Positive moments:
- instant check-in;
- a compact island, you can get around in 15 minutes. ;
- on the island there are free: gym, tennis, badminton, squash, football, table tennis, table football, billiards, darts, swimming pool for all visitors;
- extra charge: diving, fishing, spa;
- 2 sunbeds on the beach are assigned to each room on 1 line, but if you have rooms on 2 lines - there are no sunbeds (here you have to lie down on someone's or just on the sand);
- clean, clean, spacious rooms all furniture made of natural materials (solid wood, stone, glass), sunbeds and umbrellas on the beach are also made of wood. There is virtually no plastic;
- open-plan bathroom (virtually no ceiling, only walls);
- quality cleaning, all changed daily;
- friendly staff, always ready to help!
- food is not fast, but monotonous: often repeated, a lot of fried; sweet, mostly in the form of puddings; many fruits: bananas, papaya, pineapple, passion fruit, watermelon, melon, peaches, pears, apples, tangerines, lychees.
The biggest plus is the ocean. Crystal clear water, extremely warm, a sea of different fish right next to the reef, also swim sharks, stingrays, carp (no one moves).
A small minus - the island is surrounded by concrete slabs from the ocean, so it is impossible to enjoy the endless ocean and take good photos.
In terms of nutrition, we took breakfast and dinner, everything is delicious, especially my husband loves spicy food, he said that it looks like Goan cuisine. The alcohol in the bar is excellent, whiskey is especially good.
The island itself is very green, walking on it is pleasant. It will take about 15 minutes to walk around in steps, and to swim around in an hour. In the center of the island there is a football field and a garden where something is grown)
And a wonderful birdhouse, which I advise you to visit.
Flight and accommodation:
Flying Transaero. Business class. The flight was delayed by an hour and a half. Arrived in Male, respectively, with a delay. Upon exiting the airport, Fostur's representative told us with a "sweet" smile that neither today nor tomorrow we will get to our Ellaida, since the Chinese New Year and the hotel are completely full. Therefore, they will take us to the Vaadu hotel - this is a five and, they say, cool, so rejoice. We do not need this five, a ten-minute boat ride from the airport with planes constantly flying overhead. If you wanted to go to the top five - so easily would go and not in this! We went specifically to Ellaida for many reasons. Nervousness began. We called the hotel - they said that the hotel was half empty, they say you are welcome, only your tour operator did not transfer money for you to us! This is after we bought vouchers from Fostur THREE months before the trip! After a huge number of calls from my mobile for OWN money (fortunately I guessed to buy a card of a local mobile operator - Dhiraagu Mobile - it is sold in the office right at the exit from the doors of the arrivals hall, a little to the left obliquely 20 meters) and threatening Fostur with all heavenly punishments, he achieved that tomorrow we they will take us to our hotel and pay money for us. It's good that the friends with whom we later rested at the hotel were still in Moscow - they came to us later - they insured us and "raised our ears" this fucking Fostur. It turned out that Fostur often "THROWS" mere mortals at hotels and people went, for example, on a honeymoon to one hotel, and end up in another, the one in which it is better for Fostur to shove them. Many travel agencies have already refused to work with Fostur. By the way, the travel agency in which we bought the tour, two weeks after our payment for the tour, also stopped working with it. In connection with the above, with frayed nerves and shaking hands, we got to our hotel only a day later!
About the hotel:
We lived in a water bungalow. Disadvantages of a water bungalow: if you want to swim and lie on the beach, you have to go to the beach bungalows. It didn't bother us too much. Advantages: the room is larger than in beach bungalows (but smaller than in superiors); from the window a view of the sea, which splashes right under you (sleep under the quiet rustle of the waves - grace! ); there is a light breeze blowing and the room is well ventilated (it's a little hot in the superiors and beach bungalows and our friends in the superior slept with air conditioning all the time); one free bottle of water per day; iron; its own restaurant, the feeding in which is almost the same as in the main restaurant, but still a little better. Cleaning twice a day. Bath towels are changed during morning cleaning, beach towels are changed during evening cleaning. Removed cleanly.
Internet via Wi-Fi: you buy a card at the reception - $ 3 and two hours of unlimited Internet. Since we use the Internet a lot, we bought about ten cards during our two weeks at the hotel.
From the entertainment: free billiards, table tennis, a decent gym with good exercise equipment, a spa center (since we had a two-week vacation, we bought a package of massages - $ 1000 - 20 hours of any massage, that is, 10 hours per brother came out. Massage is very quality, they make Balinese), live music in the evenings, consisting of European hits of all time. The hotel constantly stirs up various lures. For example: an evening cocktail party: you pay $ 15 from your nose, you come to the beach at half past ten in the evening and drink alcoholic cocktails there until you burst or fall under a palm tree. Or for example: shrimp dinner: you pay $50 for two and in the evening you gorge yourself on tiger prawns until you hiccup. By the way, if you order such a themed dinner, then you have free lunch the next day (this is if you live on a halfboard). Well, the usual fun for the Maldives: evening fishing (there were two times) followed by cooking fish for you for the next dinner, morning fishing for big fish (they say that they rarely catch anything), a trip to a desert island (they bring to the island and leave you alone with beloved or beloved for the whole day with food and fresh water), evening watching sharks and some other all sorts of garbage like this.
