The Maldives Resorts Where COVID Isn't a Thing - Soneva Fushi & Soneva Jani

what if i told you there's a place in the world americans can safely travel to right now where there's no need for masks or social distancing that places the maldives more specifically it's the resort sonevafushi and sone vijani in this video i'll explain how they've been able to turn both properties into pandemic pods through their stringent covet 19 safety procedures where neither guests nor staff have to wear masks or social distance we'll also cover what the journey was like from new york the dining the kids club the beach villas the over water villas the excursions and much much more so keep watching many thanks to sunei bafuchi and sune vajani for hosting us hey welcome back to top flight family my name is carmen sinovi and i'm so excited to tell you about our amazing trip to the maldives in order to fly into the maldives you have to show negative results from a coven 19 pcr test that was taken 72 hours from your departure and then we also had to fill out an online health declaration form in order to get into the maldives now if you've been watching our channel for a while you know that we really like to fly carry-on only we almost never check luggage but when it comes to flying certain international airlines like emirates they have pretty strict requirements when it comes to carry-ons so for this trip we actually did have to check luggage and let me tell you that check-in line we waited there for over two hours and that's because each transaction takes so much longer now because the attendant isn't just checking your luggage they're checking your covet 19 test results they're making sure that you have that online health form filled out so even being able to do this trip at all requires immense attention to detail and unfortunately there were a lot of people who were just not allowed to get on that flight a lot of people took the wrong kind of copen19 test you need the pcr test with the swab instead of the rapid test and then also a lot of people took their pcr test too early so it was outside of that 72 hour window so there was definitely some drama at the check encounters so getting to the maldives from new york is pretty rough i would say total travel time was about 24 hours so our flight was about 12 hours long it left jfk at 11 pm local time and then arrived in dubai at around 8 30 p.m local dubai time and then we had a six hour layover in the dubai airport so we went to the marhaba lounge which you can access if you have a priority pass membership like we do and i'm really amazed that we were able to spend six hours there it really didn't feel like that long so we departed dubai at 2 30 a.m dubai time the flight was about four hours long so we arrived in malay around a.m local time so once we got to the bali airport a representative from suneva resorts met us took our luggage and they took care of checking it in for the seaplane we took a tesla to drive to the other side of the airport where the seaplanes are and then we spent a little bit of time in the sonava lounge while we waited for the seaplane to get ready and then we boarded the seaplane so zaneva does have their own seaplanes and you're actually going to see them later in this video but depending on the availability guests who arrive at malay will be booked either on the suniva seaplane or they will be chartered on one of these trans maldivian airways planes so a couple of tips for the seaplane ride they will give you earplugs and i definitely recommend that you use them because it does get pretty noisy from the propellers and make sure you get a window seat because the views are absolutely amazing and you don't want to miss out on that so the seaplane landed next to this basically floating wooden platform in the middle of the ocean and then from there we got onto a boat that would take us to the resort and one thing about the suneva resorts is that they really pioneered this concept of barefoot luxury and their motto is no news no shoes and that's actually a saying that's been kind of adopted across the maldives and so when you get onto the boat they literally take your shoes and then for the rest of the time you're at the resort basically nobody wears shoes so we enjoyed some fresh watermelon juice on the ride over and then we got to the pier at sonevafushi and then we took a golf cart to the first of three villas that we would be staying in during this trip so this first villa was villa 31 and it's the two-bedroom crusoe with a pool [Music] wow look at this oh [Applause] wow we got our own little pool so cool oh my god it's like a tree house wow so this villa has a bedroom downstairs a bedroom upstairs a beautiful outdoor soaking tub it's got several different decks it has a living room and a work area a private pool and it has direct access to the beach now we actually have another video where we take you through a very detailed tour of the entire villa so if you want to check that out i'm going to link that down below so once we got settled into the villa we had our second pcr tests done so as i mentioned we had to already show negative pcr tests to get into the maldives however once you get into this naval resorts their staff will do their own pcr test they swap both the nose and the throat so then you have to actually self-isolate in the villa for up to 24 hours until you get the results back now during that time they'll also wash and sanitize all of the clothes you wore while you were traveling