Our Honeymoon in the Maldives: Ayada Maldives Resort Review

I knew the Maldives would be beautiful, but nothing prepared me for how much our honeymoon at Ayada felt like heaven!

Looking back at these photos now feels like a dream, but at the time I remember being completely floored by how picture-perfect the Maldives really was. When we first arrived, we just kept saying to each other “I can’t believe this is real”, and I spent the first 3 days not reading or scrolling on my phone but just sat staring out at the ocean and views in front of me, unable to believe my eyes.

We are so incredibly grateful to be able to experience this for our honeymoon, and Ayada Maldives exceeded all our expectations. That’s why I wanted to share a full in-depth review of our stay. It was HARD deciding between all the hundreds of resorts for our honeymoon here, but we’re so happy with our choice…

Where is Ayada Maldives located?

The Maldives is a country archipelago made up of hundreds of small islands in the Indian Ocean, to the southwest of India and Sri Lanka. Most islands here are privately owned by their own resorts, and Ayada is based on Maguhdhuvaa island in the Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll – one of the furthest south areas of the Maldives, only about 40km from the equator!

How to get to Ayada Maldives

Malé is the capital and main island of the Maldives, and home to the airport where all international flights will arrive into. From there, what transport you take next will depend on which island you’re staying on! Some are just a short boat or sea plane ride away, whereas others require a longer journey.

Because of how far south Ayada’s resort island is, it’s one of the furthest from Malé, so we were met at Malé airport by one of the resort representatives who then took us to the small domestic departures airport next door to the main airport. There was a nice lounge here for us to chill in while we waited for the next leg of the journey.

From here, we caught a short (hour long) internal flight to another small airport in the southern atoll. Landing here was amazing as the airstrip was literally just a concrete strip taking up one whole little island, surrounded by sand and with a tiny baggage claim room. It felt like we were in Animal Crossing!

Once we had our bags, we walked a few metres to the sea where a speedboat was waiting to pick us up and take us to the Ayada resort island (this took around 40 minutes).

Checking in to Ayada & our butler

After over 24 hours of travel (including the classic 5 hour Cornwall to London journey to catch our flight), we were exhausted. BUT as soon as we saw the crystal clear turquoise waters and white sand of the Ayada resort island come into view from the speedboat, all the tiredness disappeared. My jaw was on the FLOOR!

We were greeted by the island staff, given flower necklaces and cool flannels, and boarded a buggy with our own personal butler (ours was called Abdulla and he was great!) who proceeded to give us a tour of the island and take us to our villa.

We drove along the boardwalk out to sea towards our ‘Ocean Villa’ and I just couldn’t stop staring at the colour of the water and how beautiful everything looked…

Inside our Ocean Villa with pool

Walking into our Ocean Villa, which was on stilts out to sea, was once of the most exciting moments of my life (up there with marrying Alex the week before!). Our butler showed us how everything worked and then left us to get settled in, but I was too busy leaping around and dancing with happiness to ‘settle’ 🤣.

Our villa was decorated in a beautiful Maldivian style, with a huge bed, and a bathroom larger than most hotel rooms with his & hers sinks, an enormous bath, and even a toilet and shower that looked out over the water. They’d made a ‘Honeymoon’ decoration for us on the bed, and we had a fresh fruit bowl, prosecco and fresh coconuts ready for us as we arrived.

The best part of all though had to be the outside decking area out the back, with our own pool, hammock hanging over the sea, lots of comfy loungers, and steps that went directly into the crystal ocean below.

We’d made it to heaven. 

Food & Restaurants at Ayada

There were lots of reasons why we wanted to book Ayada for our honeymoon, but one of the top ones was the FOOD. Alex and I are both big foodies, with a particular love for Asian food and sushi, and we were blown away by the quality and selection of food at all of the restaurants here – definitely the best of anywhere we’ve stayed!

Magu – buffet restaurant

We arrived on Saturday, which luckily for us was Asian night! The buffet has an enormous selection of incredible quality food, and we stuffed ourselves with sushi, Thai curries, Japanese fried chicken and so much more.

Each night is a different type of cuisine (eg. Italian, Turkish/Moroccan etc.) and each one we tried was brilliant. Magu is also the breakfast restaurant where you go in the morning for a huge range of delicious breakfast buffet options.

Ocean Breeze – Mediterranean buffet lunch & a la carte dinner

Sat on the water, Ocean Breeze opens as a buffet restaurant for lunch and an a la carte, fine dining restaurant in the evening. We went for lunch a couple of times and loved the variety and quality of the food here, and it’s also very cool looking down next to your table and seeing all the fish and baby sharks!

We also ate here for one evening and had a wonderful meal looking out at the beautiful Maldivian sunset. It was very romantic!

Kai – Asian fusion a la carte

During our 9 nights here I think we ate here 3 times!! On our Diamond All Inclusive package you could eat here as much as you want, and as soon as we figured that meant we basically had all inclusive sushi (of incredible quality with these stunning displays!), we knew we had to keep going back.

