If you’ve read the post ‘A Brief History of Time’ then here we are, our 5 year mission to boldly go and visit this resort has finally happened! There should be rejoicing and maybe a parade……except not.
It took 5 years to get here due to the Bat Soup incident, and this may have meant we’d built ourselves up during this time or maybe we had expectations beyond our initial discovery of this resort back in 2019?
This is going to be a long read, so go make yourself a drink and sit down in a comfy place ready. Toilet breaks are allowed, but I’m sorry we don’t serve mid-read snacks!
This holiday was booked through Kuoni, and cancelled, and booked and so on – but this actual holiday was booked back in August 2023 for July 2025 – yes this did mean an ‘out of date flight’ booking – basically booking flights based on best guess of costs and flight times. Less complicated than it sounds.
No back in 2019 we’d booked here for 13 nights (you lose a day cause of the travelling) and it was approx. £8.5K – Now I don’t normally put prices on the reviews here because it’s mainly about the experience, but this time it’s relevant.
The resort in question is Oblu Select at Sangeli.
Because of the out of date flights Kuoni had to guess what BA’s direct flight schedule was going to be for this year, this meant our initial booking was for 6 nights (7 days but you lose time) – this would have been possible but the return flight wasn’t available via BA and would have been a jump to Doha and then another jump home – but nearly doubling the return journey time – so we extended to 7 nights to match BA’s return flights. This didn’t add much to the overall cost (basically an extra night at the resort) but this 7 night holiday was £10.5K – I appreciate things have gone up in price over the past few years but this was steep, however, for context it was meant to be our honeymoon in 2020 and one of those ‘once in a lifetime’ trips so we splashed out.
Was it worth it?
Sadly, No.
Maybe 70-75% of the cost (allowing for inflation based on the 2020 prices) but certainly not the cost we paid. There were a number of things that simply weren’t there when we first booked for 2020, and the resort whilst still being advertised as ‘honeymooners’ and ‘couples’ is more geared for families – which is fine but not what we were expecting.
As I said, this is going to be long and we’ll do a day by day break down so you don’t lose your place. If you’re bored reading and leave partway through, that’s OK.
Day 0/1 (Bye Bye Heathrow, Hello Male!)
Normally our previous trips were a drive down to the airport the night before and stay in a hotel waking up refreshed and (maybe) relaxed. This flight was at 6:30pm so I didn’t fancy driving down the night before and spending all day paying to sit in a hotel room watching TV so we drove down the same day. For me, I prefer the overnight, it allows me to plan and I like planning things.
We did decide to use the POD parking at Terminal 5, because it looked unique. This was quite enjoyable, a driverless vehicle hurtling along towards the terminal throwing our luggage around because nobody thought of installing something to hold the suitcases! It was fun though and I would highly recommend it, just for the experience.
Into the terminal we arrived, straight to check-in. We hadn’t been able to fully check-in online the night before (which started me worrying) but this was simply down to BA wanting to check we had completed our IMUGA forms for the Maldives (Required traveller forms, the electronic version of the forms I’ve complained about people filling in whilst stood in the queue at the airport!). We were early but they let us bag drop and then through security – this was less than 5 minutes from entering the terminal to being through security. (Granted I did opt for premium security and it was empty!)
Having never been to T5 before (or Heathrow) it was quite different to Gatwick and many others airports we’ve been to – much larger and full of people who seemed in a rush to go nowhere and didn’t think twice about playing human bumper cars at times.
We needed to pop to Boots (Yeah even following my packing list there is something you can forget) so I brought up the map on the Heathrow app – useful map, not quite so clear about things being on different levels. We found Boots and bought what we needed, only to find we had to go back to where we first were for the lounge!
Lucky for me I have Priority Pass and I’d booked into the Aspire Lounge – Now this is where I wasn’t happy.