and that's done completely complimentary now you'll notice that the team that came to greet us at the pier were all wearing full protective gear they had masks they had face shields and after they get the guests settled into their villas those hosts who came to greet us will follow the same procedures as us in other words they will also get a pcr test and they will also self-isolate for 24 hours until they get those results so when i posted about these safety protocols on take talk there were four questions that came up over and over again so i'm going to answer them here number one what if you test positive so if upon arriving to either sonava resort you test positive you'll actually self-isolate or quarantine in that villa for 14 days your accommodations will be completely free but you will have to cover your own food and drink number two aren't you putting the locals at risk no because there are no locals on these islands both sannevafushi and sunivagani are private island resorts and so every single person that lives on the island either is a guest of the resort or they work for the resort so everybody follows the exact same protocols number three what about false negatives so as i mentioned all guests have to take a pcr test within 72 hours of the time they depart from malay when they get to seneva they take another pcr test and then the day before you depart you take yet another pcr test and all of the hosts or staff at the resort are tested every five days so yeah false negatives are certainly within the realm of possibility but with all of these layers of testing any positive cases are going to be caught pretty quickly and contact tracing can be done effectively number four what if you get sick while you're there so there's a neighboring island to sunivafushi that has a brand new icu unit with 20 beds and it's just a 10 minute ride by speedboat okay so those first 24 hours were really such a blur we were so exhausted from the journey we were jet lagged and in a way i'm actually glad that we had to self isolate because it kind of took the pressure off from feeling like we had to go out and do things so because of jet lag i woke up super early the next day and i was actually able to watch the sunrise from the beach and as it turns out the rest of this trip i actually ended up doing the same thing every morning it was kind of my special time to just enjoy a cup of coffee while i watched the sunrise so later that morning we got a text from the hosts saying that our pcr test came back negative and so we were free to explore the island and so off we went to get breakfast by the way if you're new to our channel we're the sanyov family and we're all about inspiring families to travel the world in comfort and style we share tips on how families can save time reduce hassle and maximize comfort when traveling with kids so if that sounds good to you please subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss our next video also we started homeschooling our girls this year so if you want to learn more about how we combine homeschool and travel check out our homeschooling channel at homeschool wherever okay so we are walking to breakfast now so we got some good news this morning which is that we all tested negative so then the weird thing is um none of us have to wear masks the whole time we're here which is gonna take some getting used to now the resort did provide us with bikes but we ended up actually walking to breakfast instead there were some issues with sizing of the bikes and also there's a whole other thing that i will get into about the bikes later in this video but one thing that's good to know is so navafuchi is a pretty walkable island and it's also really beautiful so we definitely enjoyed the walk to breakfast so the buffet restaurant at sunivajani is called mihiri mita and it's all outdoors but because of how they've planted the trees so strategically the entire dining area is shaded so it's actually really comfortable even on a hot day they serve breakfast lunch and dinner buffets here now if you've been watching this channel for a while you know that we love a good breakfast buffet at a hotel and unfortunately breakfast buffets have become a bit of a casualty because of covid some hotels are still offering buffets but the food tends to be behind plexiglass barriers and you usually have to staff serving it instead so it was really refreshing to see that this was a real breakfast buffet like old school pre-pandemic times where you served your own food and this breakfast is pretty legendary in the travel industry in addition to the main food area that's outdoors there's actually individual rooms for all different types of food and each room is perfectly temperature controlled to suit its contents so you have so delicate which is a room full of gourmet hams cold cuts cheeses and preserves you have so guilty which is all kinds of chocolate they're so cool which has 60 rotating flavors of homemade ice cream and sorbets and during breakfast hours this is also where you're gonna find fruit and cereal now my absolute favorite part of the breakfast buffet was all of the south asian food the maldives is situated very close to sri lanka so a lot of the cuisine kind of reflects that heritage and every day at breakfast there was a fantastic chicken curry and a fantastic fish curry and i made sure to fill up on that every single day at breakfast so at breakfast we also met sai who was our butler for the entirety of the stay and she was really