Hotel Pulau Dharavandhoo dengan Kolam Renang

Stayed in a deluxe room with balcony for 4 nights for ~USD140/night. LOCATION I came to the Maldives for manta rays and for this purpose Dharavandhoo is perfect, only takes about 15 minutes by boat to get to where the mantas congregate. As for location of the hotel, Dharavandhoo is a small island so location doesn’t matter much. ARRIVAL Hotel will send a golf buggy to pick up guests from the airport. If there are a few guests arriving at the same time, check-in will take a little while but no problem since not in a hurry. ROOM Room is decent size, everything clean, aircon is strong which is important given the hot and humid weather. Bedding is reasonably comfortable. TV signal didn’t work when I arrived but they got someone to come fix it a few hours later, it was ok for rest of the stay. Wifi stable and fast enough for streaming and also uploading all my mobile pics and videos onto cloud. FOOD Breakfast is good, eggs cooked to order, love the hash brown. I had a few lunches and dinners, have to say the food was pretty disappointing overall. Chicken satay was so dry that even having it with the sauce didn’t help much, the fish was bland with not enough sauce, then the broccoli and beef was way too salty. Tuna sandwich and the pizza were decent. Most meals were around USD20 including 26% tax. I was expecting quite a few seafood main courses on the menu and was quite surprised at the lack of it. A la carte can take quite a while but you can order in advance. EXCURSIONS I did 4 manta ray excursions with the hotel during my stay, each manta swim is USD60 (no tax). You basically wait for the reception to call then head down to the lobby and rest is taken care of. You can borrow snorkel set and life jacket for no additional charges. On the first 2 excursions, there weren’t that many manta but the experience was lovely as there weren’t that many other people in the water. On the day where there were a lot of manta (I counted 50 manta within 50 seconds in one of my videos!), it was an absolute mayhem as there were a lot of people and a lot were kicking and you could barely move around, not Kiha Beach’s fault but just so others are aware. Still worth it though for that spectacular sight. Everyone is only allowed 45 minutes in water, the guide will keep track of time and remind you when it’s time to get back to the boat. They have different size boats depending on how many guests from the hotel are doing this, they were all easy to get back on. One thing I wasn’t aware or beforehand was there’s some sort of system for Hanifaru Bay where priority is given to local islands and resort islands on different days. So if you really want to see the manta madness. it’s best to stay a few days and do as many excursions as possible to increase your chances. After one of the manta swims, the guide heard about a whale shark nearby. We were asked whether we wish to go swim with it. There will be extra charges for those who wish to go into the water. Unfo