams are opposing directions) feels like going on little mini-excursions by yourself.

If you’re a careful snorkeler, like ourselves, who can be a little uncomfortable with the steep “drops” on the reef-edges, there are both possibilities of snorkeling along less-steep drops (more like underwater hills) as well as the “wall”-like drops. So, yay for being able to stay within your comfort zone, and venture out if/when you feel like it! Options, people!

Vilamendhoo’s house reef is seriously incredible.


Lodging

We stayed in a stand-alone beach villa, with our own little deck overlooking the ocean. It had a bed that was large enough that you could roll over and not hit each other, which was awesome, but lonely at times. Kidding.

We enjoyed our comfortable chairs on the deck when we wanted to sit outside and just hang for a bit before any of our many meals, and our private sun chairs were perfect for soaking up some beach-time just a few steps away from our front door. Being able to watch the ocean from your room will always hold a special place in our hearts, but yeah, that’s almost a given on Maldives.

I guess the only kind-of-issue that we can come up with about the room, is that the tiled floors get really slippery when wet, which can kind of be an issue when you’re going straight from the ocean, soaking wet, through the (cold, due to air condition) room to get to the bathroom to wash off salt and sand. I suppose maybe a back-door into the open-sky bathroom at the back could maybe be useful? To be fair, this could also have been an “issue” particularly for us, as our villa was actually placed right at a reef exit, which meant we didn’t really get to “drip off” before arriving at home after a snorkeling session.


Food

We had three full meals a day in the buffet, except for the days where we slept in and actually missed breakfast. Which, honestly, when lunch follows only a few hours later, and is just as grand as the dinner that then follows lunch, it’s not a big sacrifice; you will pretty much never go hungry on this island. And even if you do feel peckish outside of buffet-hours, there’s full meals disguised as snacks served at the bars.

However, the food just wasn’t that amazing overall. So, don’t get us wrong, nothing was missing; but the food was just fine. It was definitely above standard for what you’d generally find at any random buffet, but it wasn’t anything to particularly highlight either. Maybe it was just compared to the standard of everything else on the island, the food just kinda fell short of that. Again: Nothing wrong with it, at all, but just not that interesting, and a little repetitive by the end.

A shout-out to the specialty coffee, though - being able to just get a perfect cappuccino or espresso whenever was glorious (and we do mean whenever, because they had decaf versions as well). And it came with a cookie, every time.


Overall island feel

Despite catching wind that the island was about 80% booked when we were staying there, it never felt crowded in any way. There were always plenty of seats, lounge-chairs, sun-chairs and whatnot available at every bar, lounge, and pool.

We didn’t think much about it at the time, but people have since commented on it when we share pictures from Vilamendhoo; that there really didn’t seem to be many people there. And well... It’s a small island, and of course you see other people; and, again, to us this is good, because that feeling of supervision when you’re the only one in a bar/restaurent/shop? Yikes! But yeah, thankfully we avoided that feeling, whilst also never feeling crowded or overrun. Staff always had time for us, no unexpected waiting times on food or drinks or general service. It just .. Worked. Even though the island is small - it wasn’t cramped.


Excursions

If you do want some extra adventure, there are possibilities of excursions, of course; one of us went and saw a magnificent whale shark.

We won’t say much on this topic as we didn’t go on many excursions (except the complimentary sunset cruise; it was alright), but yeah, there are excursions available. We really didn’t feel the need to go, because the reef on Vilamendhoo was plentiful in both corals and marine life, and we had everything we needed on the island.


Our tips

• Consider skipping the all-inclusive package, or at least do the math beforehand. You can find the menus of the bars online, so try to calculate how much you would drink and what it would cost versus the all-inclusive package. A lot of items on the menu isn’t part of the all-inclusive, so if you can press pause on the “oh no I’m spending money”-button in your brain (which, admittedly, is a good reason to go all-inclusive if you can’t!), you actually get a much wider selection from going ‘just’ full board. And, when we calculated it in the end, it would have cost us the same, or less, to just pay for what we consumed outside of regular meals.


• Bring more sunscreen than you think you’ll need; having to buy from the giftshop (which we did) is expensive.


• Be aware, that the - by our definition - best area of the island (aside from the reef) was the sunset pool, which is an adults only area; so it might not be the most ideal spot to bring your children.