really awesome so at both sonevafushi and atsonebajani every guest is assigned what they call either a barefoot butler or a girl or guy friday and essentially this is your point person for every single thing related to your stay everything from getting restaurant reservations to getting a ride from one place to another to even getting a copy of your hotel bill this one person basically takes care of all of that for you now i knew that sai was taking care of guests other than us as well but you would almost never know because she was so unflappable anything that was thrown at her she handled was such grace and ease and that's not to say that we were throwing things at her we were actually pretty low maintenance but there were a lot of things on the itinerary that the resort had put together for us that had to be like moved or rescheduled or cancelled due to weather conditions and she just handled everything with so much ease we loved it so after breakfast we dropped the girls off at the kids club and so navafuchi has a really fantastic his club called the den and it's a technology-free zone because they're really hoping for kids to unplug and just have fun in this space when you get there there's actually a really cute door within the door so kids can decide whether they go through the little door or the big door there's a family pool with a slide there's a splash pad for toddlers there's a huge arts and crafts area there's a music room with a drum set and keyboards there's a whole dress up area with wigs and costumes and finger puppets and if your kids love legos they will love the lego room it has both big kids legos and also duplo bricks for the younger kids the den also screens kids movie nights a couple of nights a week and when it's not movie night this room is used as a quiet room for reading so the den has a full daily schedule of activities and on that first day that we were there the girls were so excited because they got to do this fun tubing activity out on the water so the kids got to sit on this big inflatable sofa pulled by a speedboat and the girls loved it so unfortunately i wasn't there to capture any of that however the girls raved about it they absolutely loved the experience so while the girls were at the kids club sergeant i went to check out out of the blue which is one of the newest restaurants esonevafushi it serves vietnamese japanese and indonesian cuisine and is located in an overwater building with stunning views of the ocean even if you don't come to eat it's a great place to come and just lounge and enjoy the views there's plenty of sofas where you can relax and they also have these fantastic over water nets now right next door to the restaurant is the only public water slide into the ocean at the resort so if you're not lucky enough to be staying in one of the overwater villas but you still want to experience the slide this is where you can go to experience it later that afternoon back in the villa i enjoyed a bath in that lovely outdoor tub while surgeon sean went for a swim in the ocean and checked out some of the fish and coral that night we had dinner at fresh in the garden which is a mediterranean restaurant that's heavily organic and plant-based and it's actually situated above the resort's own organic vegetable garden this is what it looks like during the day so you can see it a little more clearly but it's a really lovely space and the food was really good [Music] the next morning we were still jet lagged so me and the girls actually woke up before dawn and hung out outside the villa and some bunnies came to say hi so saneva fushi has tons of bunnies that live on the island and they are very very friendly they're very open to you feeding them if you try to pet them they don't really like that very much but this was one of our girls favorite things about this resort the bunnies will often come out at breakfast time and on this particular day at breakfast a lot of them came to hang out with us okay so let's talk about bikes now chances are you've seen on instagram or other social media video of guests at resorts in the maldives kind of cycling around without a care in the world and let me tell you that was not our family our family is a bit bicycly challenged shall we say so the fact that bicycles are the primary form of transport around the resorts was definitely a little bit challenging for us so serge is fine he's a really good bike rider i did learn how to ride a bike as a kid but i only actually owned a bike about two years of my childhood so for the last like 40 something years i've hardly had any time to ride a bike shawn has learned how to ride a two-wheeler but she just hasn't had much practice and then ella has never actually learned to ride without training wheels so the bicycle thing can be a little bit challenging for families especially if you've got younger kids and or kids who are not that proficient at riding bikes yet so a couple of alternatives to know about one is you can request a tricycle so it'll be you know one wheel in the front two wheels in the back so it's a lot more stable and easy to ride and some of the tricycles will have a box in the back that's cushioned where a small child can sit pretty comfortably however there is no type of seat belt or harness so if you have a rambunctious toddler who's likely to climb out of that box this is not the best solution and the resort does also have smaller bikes with training wheels so as sineava fushi i think the bike thing is not such an issue but