Why Reethi Faru Resort was our Perfect Island in the Maldives

Planning a family trip to the Maldives will raise many questions.

Which island? What do you want from a Maldivian Island? Which is the best Maldivian Family Resort? And where to get great value for your money?

To help answer these questions we have written a great Guide to the Maldives.

Read How to choose the Best Maldivian Resort Island– For YOU.

You will find lots of great information, suggestions and tips on how to select your best Maldivian Island.

Find out below why Reethi Faru Resort on the pristine island of Filaidhoo in the Raa Atoll, is our perfect family island in the Maldives.

Our Criteria for a Great Maldivian Island

If you have been following us along on Instagram and have read several of our blogs you know by now that we’re a very active family that likes a good adventure, loves to hike and be in the mountains. Therefore we needed to make sure that our perfect Maldivian Island ticks a few boxes.

Sports facilities

As we knew we couldn’t count on much altitude to conquer we needed to make sure that our chosen island in the Maldives had some sports facilities like tennis or badminton. Reethi Faru even has a gym (that we did not use but many did during the morning hours).

A great Maldivian beach

If there is any Maldivian Island that doesn’t have a great beach, I still need to find it. I think this is pretty much the thing that EVERY island in the Republic of Maldives has, a great beach with white sand.

So this was an easy one to tick off.

Beach Bungalow

As a family we definitely wanted to have a great beach bungalow where the kids could just walk out onto the sand and play. Again Reethi Faru’s deluxe beach bungalows were a perfect fit. Since our time on Reethi Faru we have been back to the Maldives and stayed at The Residence Maldives at Dhigurah, this time in a water villa. And I have to say we all loved it. Therefore choose whatever you like best as Reethi Faru offers boths.

A swimming pool

Many will ask why do you need a pool on an island in the Maldives? Well, it is still a great feature for the kids, and the combination of having the beach and the swimming pool was amazing. The location of the pool at Reethi Faru is perfect, only a few metres from the sea with great views over the ocean.

Great snorkeling on the house reef

To get the most out of our family Maldivian holiday, we needed to ensure that the island we chose has a great house reef. And it needs to be easily accessible from the beach and of course with lots of marine life. On several forums, Reethi Faru Resort has been reported to have a great house reef and we can now confirm that also.

Dive School

As we’re both scuba diving instructors we needed to have a dive school on the island. I believe that every Maldivian Island now has a dive school and offers this service.

Eco friendly wherever possible

We wanted to ensure that the island we book for our Maldivian holiday is trying to be eco friendly wherever possible. Reethi Faru Resort with its impressive green initiatives, sustainability and pro-active conservation programs, carried away the winners prize in 2019 for the Indian Ocean Leading Green Resort.

 All of the above criteria were ticked by Reethi Faru Resort! So, there was nothing in the way to stop us from booking this most amazing holiday to the Maldives with the family.

Reethi Faru – The Resort

A stunning tropical Maldivian Island Resort with picturesque palm trees fringing the white sand beach, a beautiful lagoon with crystal clear waters, and an impressive vegetation of different plants, flowers and fruits.

The first impressions on the island were of being welcome, relaxed, yet still down to earth. We do love a bit of luxury but it also needs to be comfortable and kid friendly. There is a great atmosphere on the island which is important in our eyes.

Reethi Faru Rooms

The resort consists of 150 villas, from family-friendly accommodation to romantic hideaways.

You have the choice of

• Garden villas
• Deluxe beach villas
• Water villas
• Two-bedroom garden suites
• Deluxe beach pool villas
• Deluxe two-bedroom beach suites
• Two-bedroom water villa suites with Spa tub

We went for the Deluxe Beach Bungalow with 2 extra beds for the kids. Our room was 347. It was perfect! Our stay was during the low season and most of the time one side of the island gets more wind. The side where our bungalow was located was the more sheltered side which allowed us and the kids to swim and snorkel comfortably only a few steps from our room.

Dining & Bar options on Reethi Faru

Furthermore, Reethi Faru presents a staggering choice of 10 restaurants and bars scattered across the island.

When you walk around the island at sunset you can easily stop and have a sundowner. We did not try all the bars, but I can imagine that some do and it surely gives us a nice change to go to a different bar every day.

Sports facilities

A modern air-conditioned gym with great machines means training does not need to come to a stop when holidaying in the Maldives.

The indoor sports facilities include badminton, table tennis and a squash court. This place can also be used for a basketball game.

We wanted to use the tennis courts a bit more but as they were outside and it rained nearly every day (even if it was just for 20 minutes) the courts were wet most of the time.

We could still play inside over the badminton net. Just needed to be a bit creative.

Reethi Faru Dining Packages – All Inclusive vs Half-board

As with most islands you can book half board, all-inclusive or the ultimate package, the dine-around.

