I have visited 8 Maldives resorts in the past 6 years and I have now been to Bandos twice and I can honestly say that I shall be going back! I have tried to present an objective overview in this article for anyone considering visiting it, or who is not sure which island to choose.

Bandos was closed during 2005 being practically rebuilt, the resort that is not the island, and reopened as a new resort. The resulting resort is magnificent in my opinion. Being in close proximity to the capital Male makes the transfer to Bandos by boat short and sweet, which makes it very attractive to many holiday makers who don’t wish to board a seaplane to visit some of the more remote islands. The resort has great facilities and is also very family orientated, resulting in what has become a very popular resort in the last few years.

The lighthouse restaurant, with its prominent peaked white spire, appears in most of the photographs you might see of this resort (this is the only building on the island missing the proverbial thatched roof). The food and service here, as in the rest of the resort, I found to be great. The restaurant itself is split between an upper lounge bar (great to chill with a cold drink here about 6pm and take in the panoramic views), and the lower-level haute cuisine restaurant serving an exceptional menu of Mediterranean and Asian fusion dishes.

The other main restaurant - the Cayenne Grill - prepares a range of seafood, meat and vegetarian options to your own specification and serves this at one of the individual thatched pavilions at the waters edge.

There are 3 different category of room on the resort, as is typical with most Maldives island resorts - water villas, Baros villas and the Deluxe villas. The attention to detail and the workmanship is second to none, and walking into these rooms for the first time makes you feel good about arriving - always important for me. There are designer fittings, concealed plasma Tv, quality coffee maker, and more importantly for me, a well-stocked wine cooler.

Each room in the resort is never a stones throw from the beach or lagoon and all have a large verandah complete with comfortable daybed. If you consider that their is a very good 24 hour room service you wont be surprised to hear that I didn’t need to stray far short of taking the odd dip to cool down or go snorkeling.

Snorkeling is really good here - and I do like to snorkel, with the reef, which runs around most of the island, being easily accessible. The dive school is run by PADI and has introductory dives in the lagoon for beginners and also can provide you with your open water certificates if you want go that step further from snorkeling. There are approximately 30 dive sites within reach of Baros which offers good potential for some interesting dives. The resort also has a resident Marine Biologist providing talks on the local marine life and accompanying the snorkeling trips and excursions on the house reef.

It is difficult to beat Bandos island resort for a Maldives holiday that will not break the bank, go on, find out more.

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