at sonewajani it can be pretty dicey because so much of that resort is made up of these winding jetties and just one moment of carelessness and you could be in the ocean now luckily the ocean water is not deep at all so you're not in any real danger so if you're traveling with kids i would actually recommend mostly getting around by golf cart this is one of the things that your barefoot butler is there to help you with transportation so don't be shy about requesting rides from one place to another both resorts are very family friendly they know this is something that makes life so much easier for family travelers so really golf carts are the best way to get around so after breakfast it was time to get ready for our snorkeling trip so first we went to get fitted for our gear at the dive center at the resort and all of this gear rental is actually complimentary for guests then we met our snorkeling guide got our life jackets and we headed to the boat so they took us to an area that's known to have a lot of sea turtles and it was really fun to be able to see the sea turtles in their natural habitat [Music] after snorkeling sai met up with us and drove us to our next villa which was one of the brand new over water villas that had been completed just a couple months before our trip oh my gosh look at this oh my gosh look oh my god oh my god [Music] oh my god this is huge this villa has two bedrooms each one with incredible views of the ocean a big living room a dining room several big walk-in closets and a deck that stretches the entire length of the villa with a private infinity pool and your very own water slide into the ocean now if you want a detailed tour of this villa we actually have a video that walks you through the entire thing so i'm going to link that below if you want to check it out we ordered lunch from infillit dining and it was an amazing spread and we spent the afternoon having fun with the pool the water slide and doing some snorkeling in the ocean right outside the villa [Music] that night we tried the dinner buffet at mihiri mita which was fantastic it was really cool to see how they transformed the space with these lanterns all over the ground if you're a fan of south asian food you're definitely gonna love this buffet now the next day was pretty windy and we had left a couple of the floaties out on the deck and unfortunately we watched as the wind whipped them into the ocean and i felt so bad because so neva johnny and sone fufushi are both extremely eco-conscious resorts absolutely no plastic is used and they actually ask guests that if you bring any plastic onto the island that becomes trash to actually bring it back home with you and dispose of it there so i felt so bad that we had contributed to adding yet more plastic to the ocean since these floaties were blown out into the water and then next thing you know this happened the host who's in charge of maintaining the pools at all of the overwater villas i guess must have seen these floaties get into the water and he basically dove in and went to swim after them and to get them and this was such a mission because every time they were almost within his grasp a wave would whip them a little bit further just a couple inches away and this took like a good 20 minutes anyway we were so impressed with his dedication that we had to take a picture with him so here he is amazing job thank you so much for helping save our floatie and save the oceans from get more plastic so later that night we had dinner at out of the blue that same over water restaurant we had gone for lunch which was lovely but it was really really stunning at dinner well just like give me that thank you the skinnier one is salt and the darker bigger one is pepper cuties then the next day we got ready to transfer to sune vajani the sister resort but before we did that we actually stopped by the jewelry shop which was really beautiful the girls had fun trying on different pieces and we also stopped by the glass workshop now the seneva resorts have a very extensive recycling program and any single used glass that's brought in is actually crushed and melted in their state-of-the-art glass furnace so anything made of glass that you use at the resort is actually created in this workshop and you can even take glass making classes here so we transferred to suniva johnny that afternoon and we were actually originally supposed to go in the morning but the flight kept getting pushed back because of weather conditions so we took a speedboat over to the seaplane and it's really cute because that little wooden platform where you board the seaplane there's a sign on it that will actually say sonevafushi or sonevajani international airport now the sanneva johnny plane is much much more comfortable than the charter plane the seats are a lot wider it's much cushier so definitely a much more pleasant ride so we arrived at cenavajani and met our new barefoot butler lina and before taking us to our villa she took us on a tour of the island so that we could get more familiar with it we saw the organic gardens that supply the restaurants on the resort we saw the eco center where they do all kinds of recycling work we got to see the mangrove trees and the mangrove crabs that are really the bedrock of the entire ecological system on the island and we got to see cinema paradiso which is the gorgeous outdoor movie theater then we pulled up to our over water villa and i had no idea that the property booked us in the largest overwater villa in the