The lounge clearly shows you can enter 3 hours before your flight, now if our flight is at 6:30pm and the gate closes well before flight departure then by my logic we should be allowed in 3 hours before gate closure. – No, it’s 3 hours before your flight departs – Now we’re not ‘Kara and Nate’ so we don’t wait until the very last second before leaving the lounge to get to our gate, in fact as soon as the gate is showing on the boards we finish our drinks and make our way. Because we were early we weren’t allowed in and had to wait outside for 45 minutes……where I overheard a couple leaving the lounge bragging they had been in there for over 4 hours!
Anyway, because of the 3 hour rule I decided to play the rules and at exactly 3 hours we went into the lounge – Now I had reserved a place at the lounge and we were lucky to actually find a seat. All I can say is I’m glad the lounge was ‘free’ (as part of my free priority pass membership) because it was not good.
Nothing for Mrs BtG to eat other than the worlds smallest pear (gluten/vegetarian), yes there was white wine but anything sparkling (her preferred, something we get in No 1 Lounges) was actually being charged for. There was no water available, I mean no water! Luckily there was some apple juice. Now I normally treat the lounge as a pre-flight comfy place to sit, complete any check-ins I need to do and start to unwind. This was difficult as the lady sat next to us was on a Zoom call – with no headset so everyone could hear her conversation……luckily nothing personal was being discussed.
Our lounge time did fly though and soon enough it was time to head to the gate, so back towards (you guessed it!) Boots we headed. Then downstairs, then onto buses which took us to some other part of the terminal – the bus ride was actually a touch under 8 minutes!
And there it was the plane that was going to take us to the Maldives.
Off the bus, onto the stairs and then to our seats. I had the window seat and with it I had a broken IFE screen (1/3 was showing blue lines), broken USB ports beneath the screen and a broken headphone socket – so I spent the flight wedging something between my leg and the headphone port to stop it from popping out.
For me I have a food allergy, it’s an odd allergy but I’m pretty good at knowing what I can and can’t eat so a Low Lactose meal means my allergy is kept in check. The first meal was OK, sometimes BA meals are spot on, sometimes they are OK and sometimes they are something I can’t describe.
The 2nd meal – well this was something else and not in a good way. It had 2 poached eggs, well they were poached when then had been prepared much earlier but by the time I got to eat them they were actually little white rubber balls that you could have possibly used to play Squash. There was also some odd yellowy/white congealed jelly sauce thing that was over the potatoes – Needless to say I did not eat it!
10 hours and no sleep later we were landing in the Maldives.
It looks like they are expanding the airport, so we taxied into a really nice and new looking spot but were bussed back to a different terminal – not that it mattered. Now this has to be the quickest immigration control I have ever been through, from deboarding the plane to getting to the front of the queue took……10 minutes. Then (cause we filled in the forms online!) passports stamped and onto baggage collection. another 10 minutes and bags collected and outside we went.
Now this is where the Kuoni experience kicked in – we were met by a very friendly person holding up a Kuoni sign, welcomed us by name and then escorted us to the Oblu Select booth explaining everything we needed to know including giving us details of our Kuoni rep who would be in contact once we settled into the resort – Now this is a level of service I could get used to!
We were handed over to Oblu, who confirmed our names, took and bags and then asked for a photo – this photo I assume was then sent to the resort to help identify us to staff. We were then taken to the waiting area as they were expecting other guests from other flights – which is fair, you can’t expect a constant shuttle of incoming passengers for a 50 minute speedboat ride. We did however go all that way only to be sat by a Costa Coffee – you can’t get away from them!
A short while later……our speedboat ride was there, were was asked to board first as everyone else were in family groups. Onto the boat we went and sat at the back. Then 50 minutes of slightly choppy waters, nothing to drink and the awful smell of fuel and I mean it was strong and slightly headache inducing.
We arrived! 5 years and we finally arrived at the resort! We were greeted by staff and someone playing drums (although he did look bored), then escorted to the waiting area where we were offered drinks. The a very helpful member of staff called Mika came over and checked us in, but advised we needed to pay a tourist green tax – nothing wrong with that and quite common. We were then told our room wasn’t quite ready (we were early compared to their check-in time) so were taken to Sangs for a cocktail whilst we waited. One Mango juice and some snacks and Mika appeared letting us know our room was ready, we were then taken a short buggy ride tour of the resort and then taken to our room.
