Maldives

• Go in the summer silly! - Indian Ocean
• Lovers in Luxury - Maldives
• Feet first into the Maldives - Maldives
• No news, No shoes - Maldives
• My wedding pact with David Walliams - Maldives
• Push the boat out - Seychelles
• Relaxation Addict - Seychelles
• Mauritius the Delicious - Mauritius
• Mr Perma-Tan in Paradise - Mauritius
• Never seen you looking so lovely - Mauritius
• Island Iffy No Longer - Sri Lanka
• Having a swell time! - Seychelles
• Perfect, even for the world’s pickiest guest! - Maldives
• Do not disturb - Mauritius

MY BOYFRIEND IS STANDING before me stark naked and covered in honey and sesame seeds - I’ve seen him look happier.

Two Thai handmaidens are waiting patiently for us to rinse off in the open-air shower so they can begin the next treatment. I can’t stop laughing as he mutters, ‘I feel like sweet and sour pork’ before graciously allowing me to help him remove his sugary coating.

‘I’ve never been naked in a room with two women before,’ he observes as the water spills on to us from a bamboo pole showerhead.

‘Ahem,’ I shoot him a sharpbladed glance. ‘Oh sorry, three. But you don’t really count.’ Not the most romantic of assertions but since he’s graciously offered himself as a guinea pig for my research purposes, I’m forced to forgive him.

Side by side massage

Once we’ve rinsed off, it’s back onto our side-by-side massage beds for 90 minutes of deep, relaxing massage. After three days of scuba diving, our muscles are sore and the New Age soundtrack isn’t loud enough to disguise his groans of pain as his gamine Thai masseuse exerts the strength of 20 bricklayers.

‘You said you wanted it hard,’ I hiss at him across the 2ft divide between our beds. I hear a muffled ‘Yeah, but this is like doing three rounds with Muhammad Ali’, before we both collapse into a sensory coma lulled by expert hands, the New Age music and the sound of waves lapping gently on to the beach nearby. The setting for our ‘honey seed wrap and Banyan Tree massage’ couldn’t be more idyllic.

We’re on Ihuru, a tiny Maldivian island in the Indian Ocean. Treatments take place in open-air pavilions, screened by tangerine voile panels that flutter in the breeze. Each pavilion has its own garden, ringed by high walls and has an open-air shower and whirlpool.

Incense burns and candles float in stone bowls filled with water, one of which is thoughtfully placed below the face hole in the massage table. Facials, massages and bodywraps using an encyclopaedia of natural ingredients are administered by a team of fragrant lovelies who wash the sand from your feet before getting down to the business of pampering you.

The Banyan Tree Hotel and its recently-opened sister resort, Angsana, don’t just provide a perfect spa experience. There’s a host of aquatic activities, from world-class scuba diving to sailing, water-skiing and windsurfing.

At the Angsana, understated modernism is the order. White rooms are offset by splashes of tropical colour wall panels. Our bedroom was lovely; the outdoor bathroom out of this world. Built for romance, it housed not only a high-pressure shower, set in its own rock garden, but on a wooden terrace we had our own Jacuzzi with the stars as a ceiling.

Crystal clear waters

After a night dive and dinner we would while away the hours looking at the constellations in our scented, bubbling pool. or a scuba diver the Maldives offer near perfect recreational diving. In crystal clear waters we found ourselves swimming with turtles, manta rays, schools of eagle rays, harmless white tipped sharks and a smorgasbord of tropical fish. Not that you need to don a tank to enjoy the teeming fish life. On our first day, snorkelling just 20 yards from our room, I spotted sharks and turtles.

In fact, you don’t even need to get wet. At night, small sharks, schools of fish and rays cruise in the floodlit water near the jetty. Ihuru, which houses the new resort of Angsana, takes a mere ten minutes to circumnavigate, but it is home to a series of environmental programmes.

Efforts to increase the population of the endangered green turtle have attracted the attention of marine biologists worldwide. Twenty-eight young turtles are currently housed in a seawater playpen where they’ll be kept for the next year until they are hardy enough to brave the ocean.

Turtles lay up to 200 eggs but the survival record is tragic. Often only one turtle from a nest will reach adulthood. Until their hard shells form, turtles are preyed on by many other species.

Even before they reach the water, crabs and birds pick them off the sand. By keeping them in comfortable captivity for those first 12 months, the Angsana team hope to give them a chance of survival. The hotel also funds a reef regeneration programme.

The 1996 El Nino climatic event hit the Maldives hard. Water temperature rose to unprecedented levels and killed 70 per cent of the coral. The resort’s regeneration initiative involves placing scrap metal structures shaped like barnacles in the water and connecting them to a low, solar-powered current. This encourages coral to form and creates new reefs.

We spent an hour playing with the baby turtles before donning a mask and snorkel and checking out the most recently submerged ‘barnacle’. It was encouraging to see that it was already home to a host of hard and soft corals. Initiatives such as these are important in a fragile ecosystem like the Maldives.

Five minutes’ boat ride away is the Angsana’s sister hotel, the older Banyan Tree resort which is island chic at its most romantic. Built from local materials, the beach cabanas, with conical thatched roofs and huge wooden four-poster beds draped in white mosquito netting, are a triumph of laid-back style.

Intimate moments

Our itinerary for the week included a mysterious ‘Intimate Moments’ session booked for after dinner one night. I was intrigued and, frankly, full of trepidation. Jihad, the scarily named but utterly charming front desk manager, told me it was a surprise. On the night, we approached our room expecting scantily clad Thai girls waving bottles of massage oil.

Instead, the breathtaking sight of our bubbling whirlpool scattered with fresh flower petals and surrounded by a sea of flickering candles greeted us. Next to it, on the terrace, two mats and fresh fluffy towels were laid out and sprinkled with petals, too. half expected a neon arrow saying ‘make love here’ and an instruction manual.

We stepped into our room and found it transformed into a Vegas-style love den. Incense and more candles burned beside a chilled bottle of champagne. Our beautiful cotton sheets had been replaced by a spread of flesh coloured satin and Bette Midler’s Greatest Hits sat waiting in the thoughtfully-provided CD player. But it was a touch too much and we collapsed in a fit of giggles.

Then, having hastily stripped our bed of the offending satin, discovered to our great relief that our original sheets lay underneath. The rest is censored. By our final day we were on pampering and romance overload. We cancelled our massages and argued about the prospect of dinner on an isolated sandbank, 20 minutes’ boat ride away.

You cancel it,’ I said. ‘No, you cancel it,’ he said. ‘I can’t, they’ve been so sweet.’ ‘Yes but I can’t take any more romance. I feel like the guy in the Monty Python film who just can’t squeeze in a wafer-thin mint. I’m hearing violins everywhere I go.’

Luckily neither of us had the guts and at sunset, as we lay on raffia mats on the sand, sipping cold champagne and gazing at a blood-red sky, we were glad we’d stuck to the plan. At a discreet distance our private chef and waiter were silently preparing grilled lobster on the barbecue as candles flickered on the table and a full moon rose in the sky.

A school of baby mantas jumped in the water and sent ripples across the flat bruisecoloured ocean. I’d come in search of Paradise and found it.