With Reethi Faru having so many options to eat in other places than just the main restaurant, the dine-around option may be a great solution for foodies. With this package you can eat at any restaurant for lunch and dinner at no extra cost.

For us as a family of four, with kids that eat very little this was not an option. However, after making many calculations and weighing one against the other, we went for the all-inclusive option.

This is not something we normally do, but the value of Reethi Faru’s all-inclusive package for the 4 of us, was interesting and correctly priced.

This has given us the freedom of letting the kids have their ice cream, shakes, and juices whenever they wanted, without having to say “no” all the time to stop the bill from getting higher.  After all it was a holiday!

And the food at the main restaurant was good. With a live pasta station every lunch and dinner the kids were sorted and we enjoyed all the amazing different curries.

If you wish to eat in one of the other restaurants such as the Reethi Grill, you will get an allowance towards your bill when you are on an all-inclusive package. This allows you to enjoy a meal in a different environment and still have part of your bill already paid. 

Diving & Snorkelling at Reethi Faru with Sea-Explorer Dive School

A highlight for everybody visiting the Maldives is spending time snorkelling or scuba diving.

The underwater world is mesmerising and the Maldives has an amazing marine life.

Every day the dive school offers a free house reef snorkelling guided tour. We highly recommend you join this event at least once during your stay as the tour helps you especially if you are new to snorkelling. It also gives you a great insight to where some of the resident marine life lives as the guides know exactly where and what to look for.

Reethi Faru Resort House Reef

Due to the latest El Niño in 2016 (coral bleaching and dying due to over-warm sea water) the Maldives coral reefs have all suffered.

The shallow reefs look totally dead to an untrained eye, but if you look closer there is new life growing back. Reethi Faru has a conservation Marine Center where together with the dive school they are constructing manmade coral reefs and trying their best to bring back a more colourful reef with new corals.

To see this was a nice surprise.

But with bleached corals, algae grows which provides food for the other sea life like fish and turtles. Therefore when you snorkel at Reethi Faru the fish life is beautiful and sometimes you can find yourselves with a school of blue stripe snappers on one side and doctor fish on the other side in the open water. Just amazing. For the kids it was definitely a highlight seeing all these schools of fish and the hawksbill turtles at the house reef.

Where best to snorkel at Reethi Faru House Reef

The island is quite big and to do a full circle requires quite some strength. Also there are some off-limit areas (see map below) that are not recommended or even allowed for you to snorkel as you could get into trouble during strong currents.

Two sections are always rich in marine life and people have seen manta and mobula rays, grey reef sharks and big schools of fish on a very regular basis.

Section one
Enter in front of the main restaurant and bar (point A), head out and snorkel away from the jetty so that you have the island on your right side. Often will this let you drift with the current.

Depending on the waves, we loved to snorkel in the shallow area but also at the edge where the reef falls down and gets deeper. It is here where you may be lucky and see something a bit bigger. Also the large schools of fish love to hang out between the reef and the open water.

Having said this it is also nice to be in the shallow part where anemones, feather stars, moray eels and often the turtle was spotted.

NOTE: This island doesn’t want you to do the tip of the reef (right side) as the current can carry you out into the channel. Just keep an eye out for the large orange buoy indicating where you should head back to the beach and snorkel in the shallow part.

Section two
Enter in front of the swimming pool (number 20) and snorkel away from the jetty so you have the island on your left. This is the 2nd part where most of the marine life can be spotted. Here we loved to follow the edge, always one eye in the open water and one on the reef. During our stay we spotted sharks, mobula rays and something we were not quite sure what it was…. maybe a dolphin? Who knows, but the point is it was a great experience to snorkel as a family and despite the kids getting a bit chilly after 30 minutes, they still wanted to go on and discover more.

We absolutely loved this experience.

Under the water villas
We heard that small baby sharks and eagle rays swimming are often seen around the water villas. During our stay it was far to wavy to snorkel this part of the island so we skipped it. But I have seen videos where people have seen beautiful marine life there.

Snorkelling Boats

Several times during the week the diving school Sea-Explorer offers snorkelling boat trips to different reefs away from the island. This is a great way to see other marine life and a perfect addition to your Maldivian holiday. You may even get lucky and spot some spinner dolphins on the way to and from the island.

The manta snorkelling trip is a popular highlight. During the manta season (June to October) they organise this trip three times a week. The guides will search a number of different sites to find these elegant giants. If you are in luck it will be an experience you will never forget and a talking point of your trip to the Maldives.

We have seen mantas many times during our “diving lives” but they never get boring. Unfortunately, when we went there were big waves on all the Manta sites which prevented us from seeing any. Well, this can happen, but just sign up for the next boat and you may get lucky.