At this point I was shattered, so we had a quick look at out home of the next 7 nights, filmed a quick room tour and then I needed to sleep.
The first thing you always do when going to a new place, hotel room etc is take a look around and see what is there, and we found a number of things.
Mini Fridge – Complete with Sprite, Coke, Beers, Wine and condensed milk.
Snack Drawer – Couple of bags of beetroot crisps, peanuts and cashews.
Crockery Drawer – Cups, tumblers, wine glasses, selection of coffees, teas and sugar.
Cupboard – Dressing gowns, slippers, flip-flops and a bag.
Bathroom – Toothbrushes, toothpaste, shaving kit, make-up remover kit, and a shower cap.
Oddly, unlike most resorts in the Maldives it seems, you don’t get to keep the bag and it’s actually a $30 charge if you take it! The slippers and dressing gown I can understand as with most places you can’t take these. The flip-flops, well there was debate about this as they weren’t listed on the ‘price list’ but were a better quality than the slippers we couldn’t take!
One power nap later…….
That was what I needed, a short 1 1/2 hour reset nap before unpacking and going for a wonder around the resort – then over to ‘The Rock’ for pre-dinner cocktails, or in my case as I was still a tired a pre-dinner mocktail.
After cocktails/mocktails it was time to head over for dinner – buffet style dinner which we like but do prefer a nice a la carte option.
This is where it became interesting – Brits are renowned for their ability to queue and it’s always polite to let others go first – nearly everyone else didn’t get this message and they were rude, pushy, barging and basically on a mission to get what they wanted when they wanted it. Not a pleasant experience and did set the time for the rest of the meals we had – same thing every buffet meal time, it was like feeding time in a zoo.
The selection of available foods was generally good, a lot of pan asian cuisine as expected, but some of the cooked foods did go cold quite quickly. Empty containers were filled back up very quickly and in some cases replaced whilst they were still half full (or empty depending on your view).
At this point it had been a long day so we went back to the villa for some much needed sleep.
Day 2
Our first full day, awake, up, ready and over to buffet breakfast.
Not so busy, less people around and not as much pushing for food – maybe our previous night was a one off and this was the actual experience. Plenty of breakfast options, even bao buns for breakfast (it would have been rude for me not to!).
Back to the villa for a little bit before going for a wonder around.
We spent the day getting our bearings, learning where things were, including the Spa and ended up at the One Banyan Island for lunch – this side of the resort is adults only during the day and also has the island’s 2 a la carte restaurants. We were the only ones there so we ordered a couple of cocktails and a light bite for lunch.
It was nice, it was quiet but it had a slight design flaw – the seating area and pool was between the 2 restaurants which meant it felt like you were the show for anyone there for food – not quite secluded and private as it first appeared. But none the less, it wasn’t busy so not all bad.
Spa time! As part of our booking we had a 45 minute couples spa treatment, upon arrival we were presented with a juice health shot and asked to complete a very in-depth questionnaire on what we wanted from the spa session. Oddly, once completed we were then presented with the 4 options that we could have, this made 95% of the questionnaire we just completed redundant!
The treatment itself was very good, I managed to break another person who attempted to work on my ever present knot – one day someone will finally get it to go and stay gone, but I doubt it, I think it’s a recurring thing due to previous injury so will never truly go.
Treatment down, rubbed down in coconut oil and a nice glass of water later and we were heading off to dinner.
My mistake, the buffet carnage was present once more! For example, it’s a salad bar with a person who makes a salad bowl up for you to order – this does not mean you reach over them and take salad items from the various bowls – wait. your. turn.
I won’t mention the buffet meals again, it was pretty much rinse and repeat each breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Sleep.
or so we thought.
A massive and I mean massive storm came in, it was loud, it rocked the over water villa – yeah that was fun. It rained, there was lightning, there was wind – it was like home except warmer.
