It is this turquoise like from a picture book, this sea in the most beautiful shower gel green blue. This radiant white of the sand, this coconut palm backdrop. It is the corals, the fish in all colours of the rainbow. The stingrays that seem to fly under water. Is there anything more beautiful than spending your holidays on a Maldives island?
Surprisingly, the answer is yes – to spend a holiday on a very particular Maldives island: on Velaa Private Island in the Noonu Atoll just 190 kilometres north of Malé. My current favourite island!

What makes it so? It is a combination of this feeling of great relaxation, this sense of nonchalance coupled with the highest standard, with five-star quality from the spa to the fantastic restaurants. In one of them, you sit with your bare feet in the shallow water of a dark blue tiled pool – at tables. It is this eye for detail, this careful presentation that has made Velaa my current island.

There’s only one big disadvantage. The typical Maldives problem! There is probably no place where it is as big as here: you just never want to leave. Not this picture-book lagoon, with the warm turquoise blue waves, this view under as above water, the beach, the many coconut palms – not this hotel. There is only one thing to be done: come back, soon!