More than anything else, a trip to the Maldives is about colors. The most delicious greens and blues you’ve ever seen in the water and sky; bright white sand; fluorescent coral and fish in yellow, orange, purple that strike your eyes, even through goggles, like lightning.

Make sure you’re on a flight that arrives at Male International Airport during daylight hours, and make sure you get a window seat, because the colors grab your attention on the descent and leave you hypnotized even after the sun goes down. If you fly Bangkok Airways, you’ll reach this tiny nation of less than 400,000 people in the late afternoon. Below you, dark dots haloed in bright turquoise reveal themselves to be chains of tiny islands, lined up as if splattered off a paintbrush.

The colors seem unreal and so does the country—like it shouldn’t exist, couldn’t exist by chance, a case for intelligent design. There are over 1,000 islands in the Maldives, most of them uninhabited, heartbreakingly beautiful and fragile, looking like they could be swallowed by the sea in a moment if Mother Nature so wished it. But she doesn’t; she loves these islands, caressing them with her gentle waves that end in foamy white kisses.

The walled capital of Male, where the majority of the people live, is a multi-hued crayon box of sun-bleached buildings jutting out in the middle of open sea. Here, wooden boats painted like children’s alphabet blocks are tied to the sea wall, mosques call the faithful to prayer, souvenir shops along narrow cobblestone streets sell local handicrafts and t-shirts from Pratunam and, in a bustling open fish market, meaty tuna are displayed head-to-tail in rows, filleted, bought and sold.

The airport is on an adjacent island, this one apparently manmade, just barely long enough for a runway and not wide enough for two. Speedboats wait like taxis only a minute’s walk from the arrivals hall, shuttling passengers across the water as the sky turns purple then blue-black.

Moving Up

Over 600,000 people visited the Maldives last year. Budget travelers still have a few (dwindling) options, but post-tsunami, the focus is on more high-end tourism, and the country now boasts five-star properties operated by big hitters like Four Seasons, Hilton, Six Senses and, recently, Thailand’s own Anantara.

The template is for one resort to occupy its own island (or islands), with accommodation often in the form of super-luxurious bungalows built over the sea. To occupy your time there are usually water sports such as snorkeling, kayaking, sailing and the like, but really, the Maldives is more about chilling in paradise than extreme sports. It’s also more of a couples destination than a place to go with your mates.

Even Club Med, which is not known as a luxury brand, now features luxe 70-square-meter Lagoon Suites, each with a sundeck, a huge freestanding bathtub surrounded by glass walls, plush furnishings, a king-size bed and a welcome bottle of Champagne. Such splendor is great if you can afford it, but the standard accommodation at the Club Med Kani is just fine, too: better than basic, with high ceilings, aircon, TV and fridge—plus every unit has a sea view. This, plus the fact that three buffet meals (with beer and wine at dinner) a day, water sports and other activities are included, makes the Club Med packages the best value for money out of Bangkok.

“Paradise (Soon to Be) Lost”?

We’ve all heard the Maldives come up in discussions about global warming. Ninety-nine percent of the country is water, and more than three-quarters of its land is less than 1 meter above sea level, with its highest point only 2.4 meters above the surface of the Indian Ocean. If global warming continues at the rate it has over the past few decades, scientists say, the Maldives might not exist. Ironically, though this will not happen until the next century at the earliest (assuming we humans don’t change our ways), Maldivian officials are not doing much to dispel the myth that the islands will be completely overcome by water in our lifetime.

“Well, let’s just say that it hasn’t hurt us in terms of tourism,” chuckles a suave young representative of the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation over dinner at the unbelievably beautiful Soneva Gili & Six Senses Spa. There’s no question that the misconception has caused some people to move the Maldives up in their lists of places to visit.

“Anyway, it’s not going to happen—ever. The Maldives are not going to disappear,” he says. “But if people think that and it makes them come here, we don’t mind.”