Now let's move from the surface to the underwater world of the Ellaidhoo hotel.
I must say right away: this is one of the MOST beautiful reefs on the atoll. We are divers ourselves. Dived every day. We saw EVERYTHING that is possible: stingrays, sharks, moray eels, turtles, lionfish, a bunch of all kinds of fish, very beautiful corals, twice a manta swam. Only went to the house reef 10 times - and all the time something new. This is not the first time in the Maldives and we have been to Egypt five times, but we have never seen such a variety! The dive point is one of the most organized and largest I have ever seen. Divers come to this island from all over the world: the British, Germans, French, Scots, Swiss, Japanese, Italians - and these are just those nationalities with whom I had a chance to communicate directly. Prices for equipment: a balloon - $ 50 per nose, if you want to take nitrox, if you want air - just in bulk. We went to this and that. Any unit for rent - $4. Belts for free. Bot - $ 13 from the nose. There are several bots: morning - with two dives, three-hour - with one, for the whole day - with three, night - with two. I’ll make a reservation right away that there is no Russian-speaking dive instructor. There are not enough instructors. There were always two people on the houserif, without a guide. Russians are not taught without a Russian-speaking instructor. The Germans, the French are sometimes taken to the training room, the Russians are not. Just not enough staff. In addition to certificates, logbooks are very welcome.
The hotel itself COMPLETELY corresponds to the price-quality parameter. All the staff are very friendly. Due to the absolute absence of Russian-speaking staff on the island, it’s good to know a couple of elementary English-German-French phrases.
We can safely recommend the hotel to all social strata of the population with any thickness of the place for storing banknotes!
The hotel is a normal four. Service is sometimes great, sometimes not so good. I was alone - the Maldivian staff reacted to me no less enthusiastically than in Turkey (this is a significant minus), well, it’s unpleasant for me when I go into a bikini, and they rub me with their eyes. After a week of rest, one of them even complained to visit in the middle of the night - he knocked, tried to enter, asked if he was alone in the room, even held the door when I tried to close it. After that, I lay until the morning with wide eyes, not knowing what else to expect. Then there was an identification (ha ha, they all look the same to me), they offered a more expensive water villa for free (I moved to it already 5 days after the offer, since I prefer land, and I had baited birds near the beach bungalow and Murenka). It is much cooler in interior than a beach bungalow (there were even scales, though they showed that I weigh 30kg) . . ), and the weed from it is beyond praise, I recommend it (the only negative is the adjacent wall with neighbors, and the audibility is wow, it’s good that I was without a partner, otherwise they would have arranged sleepless nights for the neighbors). Every single house is crammed next to each other, and all day long everyone is rummaging around, so sex on the beach is canceled, but with the advent of darkness, privacy is guaranteed. But to me, after THAT incident, all the evenings and nights were very restless and the rest was spoiled. Although such a merger with nature is difficult to spoil - all the birds are tame, and the underwater world that I saw live for the first time is just another planet!
So, more about the hotel - it stank very much and it was stuffy in the restaurant, intended for living on land, even though it is on the street. But the restaurant for guests of water villas is very worthy, really on the ocean (more precisely, the pool, but the feeling is that the ocean, since the ocean is immediately behind the pool). The food is nothing, without culinary delights, monotonously. Snacks in the second restaurant - super.
And just a giant minus of the hotel is a stupid stone-concrete wall that surrounds the entire island, it is not one, but two! - the second in the place where the sea collides with land. Only in one place, where I went to swim, this first one was absent (about 50 meters). These walls spoil the beauty of the ocean. Well, on an island of this size, it would be normal for three times fewer rooms (but, of course, the price would be different).
A big plus is a good Russian-speaking diving instructor. Although I have not yet reached diving (sorry, Oleg! ), but those who are just starting out and do not know foreign languages perfectly cannot do without this. And this is an important factor. He is there until May and is waiting for everyone. By the way, he is a very attentive person, and he will find time for everyone to pay attention, and will help in any way he can. Not to mention that he has a wealth of experience in diving.
Photos of the hotel on the Teza website, like Updates, are old. Guys, everything is already wrong there! - Update.
The Updating Agency did a good job - however, I had to choose the hotel myself, delve into all these reviews. But I’m thinking, I explained what I want, and everything was chosen for me as I dreamed, but I don’t worry at all). But, apparently, it does not happen). Renewal employees do not know well what this or that hotel is like... In all other respects, it's good. OLE- RESPECT!
Oh, I almost forgot - there is magical live music several times a week! The voice of one of the musicians and singing can be given the MTV Grand Prix!
In the spa, Balinese women are simply amazing, they give such positive energy, and the Balinese massage is cool.
Well, there are many, many more things that you shouldn’t write and read about, but you should see with your own eyes) -
God! This is not a review, but an entire article. The one who reads to the end is strong)