Celebs have good reason to choose the Maldives

With the world at his disposal, Tom Cruise chose the Maldives for his honeymoon.

Our seaplane skims along, smooth and low over an ocean of pure, sparkling, translucent blue stretching to the horizon. Below, to left and right, behind and forward, the aquamarine expanse is broken only by a sprinkling of small islands separated as if by some supreme architect at discreet distances apart, each existing in its own private space.

Each, too, is marked around its edge by white beaches slipping into clear, gentle shallows and dipping down to the deep, the centres lush with exotic shrubs, trees and palms. Without exception, thatched roofs dotted here and there peek through to the sky and sleek jetties reach out their arms like daddy longlegs, hosting on this side and that a string of uniform, over-water timber bungalows, complementing nature. Lagoons, and waves breaking over coral reefs, are distinguishing markers.

In fact, close to 100 per cent of this country's territory is actually under water: the thousands of individual, small, land masses rise no higher anywhere than a metre or two above sea level. So, then, Maldivians are adept seafarers. Catch a bus or train in Sydney or Melbourne: catch a plane or boat to commute in the Maldives.

But the Maldives has taken its watery trademark to inventive levels. At one resort, I descended by staircase to the ocean floor to dine in a massive sub-marine wine cellar, its walls lined with 6000 premium bottles. (No room for the Grange; it was stacked in crates by the door!)

At another I was soothed by a herbal facial and a pedicure in a submerged aquarium: I was the "goldfish in the bowl" as curious schools of sharks and wrasse cruised by the picture-glass walls around me.

Report: Susie Boswell - smh.com.au