The bathroom flooded out – the bathroom being permanently exposed (wooden slatted windows either side) meant wind and rain could take a shortcut through the bathroom resulting in a very flooded floor which meant I was making a towel/bathmat based safe walking area to the toilet from the bedroom door because slipping in that would have been bad.
Back in the main area watching the storm I suddenly heard dripping…..had a look a round and found water was dripping in the corner of the room near the bed and a puddle was making its way towards the bed – so I grabbed our only dry bath towel and placed it on the floor to stop the puddle, grabbed the 2 bins and placed them on top of the towel to catch the now stream of water.
The storm did subside so we went back to bed.
Day 3
Firs things first, empty the bins, check the bathroom. Then dressed and over to reception to report what happened before breakfast.
Not a problem they said, we’ll sort it they said, we might need to move to you another villa they said……they said a lot, they did a lot less.
Breakfast over, then to the dive shop to see what excursions were available. Mrs BtG was looking at the boards and spotted something she had always wanted to do, so we asked for more details, had all the details and then the price……time froze for a little bit at this point…….$4000, each.
Yes, $4000 each! How? What? Why? Well it appears you need to charter the boat and it requires 8 guests or more, but the minimum cost is for 8 guests and as no-one else wanted to go we’d have to pay for all 8 spaces, which worked out at $1000 for each space, so $8000 or $4000 each.
Erm No, how about this one? This time started with the price, just over $130 each, that’s better……than the explanation. 1 1/2 hours by boat to the location, 20 minutes in the water, move the boat to the other side of the same reef, 20 minutes in the water and 1 1/2 hours back. So 3 hours on a boat for 40 minutes snorkelling time? We’ll think about it.
Back to the Villa to see what was happening following the storm.
Bathroom – deflooded, cleaned, new towels – perfect, no issues.
Main area – erm, what? They ‘enhanced’ my 1am fix. How did they do this? Well they replaced the bath towel with a bath mat. It was fluffier so could probably hold more water. The water catching bins were still there!
It rained on and off for most of the day, so we spent a fair amount of time in the villa watching the waves and went over to the Adults only island for drinks and lunch.
The rain then held off and back to The Rock for pre-dinner cocktails – only to find it was closed. So off to Sangs for pre-dinner cocktails.
Buffet time – yep.
Back to Sangs to listen to some music/singing.
And back to the villa, time for some coffee.
Sleep
Day 4
Breakfast – same but this time we noticed something, an impromptu photoshoot by some other guests, and I mean a photoshoot – a group of ladies, 1 of which was the ‘model’ a couple with cameras and the rest directing. This then happened on subsequent mornings except the ‘model’ was a different lady each day. One day they even had found a chair from somewhere and placed it in the water for some clever photos – the waves however didn’t let them.
Another day watching weather come and go, another day spent watching the waves and drinking the contents of the mini fridge!
Sangs for our pre-dinner drink and catching the end of an informative lecture by the resort marine biologist.
Dinner.
Back to the room – only this time it was different, this day was our anniversary and our bed was decorated and a massive chunk of cake was sat there waiting for us! It brought a smile to our faces and finished another day in the Maldives.
Day 5
Normal morning routine, up and then breakfast.
Today was the pre-booked included house reef snorkelling trip- I opted to pass on this one, apart from the jelly fish minefield still being in my head from 2 years ago, the storm, the choppy water and the moving villa was really putting me off getting in the water – that and this was the 5th day with red flags on the resort advising not to go into the water.
I stayed in the villa drinking coffee and listening to music whilst Mrs BtG went fish hunting, the storms however meant visibility wasn’t great.
It was however not a buffet lunch day, it was lunch at Just Wok and this I would say was the best meal of the holiday.
A little walk to find the marine biologist and a chat about various things including when to best get into the water to see marine life and then back to the villa for some more wave watching and an afternoon nap after the really good lunch. We had thought about skipping dinner but actually changed our mind, first going to Sangs (The Rock having been closed again the night before).