whole resort oh my god wow [Music] you like what do you it i love it on the ground floor there's a spacious living dining area as well as a full kitchen on the second floor there's a private gym a pool table and a massive couch where you can cuddle up to watch movies all four bedrooms have incredible views of the turquoise blue waters and stretching the entire length of the villa is a deck with a water slide and a private infinity pool now again if you want an in-depth tour of this villa and it's definitely worth watching we have a video where we walk you through it and i'm going to link that down below so we spent the rest of that afternoon at the pool and watched the sunset there and then we went to dinner at overseas which is the pescetarian vegetarian and plant-based restaurant by swedish chef matthias dahlgren so the next morning we had breakfast at the buffet restaurant down to earth and this is such a gorgeous gorgeous space it's got kind of a circular shape so anywhere you look you get beautiful views of the ocean there are individual rooms for bread individual rooms for salads and one thing that was really nice was at breakfast we met a couple of families and the girls got to play with their two little kids and it was the first time in almost an entire year that they actually got to socialize with kids indoors without a mask on and then after breakfast we got our third kova test because in order to exit mala you have to show negative results and we went to check out this famous swing in the middle of the ocean that you have undoubtedly seen on instagram before then we had lunch at crab shack and crab shack is probably one of the most popular restaurants here at sunai vajani they specialize in of course crabs and they serve both blue crab and mud crab and there's a lot of different sauces and preparations to choose from we really love the black pepper sauce and the profound salt sauce so those are two that i would definitely recommend the cocktails here are really fun too especially this one called message in a bottle which is made of basil lemon and vodka and the basil is of course grown in their own organic garden after lunch the girls went to the kids club while serge and i had a couple's massage and there are actually two spas at johnny the main spot in the main building and then there's also a smaller ayurvedic spa near the crab shack so the main spot is very simple and pretty small but the quality of treatments is really out of this world so definitely don't miss this experience the gym here also has great views of the ocean now the kids club at sune vajani is really simple and really small but the staff members were so fantastic they were really personable really fun and our girls had a great time and they were actually in no rush to leave but one thing that's good to know is so new johnny is actually in the process of building a new kids club and once it's completed it's actually going to be the largest kids club in all of southeast asia so that's gonna be ready in about another year or two so definitely keep an eye out for that one [Music] don't worry nothing's gonna happen as soon as it hits like shallow water or an island it's just gonna disappear so then as we were walking out we noticed that a lot of the hosts were standing around looking over the water and we were like huh i wonder what's going on and it turns out that there was a water spout in the background and this is essentially like a baby tornado but it's over water instead of land so that was really cool to see that afternoon we went on a dolphin safari and you know anytime you do like dolphin or whale watching tourists it's always a bit hit or miss because you never know what you're going to be able to see unfortunately on this day we didn't have that much luck we only saw a brief glimpse of one dolphin and then it started raining but it was still fun to be out there on the water so that night we had dinner at so wild which is the plant-based restaurant by raw food chef diana von kranick and it's located in the middle of the organic garden now unfortunately as i mentioned it was raining that evening so they actually rearranged the seating so that we were right next to the kitchen but usually there's a much nicer setup where you get to sit actually in the middle of the garden itself but it was still a really pleasant meal we had a tasting menu where we went through a series of dishes that were all plant-based even the dessert so this was definitely not our usual kind of thing but it was very well done and then sadly next day it was time to head back home okay if you want a detailed tour of that 10 million dollar four bedroom over water villa in sone vijani just click that video right there if you haven't already please subscribe and turn on notifications give us a follow on both tick tock and instagram thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Top Flight Family

Views: 512,009

Rating: 4.8740931 out of 5

Keywords: soneva fushi, soneva jani, soneva resorts, the maldives, maldives, maldives island 2020, maldives island 4k, maldives resorts water villas, maldives travel guide, maldives resort tour, maldives resort, maldives vlog, top flight family, the sognonvis, the sognonvi family, luxury family travel, family travel, travel with kids, maldives with kids, maldives island, maldives island tour, maldives beach, maldives hotel, travel to maldives, maldives travel, maldives travel vlog

Id: 6vQKq0lQxdI

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021