For us the next boat was on our departure day so we could not go, but heard that they saw lots and lots of manta rays and even a whale shark! Wow, so jealous but also so happy for everyone who had this great experience to snorkel with these beautiful giants.

But this clearly showed that just because you do not see them one day, it doesn’t mean you will not be lucky the next time. The underwater world is not a zoo and to have the chance of seeing great things you need to be out looking during every possible opportunity.

For more information on all trips and prices please visit the Dive School Sea Explorer directly.

Suggested snorkelling equipment

If you are new to snorkelling and have younger kids we do recommend getting the full face mask, at least for the kids. It makes the whole experience much easier for them and it is super fun to hear them talk and get excited when they see something beautiful.

But remember with these masks you cannot skin dive as the pressure on your face will be too great.

Our kids had just turned 7 when we visited the Maldives and are already very good swimmers. However they had to put a float vest on, no question about that. We found the best ones are the life vests from Decathlon. The child still has the freedom to use their arms properly and the vest stays in perfectly positioned the whole time.

Definitely get some fins as it is easier to swim and get along the reef. They also help your buoyancy should you need to assist the child during a mask adjustment.

To ensure we could stay more than just 15 minutes out at sea the kids wore 3mm wetsuits. This allowed them to stay at least 30 minutes without getting too cold and it also protected them from stinging plankton which are sometimes floating around.

Diving with Sea Explorer Dive School

Diving was a massive part of our lives pre-kids. For over 12 years we lived in Asia and diving was our life, of which more than six years was in the Maldives! There was no way we could depart from Reethi Faru without logging a few more dives.

The dive school offers two-morning boat dives and one afternoon boat dive.  If you are a certified diver and confident enough to dive without a dive master you can go with a buddy on the house reef anytime.

As one of us needed to stay with the kids we split the diving amongst us. Due to the logistics they need a minimum number of divers on the boat in order for it to go out. This can understandably cause some disappointment if there are not many divers on the island and during our stay the afternoon boat was more popular.

Just make sure if you want to dive as much as possible, that you are checking every day with the dive school if there is a boat, and put your name on the list.

The boat dives are amazing, we only did 6 all altogether, but they were seriously beautiful. Dave had twice on different dive sites lots of grey reef sharks (15 at least) and an absolutely amazing marine life.

My highlight was at the Anemone Tila where the corals were absolutely beautiful and there was so much to see, that we nearly missed the many sharks drifting by us followed by a manta ray.

So yes, definitely pleasantly surprised by the underwater world during our dive trips.

For more information on all prices and dive courses please visit the Dive School Sea Explorer directly.

Where is Reethi Faru Resort?

The island is located north of Malé in the Raa Atoll and has been in operation since late December 2017.

If you wish to know more about the Maldivian Atolls and learn all their names, read “How to choose the Best Maldivian Resort Island– For YOU”. The article gives you a lot of insider knowledge of the Maldives and interesting facts.

How to get to Reethi Faru Resort

Once you have reached Malé the capital and home of the international airport of the Republic of Maldives, we highly recommend booking a seat on a seaplane. Enyjo the last stretch of your journey to paradise with TMA. It is the more expensive option, ( US 500 return per adult and US 300 return per child).

But holidaying in the Maldives and NOT flying over the islands in one of these great planes and marveling at the most amazing views over the Atolls would just be a shame.

The scenic flight on the seaplane takes 45 minutes and gives you a spectacular view over lots of Maldivian resort islands, local islands and many atolls.

An alternative option to reach Reethi Faru would be with a 20-minute domestic flight to Dharavandhoo, followed by a 40-minute speed boat ride to the island. At the time of booking you can let the island know which transport method you would like them to book for you.

Conclusion: Reethi Faru Island Resort Maldives

Even knowing the Maldives well, we were a bit hesitant when we booked as we were too worried that it would be too boring for the kids. But, there was absolutely no reason to have the slightest doubt. It was a perfect family holiday with the right mix, of relaxation and activity.

In fact 8 nights on the island was a tad too short, I would definitely recommend booking a stay of 10 nights on the island at least.

We loved our stay at Reethi Faru Island Resort so much that we’re considering a 2nd stay next October! I guess this shows how good it was. Don’t hesitate, book your dream holiday at Reethi Faru in the Maldives now!

After being back home we also talked to experience a local Maldivian island. Find out about our experience on Fulidhoo Island in the Vaavu Atoll. One of the best Maldivian local island.

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I hope that the information provided here will prove itself useful and you are considering booking a holiday on Reethi Faru Island.

If I have left anything out or you have a question, please ask your questions in the comments below so that other readers can join in the conversation and benefit from your queries also.

Note: We have been invited by Sea Explorer Diving School to discover the underwater world. Thank you again! But our stay on the island was not a collaboration nor a sponsored trip.

Thank you & Never Forget to Travel

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