Club Med Kani Maldives - Paradise on Earth

A school of five silver color fish slowly makes their way to where I was sitting, a small little wooden platform at our lagoon suite villa, my legs dipped in the icy cold water, inches away from the green, oh so green seaweed on fine white sand, waving gently under the magical spell of the sea current.

Meters away, a lone black tip baby shark of a meter long, cruises by oblivious to my presence. A sudden disturbance in the seabed caught my attention. A grey mantra ray of almost three feet in diameter glides by.

The sound of waves beating against the concrete pillars of the villa coupled with the gentle sea breeze blowing onto my face and the dancing sunlight reflected on the clear blue seabed has almost an hypnotizing effect. For a moment, you are in complete total peace with yourself, with mother nature, with God. For that one moment, the world you know and left behind does not seemed to exist or matter.

There is only you, the sea, the blue skies with fluffy white clouds drifting by and the wind, blowing and singing her gentle soothing melody.

This is Maldives.

Read the full story and more pictures at Clud Med Kani Maldives - Paradise on Earth (myNikon&I)

Club Med Kani Maldives - Arrival

Mynikon & I : Club Med Kani Maldives - Arrival

We arrived at 9:45 p.m. local which was 12:45 a.m. Malaysian time. After a 4 hours flight, we were tired. Maldives international airport looks pretty much like the one we have at Pulau Langkawi. Small and rather unorganized. After clearing customs, we walked out of the arrival hall expecting greeting cards from Club Med with our name but there were none. Lost and unhappy, we asked around and were directed to a small Club Med counter. We were tagged with a green wrist band (something which  will bring us much more attention and privileges as we found out later) and  were asked to wait. And we waited and waited. We ended sitting by the roadside because we were supposed to wait for another flight from Singapore and since both flights are arriving apparently 5 minutes apart in the middle of the night, the management thinks that it is good logistic to group guests from this two flights together.

Read more about our experience about the Lagoon Suites at Club Med Kani Maldives and our experience upon our arrival ....(http://mynikonni.blogspot.com/2012/09/club-med-kani-maldives-arrival.html)

My Favorite Shots from Club Med Bintan Island

We just came back from a holiday from Club Med Bintan Island. In fact, we did three Club Meds in 10 months. Kinda of crazy but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and glad that we did. We did Club Med Bali in September 2011 last year to celebrate wifey's birthday there together with Ryan.

Then when my eldest son, Reuben came back from Christchurch for his holiday in the beginning of the year, we brought him and Ryan to Club Med Cherating in Kuantan.

Club Med ran another `buy one free one' promotion recently, and we could help ourselves but to get ourselves another holiday in Club Med Bintan Island. Of the three, I enjoyed Bintan Island the best although it is the smallest of the three. You can read about my comparison of the three Club Meds in my travel and photography blog (http://mynikonni.blogspot.com).

I took tonnes of pictures during our stay at Bintan Island and the beach was absolutely fantastic and the sunrise breathtaking. But, these few pictures were my favorite, because they are of my soul mate and my prince .....(unfortunately, Chenya was left at home this round, as she was a little too young to join us).

Balancing a already unsteady world of turmoil, injustice and uncertainties

As I took this shot, I was imagining them doing it in slow motion against the awesome soundtrack of "Chariots of Fire"

Mother and son having quality time together and daddy was just too happy to be snapping away with his Nikon D90 - Previous moment - Priceless !

Natural Performer

Ryan has always been an outgoing child and has very little trouble interacting with others. Even when he was a baby, he can be carried by almost anyone and often times, he will be `missing’ the moment we arrived at any gathering or parties because he will be carried off by one of his nannies, uncles, aunties, kor kor or cheh cheh.

When he started talking, he was such a talker that he amazes most who talked to him. Recently when we were at Club Med Bintan Island, we were pleasantly surprised that he could hold a proper single conversation with the resort in house doctor who happened to sit with us for dinner.

Because of his outgoing personality, he is also a natural performer. For the last two school concerts, he has done very well and was one of the few in his class who could follow almost every step and movement the teacher taught.

(Ryan going through his baking class in the Petite Club)

And when we heard that he was going to perform at night when we were in Club Med Bintan recently, we were a bundle of nerves. We weren’t sure how he would perform. Unlike when he was with us in Club Med Bali last year and Club Med Cherating earlier this year where we did not enrol him to join the Petite Club, we made it a point to enrol him to the Petite Club for 2 full days this year for two reasons. Firstly, is to allow him to have fun with other children and the activities that they are organising and secondly, so that mommy and daddy could have some quality time together.

On the night of the performance, we had a hurried dinner and rush him an hour earlier to the Petite Club organizers to get him ready. Joanne, one of the GO who came from Cheras Malaysia and who have taken a special liking to Ryan was gracious enough to take him there on our behalf.

When the hour came, and when the MC announced the special dance performance from the Petite Club, we were overwhelmed when we see Ryan all dressed up and ready to perform and performed HE DID! He was simply amazing and the crowd went totally frenzy.

When his dance performance ended, we had a bigger surprise when the pretty MC (GO from Japan) called Ryan up to the stage again and this round, he sang a solo. His rendering of “This old man, he play one …” was simply flawless (errrrr….parents are always bias ok)

From that night onwards, for the next three days that we were there, the entire Club Med including the Village Head knows Ryan by name and he was treated like a star whenever he goes. They gave him the title `Assistant’ because he was being so helpful and that is also the other way to get him to keep quiet instead of asking so many questions !!!!