As well as sushi, there were other Asian fusion dishes such as Nasi Goreng (I had this one night to relive our Bali adventures!) and curries.

Zero Degree – pool bar & a la carte lunch

This restaurant/bar is located next to the pool and serves classic pool bar type dishes like Club Sandwiches, burgers and pizzas, along with delicious cocktails and drinks too! We ate here a few times for lunch and I’d highly recommend the chicken caesar salad! There was also an ice cream stand where you could get unlimited ice cream whenever you wanted here too.

Mizu- Teppanyaki

This is a MUST do if you are staying at Ayada. We had one visit here included in our All Inclusive package and I’m so glad we did it! Teppanyaki chef, Jojo, was SO good – he was incredibly skilled and talented, and even got Alex up having a go throwing some eggs around. We have been lucky enough to try a few teppanyakis before but this was definitely the best.

The food Jojo cooked for us was exquisite as well; huge fresh scallops, succulent fillet steak, and more amazing sushi with fresh local tuna.

Il De Joie – wine & cheese bar

I loveee cheese, and so the fact this even exists at Ayada is so cool! In the middle of the boardwalk, this French-inspired bar serves lots of different wines and speciality cheese to experience for an evening snack before dinner.

Sea Salt beach BBQ

This is an extra experience that comes at an additional cost when staying at Ayada (even for Diamond All Inclusive guests) but definitely worth doing – we loved it! The staff set up a big BBQ and tables on the beach, and cook fresh meat and seafood for you there by the ocean.

The main draw of this is the amount of lobster at the BBQ, which you can essentially eat as much as you want of! The evening finishes off with a fire dance showing under the stars which was great fun too.

Ottoman Lounge – Turkish teas, snacks & shisha

The Ottoman Lounge is in the centre of the island and serves Turkish coffee, afternoon tea and shisha throughout the afternoon. This was the one place we didn’t visit but mainly because we were eating SO much at all the other places, we didn’t feel like we needed any snacks (and I can’t drink caffeine at the best of times, let alone Turkish coffee!).

With so many options, and with the buffet restaurant changing every night, you definitely can’t get bored of eating here – we stayed for 9 nights and of course wish we had longer.

The Diamond All Inclusive Package at Ayada

For our honeymoon, we just wanted to spoil ourselves, and we knew that being able to eat at the Asian restaurant lots and not worry about extra costs would be a priority for us, so we opted for the Diamond All Inclusive Package for our stay. The other level is ‘Crystal’, which has slightly less inclusions, and there are non-all-inclusive options as well when staying.

The Diamond package allowed us to eat wherever we wanted (as many times as we wanted), and included the Teppanyaki for one night, a credit towards the Sea Salt BBQ, a 60 minute treatment at the spa, 2 excursions during our stay, and more. You can see the full packages here. 

The Highlights of our Honeymoon

We made so many amazing memories here and I still can’t quite believe it was real! These are just some of the highlights of our trip…

The outstanding service

Having our own butler who organised things for us and who was on hand to help with anything throughout our stay via WhatsApp was very cool and incredibly useful! But more than that, the staff across the whole island were incredibly friendly, happy and helpful with absolutely everything.

Snorkelling with sharks!

The island has its own reef and plenty of snorkelling opportunities, which Alex certainly made the most of! He ended up swimming out really far (absolutely giving me a heart attack from the villa decking!), went over the reef and spotted a huge shark!

If the deeper water isn’t for you, all around the villas and the beaches are lovely clear, shallower waters to explore too. We saw lots of pretty fish here.

Incredible food (especially the Teppanyaki!)

As I say, the food throughout the whole trip was OUTSTANDING. From the beautiful displays of the sushi, to the freshness and performance of the Teppanyaki, my mouth is just watering writing this and a I want to go back!

The resort carnival evening

One evening, the resort put on this fun carnival evening, with a field full of fairground games. Every time you won a game, you’d get a token which you could then spend on special carnival drinks and snacks – such a great idea and loads of fun!

Breathtaking sunsets

I didn’t anticipate just how stunning the Maldives sunsets would be! There were so many evenings where I just couldn’t stop taking photos of the fiery sky.

Poolside cinema night

On Sundays, the hotel puts a big cinema screen up by the pool, and you can chill on the lounge beds all evening with popcorn and drinks while a movie plays. It was December when we visited so it was so fun cuddling up and watching a Christmas romcom here!

Switching off completely on our villa deck

Our favourite part overall just had to be our Ocean Villa outside space. I just don’t think anyone can beat having your own private lounge area, outside pool, AND steps into that unbelievable Maldivian water! We spent most of our days here to be honest as it was just so beautiful.

 

We booked our flights from the UK and our stay at Ayada through Kate Parkyn at Not Just Travel – an independent travel agent we’ve used lots for multiple trips, who we’d highly recommend :) 

Is the Maldives on your destination bucket list?