We then went back to the villa and had a nose at the prices of in villa dining (not that we wanted to use it, but we wanted to know how much things cost) and ours jaws dropped. Not quite the price of the excursion but silly money for a bowl of soup, or a salad, or a sandwich. Yeah, we’ll walk and endure the buffet thanks!
And sleep.
Day 6
Early morning this day, the marine biologist had mentioned the best spot and time of the day, so we got up early and headed down to this spot – only to find the red flags were in force and understandably, the waves and current was strong so no marine life in this area. Instead we headed over to The Rock for some more snorkelling, only the tide (well that constitutes as a tide) was out so the water was barely knee depth and no good for snorkelling.
Oh well, over to breakfast instead.
On the way back we had a quick stop at the beach, more wave watching but also seeing very dark clouds rolling in, so we headed back to the villa…..just in time – another storm.
So we spent the morning in the villa watching the underwater camera.
A break in the weather and back to the buffet for lunch, and again timing was on our side, just as we arrived it started raining again. We were seated and the wind and rain picked up, the doors were rattling and leaking, we had to move tables as our table was getting a soaking!
Then back to Sangs for a drink, well the attempt at a drink. The Maldives have banned vapes but allow smoking, unlike some other resorts all the public areas were open to smoking, it’s one of those things. We sat down, drinks arrived as did a gentleman smoking a huge cigar – the storm shutters were down because of the rain which meant the area was enclosed. Of all the empty seats he sat next to where we were and the smoke drifted, it was not nice so we left.
Whilst stood outside we decided for the 2nd time we’d use a buggy as it was hammering down with rain. Whilst waiting for the buggy one of the bar staff came running out asking if the cocktail was OK as we’d left without drinking it, being polite we said we wanted to get back to the villa because of the rain – it was the cigar smoke, not the rain.
The buggy appeared, 2 ladies who managed to occupy 2 rows between them and refused to move so we sat on the back – the funny thing, their journey was a grand total of 10 metres……
Back in the villa for next few hours whilst it rained and rained and rained.
Another break in the weather just in time for dinner.
Day 7
Our last full day and a day of routine.
Breakfast, villa, walking, lunch and drinks, walking, then villa. Just a relaxing day.
Dinner was not the buffet this time, but thankfully in JustGrill.
The menu looked really good, they were concerned about my food allergy some substituted part of my meal with fries (which was good) but it just felt OK. It wasn’t like Just Wok, this could have been the last night, it could have been we were on a bit of a downer because of the constant rain, it was hard to say.
Our final walk back from the adults only island and back to the villa to take it easy and pack, when we got there our instructions on check-out etc were there ready.
So we packed up, enjoyed the contents of the mini fridge and snacks and set our alarm for early.
Day 8 – Leaving
The alarm went off, up we got.
We didn’t fancy having breakfast this early so got ready, reception as per the letter phoned with a wake-up call – interesting that it was 15 minutes before the luggage collection time! Luggage was packed and we waited for the luggage collection as it was, yet again, raining.
Luggage collected, finished getting ready and then checked the weather, the rain had almost stopped so we decided to leave and go to reception ready to depart…..about 10 metres away from the villa the rain came back and it was heavy, we ended up going back to the villa where we had to dry off with a combination of towels and the hairdryer before I called reception to ask them for a buggy because of the rain.
Buggy arrived and we stayed mostly dry on the trip to reception, partly down to using an umbrella on the side!
In reception we checked out and sat on the comfy seats waiting for the boat to take us to the airport, then one of the members of staff advised they had made a mistake and I shouldn’t have paid the green tax at the start as it was included in my booking. Some details were taken from me to facilitate a refund.
I’ve always been told you should be at the airport 3 hours before an international flight, so our flight being at 11:15am meant 8:15am as being at the airport – something that would have happened if we left at 7:30am as advised. We were the only guests on that boat, everyone else was staff and needless to say it wasn’t at reception until just before 8am.
Up we got ready to board the boat, it had of course stopped raining, but the water was choppy and the boat was moving around. One of the staff said the boat was wet so could be slippery and they laid out some matting on the deck of the boat.
Mrs BtG got onto the boat and turned around to see me slip and bounce down the steps and land up in a pile at the bottom, luckily I was on the inside of the steps, had I been on the outside I would have more than likely ended up in the water between the boat and the pier. A member of staff helped me up and asked if I was OK, I had twisted but assumed I was fine, I was also aware of the time so wanted to leave.
The next 50 minutes or so was painful but again I thought this was down to the fall and twisting.
Back at the airport and we were met once again by Kuoni who escorted us to the airport, through first line security, to bag drop (where they asked if they could upgrade us, but unfortunately everything was booked) and then through to second line security.
We then did a little window shopping and bought a magnet and keyring (to become a Christmas decoration) before grabbing some water from one of the cafes and going to the gate.
Didn’t take too long before boarding and of course, it started raining again!
Onto the bus and a trip over to the plane (eventually), because it was raining they were slowly unloading as close to the steps as possible, I stepped out of the bus and felt a sudden surge of pain on my right leg, we got onboard and found our seats. I had a look at my leg and there it was, I’d cut my leg open on the fall.
The next 10 hours were a painful experience, having to readjust my seating position every 20 minutes, trying to use a pillow and blanket as padding – again assuming it was down to the fall and twisting.
About an hour outside Heathrow we were told there was an issue with ATC in the UK, yes it was the day the radar system had gone down! There was a chance we may have to be rerouted to ‘an airport somewhere in Europe’ – luckily the back-up system was used, the system came online at 5:30pm, we landed in Heathrow at 5:32pm…..
This did mean Heathrow as a ghost town, so straight through passport control and baggage claim.
Because it had been a long travel day and we had another 3 hour drive home we booked into the Sofitel based in T5, when we go to the hotel I sat on the bed and promptly jumped up in pain.
It was more than simple twist
Along with the cut on my leg I had a deep purple stripe on my lower back, I’d bruised a whole area on the side that impacted the steps, so yes I had twisted, cut my leg and badly bruised my back!
This was reported to Kuoni who reported it to Oblu Select as this accident could have very easily been avoided – they didn’t have any handrails or any anti-slip material on the steps.
The bruising took about 2 weeks to go, the cut took 3 weeks to begin to heal and here we are over 5 weeks later and it looks like I’ll have a scar on my leg for the rest of my life to remember this trip!
Kuoni have emailed the resort several times – the resort whilst initially responding saying they would investigate have gone silent. Not good.
So overall, we waited 5 years for an overpriced holiday full of rain, rude guests, disappointment and injury – The side of the Maldives you don’t get to see!
We booked via Kuoni for Oblu Select at Sangleli, staying in an over water villa for 7 nights. We flew from Heathrow T5, used POD parking and stayed in the Sofitel at the end of our holiday.
November 2025 – Surprise Update!
So after having so little response from either the hotel or Kuoni I added a much shortened version of the above review to Tripadvisor and Google Reviews – The hotel replied to both saying sorry. Kuoni still hadn’t replied.
So the other week I went on Trustpilot (I have reviewed a number of companies there and have a fully verified account) and left a 3 star review of Kuoni, highlighting both the good and the not so good. They responded!
Upshot of the response, the hotel have installed a hand rail on the decking by the reception area – which is what I wanted to happen, yes I fell, yes it was an accident, but I wanted to make sure no-one had to fall if it could be avoided, so well done to the resort for doing that. Kuoni also apologised for their handling of the issue and provided me with a sizeable discount voucher for a future holiday (valid for 2 years) and today I received a small gift from them – Or as I call it, a very generous small gift of a food hamper (I reckon they must know I appreciate good food!).
Whilst I wasn’t expecting the voucher nor the hamper from Kuoni, it matches how they handled everything before the holiday, so yes I’m really happy the hotel have installed a handrail and very happy that Kuoni acknowledged and put things right.
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